How will my donation to the Environmental Law Foundation make a difference?
Together, we can use the power of the law to protect the environment and ensure communities are heard when decisions affect the places they live, work and care for. For 35 years, the Environmental Law Foundation has helped grassroots communities across the UK take action against pollution, unlawful development and environmental harm. Every donation — large or small — helps ensure communities are not left to face environmental injustice alone. Your donation powers real change.
Right now, your support will enable us to:
- Take on more than 350 cases every year, providing free legal advice and litigation support to communities working to safeguard the environment.
- Help communities engage confidently in complex planning, regulatory and legal processes.
- Unlock up to £1 million in pro bono legal support annually through our national network of lawyers, barristers and technical experts — maximising the impact of every donation.
- Carry out research that strengthens environmental protections for everyone and helps hold decision-makers to account.
- Turn lived experience into systemic change, using insights from real community cases to inform policy, improve practice and strengthen environmental law across the UK.
Just recently, thanks to support from people like you we have:
- Helped communities challenge unlawful development threatening protected habitats and wildlife, including cases where planning decisions failed to properly consider environmental law or biodiversity impacts.
- Supported landmark legal action that strengthened protections for rivers and waterways across the UK, including backing the Manchester Ship Canal Company in a successful Supreme Court appeal confirming that water companies can be held accountable for unlawful sewage discharges.
- Supported communities to defend irreplaceable green spaces and ecosystems.
- Enabled local groups to engage confidently with regulators, councils and developers — ensuring their voices shape outcomes.
- Led groundbreaking Rights of Nature initiatives, including supporting the landmark motion that secured England’s first Rights of Nature river charter.
