APCEL Student Outreach Programme: Cedar Girls’ School

On 25 August 2023, the Asia-Pacific Centre for Environmental Law (APCEL) hosted students from Cedar Girls’ School.

To the delight of our guests, the workshop began with afternoon tea. Students and teachers brought their own cups, lunchboxes, and cutlery to reduce waste by avoiding the use of single-use disposable items.

Selene Tanne (Sheridan Fellow, NUS Law; Academic Fellow, APCEL) kicked off the sessions with an icebreaker discussion session. Students discussed the environmental issues they knew of, those that they were most concerned about, and the role they believe that laws and policies play in correcting environmental problems.

Following that interactive segment, Dr Sroyon Mukherjee (Research Fellow, APCEL) introduced students to international environmental law – where it comes from and how it might percolate through countries’ legal systems. After a brief segment on the mechanism of international treaties, Sroyon led students through an interesting exploration of abstract issues, including distributive justice and the rights of nature. Finally, Sroyon used the example of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to demonstrate the necessary and natural intersection of environmental law and science.

After a short break, Selene returned to share about the various contributions that Singapore either has made or is aspiring to make under the Paris Agreement regime. She explained the two-pronged focus of mitigation and adaptation in governing climate change, which many governments have prioritised as the most urgent environmental problem to be solved at present.

The workshop culminated in a hands-on activity that was intended to allow students to have a flavour of how laws are structured and understood in practice – students worked in teams to identify provisions in the Resource Sustainability Act 2019 in order to answer assigned questions.

The session ended with a tour of the campus led by a student volunteer.