19. International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN)

The IUCN is an environmental network made up of over 1,000 members including states, government agencies, and national and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as well as some 10,000 individual scientists and other experts structured in six commissions whose headquarters are in Gland, Switzerland. The priorities and work of the IUCN are set by member organizations every four years and subsequently co-ordinated by a professional secretariat with 1,000 staff in forty-five countries. The mission of the IUCN Environmental Law Programme (ELP) is to advance environmental law through the development of legal concepts and instruments and to facilitate the use of environmental law as a tool to influence, encourage, and assist societies throughout the world to conserve the integrity and diversity of nature and to ensure that any use of natural resources is equitable and ecologically sustainable. The ELP is an integrated program of activities that assists decision makers with information, legal analysis, advisory services, legislative drafting, mentoring, and capacity building at national, regional, and global levels. ELP activities are carried out by the World Commission on Environmental Law (WCEL) and the Environmental Law Centre (ELC), in collaboration, as appropriate, with the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law. As of the end of 2013, the WCEL has over 950 members, including judges, prosecutors, government attorneys, private attorneys, law professors, and others engaged in the commission’s work and mission.