By The Honourable Justice Brian Preston FRSN SC FAAL
At the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit 2015, attending countries adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which included 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). One of the sustainable development goals, SDG 16, is to ‘promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels’.
SDG 16 involves three related goals. First, the promotion of peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development. This involves promoting societies that value and seek to achieve sustainable development. Second, the provision of access to justice for all. Third, the building of effective, accountable and inclusive institutions. Such institutions include those not only in the legislative and executive branches of government, but also the institutions in the judiciary of the courts and tribunals. For convenient expression, I will refer to these judicial institutions as courts. Courts play a vital role in achieving the first two goals: sustainable development and access to justice. These two goals are mutually reinforcing and create a third goal – promoting environmental justice.
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