Access to laws, regulations and cases is of critical importance not only to lawyers, but to other stakeholders in decision-making relevant to environment, conservation and sustainable development. That is why the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) officially established a partnership to set up ECOLEX in 2001.

“Keeping records and information is of particular importance for law. ECOLEX has been recognized as a flagship knowledge tool on environmental law,” says Director of the IUCN Environmental Law Centre, Dr. Alejandro Iza   “The launch of a new ECOLEX celebrates 15 years of committed partnership between IUCN, UNEP and the FAO and sees ECOLEX enter a new phase of development offering enhanced tools and services”. 

Over the past decades, the world has seen major developments in the field of environmental law with significant growth in multilateral and bilateral agreements, national legislation, international "soft law" documents, law and policy literature, as well as related jurisprudence and court decisions. Yet, much of this wealth of information has been difficult to access for free in one place.

The new website allows users to search information from over 180 countries in different languages by subject matter or key word. They can search:

• 2,100 multilateral and bilateral environmental treaties
• 113,000 national legal instruments
• 1,500 court decisions
• 10,000 decisions by treaty governing bodies
• 37,000 bibliographic references to law and policy literature

The birth of ECOLEX and its tripartite partnership came from the commitment of IUCN, FAO and UNEP to offer their individual environmental law information holdings on one site to be used free of charge by lawyers, environmental practitioners, decision makers, academia, private sector and non-profit organizations world-wide in an easily accessible service.

Since its creation, ECOLEX has become the broadest global source of information on national and international environmental law. Its wealth of information has been built up over decades through the three partner institutions’ knowledge tools. It has been widely adopted by legal communities all over the world and has 130,000 visits per year.

IUCN`s Environmental Law Centre - ELC - created a comprehensive information system on environmental law - ELIS - in the 1960's. ELIS, which was one of the first computerized legal information systems, evolved into a large set of references to treaties, national legislation, soft law and legal literature, linked to documents held in the libraries of the ELC. 

FAO has been committed to the collection and dissemination of legal and policy instruments on food, agriculture and natural resources management for more than 70 years. From 1954 to 1994, the FAO Legal Office published “Food and Agricultural Legislation”, an annual compilation of significant, innovative and illustrative legislation. In 1995, this publication was replaced by FAOLEX, a global, open access, database of national legislation, policies and bilateral agreements in areas relevant to FAO’s mandate.

UNEP has provided leadership to the development and implementation of global and regional international environmental agreements, the strengthening of national environmental legislation and the helping develop skills and capabilities in the field of environmental law. This work has led to the collection of a very significant amount of legal materials in electronic and hardcopy form and UNEP has contributed the collection of jurisprudence and case law to ECOLEX and provides information decisions and resolutions by the governing bodies of Multilateral Environmental Agreements through InforMEA.

As in the past, ECOLEX continues to benefit from the extensive network of environmental lawyers and practitioners associated with IUCN, FAO and UNEP, including the IUCN Academy of Environmental law.