When I was a law student, I took advantage of an opportunity to take a course in “Planning Law” from a professor with a passion for municipal governance. I learned a lot, and it was fascinating to explore some of the ways that municipal governments contribute to the intricate web of institutions that shape day-to-day life in Canada.

In the second part of this blog series, I highlighted opportunities for restorative justice to be used for the purposes of finding justice when environmental offences have been committed. In this part, I discuss the role for restorative approaches in decision-making processes where no offences have occurred. The focus of this post is on restorative process as a tool for education and engagement.

In the first part of this blog series on restorative environmental law, I advocated generally for restorative justice to be used in environmental law because of its inclusion of communities in justice processes and outcomes. In this post, I will examine restorative justice in the context of environmental offences.

I was first introduced to restorative justice in my second summer of law school, when I spent two months working at the Community Justice Society (“CJS”) in Halifax. CJS is a non-profit organization that runs the restorative justice program on behalf of the Department of Justice in the Halifax Regional Municipality.

River as Person

Earlier this year I had the privilege of hearing from Dame Tariana Turia and Turama Hawira at the 2nd Annual Assembly of First Nations National Water Symposium in Niagara Falls. Dame Turia and Mr. Hawira are the first co-appointed voices of New Zealand’s Whanganui River, which was granted legal personhood by the Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Act in March 2017.

Last month I had the opportunity to attend the first Canadian Animal Law conference, which was held at Dalhousie’s Schulich School of Law. As the only member of the East Coast Environmental Law staff without formal legal training, I had initial reservations about being East Coast Environmental Law’s representative at the conference, as I anticipated that a great deal of the material would be over my head. In the end, I managed to banish these fears and dive wholeheartedly into the weekend.

The East Coast Environmental blog consists of a wide variety of environmental topics. Some blogs maintain a legal focus, some take a more sociological approach, while others lend a scientific lens to the material that they explore. The depth and breadth of these blog posts showcases the variety of interests and perspectives found amoung the many dedicated individuals connected to East Coast Environmental Law.

Diversity is variety. Biodiversity is the variety of life.

Maintaining variety across all aspects of life is integral to ensuring healthy, robust, and resilient conditions for growth and continuity. Farming and agriculture, neighborhoods and communities, our diets, political candidates, classrooms and learning environments, forest flora and fauna: all these aspects of life rely on diversity for sustenance.