Estonian Environmental Law Center (EELC) was founded in 2007 by environmental NGO Estonian Fund for Nature (ELF) and 3 public interest environmental lawyers – Kärt Vaarmari, Liis Keerberg and Silver Nittim.

In fact, EELC is continuing environmental law activities, carried out by ELF in previous years. These activities have involved environmental legal aid in numerous cases, but also legal analyses and participation in legislative procedures.

Mission Statement

EELC is a non-profit non-governmental environmental law organization with a purpose to create, collect, disseminate and use expert knowledge on environmental law, in order to enhance development of environmental law and quality of environmental decisions of different levels as well as environmental legislation.

Activities

EELC is starting its own activities in 2008. These activities will involve legal analyses in field of environmental law, collection and dissemination of information on environmental law (including webpage on environmental law), trainings about environmental law, environmental legal service and participation in environmental legislative processes and other environmental decision-making processes.

Priority program areas of EELC in 2008 are:

History

ELF started environmental law activities on 2001, when Estonian environmental organisations had come up with conclusion that competent legal advice is crucial for their further activities. Since then, several environmental law projects have been carried out, most of which have been aimed at providing free environmental legal help to individuals and NGOs, but legislation and legal analysis have also been under attention.

In it's environmental law activities, ELF has been closely cooperating with other Estonian environmental NGOs, primarily through the network of environmental organisation, EKO ( Eesti Keskkonnaühenduste Koda ).