Preface to 'Framework for Assessing and Improving Law for Sustainability: A Legal Component for a Natural Resource Governance Framework'

Achieving a sustainable future is one of the most urgent challenges of our time. Fundamental improvements in how we govern and manage our ecosystems and natural resources are needed to loosen the grip of inequity, poverty, and conflict and to enhance human well-being as well as livelihood and development opportunities, adding fuel to the vision of the United Nations Rio +20 conference in 2012. With these goals in mind, IUCN initiated development of a 'Natural Resource Governance Framework' (NRGF) to assess and improve environmental governance. NRGF is intended to provide a robust, credible approach to assessing and strengthening natural resource governance in diverse contexts. NRGF is a knowledge basket, comprising different standards, processes, relationships, capacity-building materials and tools. Its development is led by the IUCN Commission on Environmental Economic and Social Policy (CEESP). A core component of this initiative focuses on improving the effectiveness of legal aspects of natural resources governance. This report presents a first step in this process: a framework for assessment of the implementation and effectiveness of legal principles for sustainable natural resource governance. The framework provides a disciplined basis to stimulate constructive discussion about reform while respecting scientific standards of objectivity and transparency. One aim is that this component of the NRGF toolkit will further stimulate a community of practice focused on improving legal aspects of natural resource governance. IUCN has created an online platform to support this work: www.lawforsustainability.org.