Rights-based approaches are proving pivotal as we struggle with the challenges around biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation. Human rights span a broad spectrum from individual and community-based rights to national and global human rights to healthy ecosystems, which includes access. Rights of Nature, implicit in many Indigenous communities, have seen growing recognition in recent decades and, in several instances, personhood of nature/parts thereof have been granted legal standing. This introduces a new dimension to management of anthropogenic activities. In this session, we examine potential synergies and trade-offs when aiming for a balance between human rights and nature’s rights as we strive towards more desirable futures. We focus on rights-based approaches in managing human-nature interactions, with a view to transforming nature-human inter-relations and coexistence, and as a means to better implement real ecosystem-based management.

Biodiversity governance relies on scientific knowledge but what law does with that knowledge is far from straightforward. Legal systems don’t merely absorb ecological facts: they transform, filter, and reframe them. In doing so, law itself is reshaped. Simultaneously, scientific practices are shaped by legal frameworks: compressed into regulatory thresholds, adapted to procedural timelines, or excluded for failing to meet evidentiary standards. This session explores the dynamic, bidirectional relationship between law and science, and the complex practices and institutional spaces that result.
We invite contributions that critically examine how scientific knowledge is translated into legal and regulatory systems and how legal processes, in turn, shape the production, selection, and interpretation of the scientific practices, hypotheses, and forms of knowledge emerging in the biodiversity space. How do legal mandates, frameworks and preoccupations influence what counts as the “best available science”? How do legal and governance institutions navigate ecological uncertainty, plural knowledge systems, and competing interests? And how can regulatory and governance frameworks remain responsive to ecological realities without undermining legal legitimacy?
We particularly encourage interdisciplinary submissions, comparative work, case-studies and insights grounded in practice. This session aims to surface the assumptions, frictions, and creative possibilities that emerge when science and law attempt to speak to one another under pressure.

Target 18 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework includes eliminating, phasing out, and reforming subsidies harmful to biodiversity by 2030. The WTO’s Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies will likely enter into force soon and will be an important regulatory addition to operationalizing this target. The WTO Agreement was adopted in 2022 to tackle harmful fisheries subsidies, including those subsidies that go to illegal, unreported, or unregulated (IUU) fishing, the fishing of overfished stocks, and fishing in the unregulated high seas. As of August 2025 it only needs three more ratifications to enter into force. Meanwhile, negotiations are ongoing to create new rules to curb the subsidies that contribute to overfishing and overcapacity more broadly. This session will detail the importance of the WTO Agreement to biodiversity and what next steps the world can take to ensure the Agreement is implemented and finalized, especially in the lead up to the WTO’s Ministerial Conference in March 2026. (Potential conveners could include the International Institute for Sustainble Development, and the Stop Funding Overfishing Coalition)

As biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation accelerate, restoration has become a central strategy to reverse ecological damage and ensure long-term sustainability. However, the legal frameworks governing restoration remain fragmented and weakly enforced. Strengthening coordination between international and national laws is critical to achieving the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.
This session explores how international environmental law can support restoration by better integrating with national legal systems. It examines both normative and institutional dimensions of restoration across national and international legal frameworks, with a focus on coordination.
We invite contributions that explore ecosystem restoration across diverse environments, focusing on:
1. The legal basis for restoration under multilateral environmental agreements (e.g. CBD, Ramsar Convention, UNCCD, UNCLOS) and their operational mechanisms;
2. The formulation, assessment, and reporting and monitoring of restoration plans under treaty regimes, and how these obligations are integrated into national laws;
3. Jurisdictional and sovereignty challenges in restoration implementation, including coordination between States and among central and subnational authorities;
4. The roles of international organizations, treaty bodies, dispute settlement mechanisms, NGOs, and private actors in developing and enforcing restoration-related norms at international and national levels;
5. Innovative legal approaches at national and international levels to scale up restoration, including rights-based frameworks, due diligence duties, and ecosystem-based obligations.

o Specialist environmental courts and tribunals (ECTs) are often seen as key to resolving environmental disputes and enforcing biodiversity protections. But, they may risk reinforcing proceduralism, institutional constraints and include risks including how “knowledge” and scientific expertise is treated, and how "biodiversity" is understood. Shifting legal categories and inconsistencies between statutes, create significant complexity for courts and practitioners. This workshop invites critical and comparative engagement with the role of ECTs as institutions. Drawing on recent scholarship, case-studies and diverse experiences, we ask whether ECTs help move beyond procedural review toward substantive protection and restoration of biodiversity and under what conditions. In particular: How do ECTs influence biodiversity governance, directly (e.g. through rulings) or indirectly (e.g. through deterrence, capacity-building, or procedural design)? When and why do specialist courts outperform generalist forums? When do they risk marginalising broader ecological / justice concerns? What is the role of institutional design, technical expertise/expert witnesses, standing, and access to justice in shaping outcomes? How do ECTs and evolving legal frameworks interact, including recognition of rights of nature, Indigenous legal orders, and earth systems law? Do biodiversity outcomes depend on judicial forums themselves or on broader political, legal, or epistemic conditions? How do historical legal categories and fragmented statutory regimes shape the way biodiversity is defined, protected, or left vulnerable in specialist courts? Are courts appropriate fora for determining contested matters of science and is the precautionary principle working appropriately in those scenarios?

This interactive workshop invites all those interested in exploring the evolving interface between ecosystems, the climate legal regime, and human rights, in light of recent landmark rulings from the International Court of Justice, Inter-American Court of Human Rights, International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, and European Court of Human Rights. These decisions underscore the need to integrate biodiversity and diverse epistemic perspectives into legal reasoning within the “triple environmental crisis,” while simultaneously opening, recalibrating, or foreclosing critical conceptual and legal avenues. They have reinforced some interpretive paths (e.g., privileging human rights), constrained others (e.g., climate law as a lex specialis regime), and left key questions unsolved (e.g., structural drivers of environmental crises). These tensions raise pressing questions about law’s role in enabling biodiversity-positive futures, the legal methodologies required, and the institutional and jurisdictional complexities of implementation.

Designed as an ideas laboratory, the workshop will begin with a concise framing introduction, followed by facilitated group work across thematic clusters, and conclude with a plenary to share insights, receive feedback, and refine draft ideas. Participants will form collaborative groups to co-develop tangible outputs such as blogs, commentaries, podcasts, or research proposals. Immediate outcomes will include draft contributions, while laying the groundwork for longer-term joint projects (e.g., special issues or co-authored articles). By fostering this co-writing session, the workshop seeks to advance the legal understanding of biodiversity and climate justice, while building enduring collaborations that extend beyond the Forum.