Fighting for a Community's Legal Right to say "No" to Development Thomas Linzey and Mari Margil
(eVideo)

English

Part of The Green Interview series.

Streaming video file encoded with permission for digital streaming by Infobase on April 25, 2015.

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This episode of the Green Interview features Thomas Linzey and Mari Margil of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), a non-profit, public interest law firm providing free and affordable legal services for communities facing threats to their local environment. CELDF has assisted more than 110 local governments in the U.S., as well as the governments of Nepal, India, and Ecuador. It was a founding member of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature, and a co-author of the Universal Declaration for the Rights of Mother Earth.

When the organization first formed in 1995 in Pennsylvania, it began by assisting communities facing unwanted corporate development projects by appealing corporate permit applications through the state's environmental regulatory system. After experiencing how the regulatory system operated over several years and seeing communities lose time and again in the long run, CELDF's approach to these cases shifted, but assisting communities in drafting legally binding laws in which they assert their right to local self-government. CELDF argues that in order to achieve sustainability, communities must be able to make decisions about their future and have the legal right to say "no" to what they don't want.

13 & up.

System requirements: Access Video On Demand playback platform.

Closed-captioned.