IBA Climate Registry

Welcome to the IBA Climate Registry: a unique climate knowledge sharing platform for bar associations and law societies.
Lawyers across all practice areas have a critical role to play in addressing the climate crisis and facilitating the global transition to net zero, including by supporting their clients’ efforts to do so. Bar associations and law societies play an equally important role through the support and education they provide to their members.
This Registry provides a platform for bar associations, law societies and similar bodies around the world to share the steps they are taking to address climate change and facilitate the transition to net zero, both through their own operations, and their engagement with member lawyers and law firms, by sharing:
- organisation-wide climate policies, resolutions and declarations
- reports on the organisation’s carbon footprint
- guidance and educational materials for legal practitioners relating to climate change
- examples of climate-related initiatives undertaken by their organisation
Search by region for information and upload documents for your jurisdiction below. We welcome submissions from local, state, regional, and national bar associations and law societies.
Search by region for statements and information
Be part of the change! Submit bar association statement and information
Resources: climate change, sustainability and the legal profession
Below are a range of tools, academic articles and resources that address intersections between climate change, sustainability and the legal profession. The majority of these resources have been drafted or created by IBA members or organisations with whom we work closely. They are listed in recognition of the need for improved access to resources in this field.
- Climate contracting in action training course (launched May 2025)
This training course provides lawyers and other professionals with practical skills for integrating climate considerations into everyday legal work. The course focuses on: the role of law in driving climate action, mitigating climate risks in legal practice, principles of climate contracting, and practical application of climate-aligned clauses. - Law and climate atlas
The Law and Climate Atlas maps intersections between climate change and different fields of law, outlining how those fields are influencing, and being influenced by, climate change, particularly in the UK and the USA. The Atlas also canvasses how these areas might help drive climate action. - Climate change legal knowledge hub
The Climate Change Legal Knowledge Hub lists over 150 training resources in areas such as climate change science, policy approaches, legal issues, biodiversity, and sustainable business practices. The resources are aimed at qualified lawyers, aspiring solicitors, members of professional support teams, and others working in the legal sector. - Legal Charter 1.5 matter classification toolkit.
The Matter Classification Toolkit is designed to provide a methodology for law firms to classify matters according to their climate impact and contribution to the global climate transition.
- Sustainability-competent lawyering in the international context (John C Dernbach and Amy L Edwards, 2025)
This essay underscores the growing need for lawyers to be both climate-competent and sustainability-competent. Focusing on the US context, the essay emphasises the importance of understanding and counseling clients on how international laws affect legal responsibilities of clients, especially amid the shift from voluntary standards to mandatory directives in corporate law and reporting. - Representing climate wreckers (Camila Bustos, 2025)
This Article examines how professional responsibility rules and principles in the US should be interpreted in the context of lawyers representing so-called ‘climate wreckers’ in civil matters. It argues that lawyers choosing to represent ‘climate wreckers’ should be held accountable for their decision to do so. - The legal profession and climate change: becoming a climate conscious lawyer - climate change and the Australian legal system (Vivien Holmes and Julian Webb, 2024)
This chapter examines the idea that lawyers have a special role to play in addressing the climate crisis. It then discusses the regulation of lawyers in Australia, including the conduct rules, and whether the current regulatory framework facilitates or impedes lawyers acting as ‘climate conscious’ lawyers. Finally, it considers gaps in the rules — that is, where the rules provide little or no guidance for a climate conscious lawyer — before discussing current developments and future trends. - The lawyer's duty of competence in a climate-imperiled world (John C Dernbach, Irma S Russell and Matthew Bogoshian, 2024)
This article examines the concept of competence for lawyers and other professionals and provides examples of how professional competence evolves under changing circumstances. It also describes the benefits of systems leadership skills and capacities and identifies principles for climate-competent lawyering. Existential ethics: thinking hard about lawyer responsibility for clients’ environmental harms’ (Steven Vaughan, 2023)
Focussing on the UK context, this paper argues that lawyers have significant ethical agency and that their professional obligations do not impede (and sometimes require) an active, ethically responsible stance towards environmental harms. It considers theories of legal ethics that go beyond ethical conduct rules and considers the ethical implications of a lawyer’s decision to represent a client.Climate conscious lawyering (Brian J Preston, 2021)
This article argues that climate change places a responsibility on lawyers to adopt a climate conscious rather than a climate blind approach in their daily legal practice. A climate conscious approach requires an active awareness of the reality of climate change and how it interacts with daily legal problems.