Oxford Climate Club talks to environmental lawyer Rowan Rowrie about her career journey

you can use law to protect the environment by creating strong legislation and i've done some work that's been around strengthening legislation and making sure that there is good protection for the environment that's written into law and then you can also use that law so once you've got good laws available then making sure that those laws are used that you're challenging governments or challenging companies and making sure that the protection that's in place is used um to protect the environment is is really important so i think there's there's different ways that you can do it that's kind of constructive and also a bit more challenging um and then thinking about who you're protecting whether it's protecting just the natural world or whether you're thinking about combining environmental work with human rights which is a lot of the work i've done where you're bringing in the people that are affected the people that are well placed to protect the environment and protecting their rights as well as just the environment itself it's definitely not an area of work that is without its challenges and there have been quite a few times when i've really doubted my career or doubted what the next job's going to be or doubted what path i'm on um but i think there's power in law and i think that lots of people can see that there is potential power in law and using that power in a way that feels appropriate that feels like you're actually using it for um for people that are not able to protect themselves or for the environment that is not able to protect itself within our legal system does feel like a career that i'm happy to be part of or you know work that i'm happy to be doing even if it's really challenging on a personal level and really challenging on a financial level lots of times it's definitely not the most lucrative area of law and that it feels like a good skill set to bring to the environmental sector i think careers only really make sense in hindsight so i think that whatever story i tell about i did this and then i did that and then i did the other and that's where i am today it kind of makes sense if i tell you in that sort of sequence but at the time it's never felt like that it's never felt particularly clear so i think to anybody that's further along you know back along the path trying to look forward and figure out what comes next don't expect it to make sense looking forward because it doesn't so my experience was i did i did english biology and chemistry at a level so kind of art sciences split and then did archaeology and anthropology at cambridge and loved the again art sciences split and something that was quite practical um but then didn't want to stay in archaeology long term after that so left um left cambridge with with that degree and then went to work in charities in london for a year and got a bit frustrated by the kind of roles that i was able to get as a graduate but without any specific skill set that was useful to the charities sector so i decided to follow a very well trodden path of cambridge graduate to go and do law um and was able to get a training contract to do that so i got a training contract with a firm that did a very kind of broad base of different types of law i deliberately avoided magic circle because i thought if i ended up going into the magic circle and earned loads and loads of money i'd find it harder to leave and i've seen quite a lot of people who have ended up going down that path and have found it harder to leave because it's very alluring and it becomes a lifestyle and it's a different choice so i chose a firm that enabled me to do some environmental law and some public sector law um and did the gdl and training contract et cetera and then as soon as i qualified i left and found myself unemployed so suddenly like qualified lawyer no money at all um but found stumbled across client earth um they had just started at that point and they happened to be just down the road from where i was living so i got in touch with them and kind of set up a meeting and explained that i was a qualified lawyer and i was just down the road and i was interested in some of their areas of work and while i'd been doing the gdl i've been doing volunteering with global witness and while i've been doing the lpc i've been doing quite a lot of work with the solicitors international human rights group and did a couple of projects had a couple of projects with them um and then while i was doing the training contract i did some of a masters with the open university around sustainability and environmental law but um hadn't got sort of experience of you know being an environmental lawyer and didn't have a masters but went along and got in touch with client earth and explained who i was and they were happy for me to come and do some work with them um initially voluntary and then very quickly that became a paid role and then that kind of turned into another paid role when the first contract finished um so i was there for a couple of years with client earth and then um various things happened and it felt like it was time to kind of go and do something else and think about leaving london so i ended up working with the government legal service briefly because you could get very flexible contracts with them and that was interesting to see how the government's legal system works and then went out to southeast asia with earth rights international again initially unpaid took a punt and went out there and then that very quickly again turned into a paid role and my husband dan came out as well and he did some work initially with them and then with other organizations locally and they are an organization that are not that well known in europe but much better known in the us who've done lots of litigation in the u.s courts against oil companies for human rights abuses overseas and they do a lot of work with local communities and providing training to local communities around environmental and human rights issues um and they at the time i started work with them in chiang mai because that's where their main office in south east asia was but a lot of the work was focused on myanmar and at the time it suddenly the situation in myanmar was changing very rapidly and it kind of became possible to open up an office in myanmar so i went across to myanmar for earth rights and helped them set up an office in in myanmar um in 2012-ish and then help set up a program there so set up a program training some of the local lawyers on environmental law they have no concept of environmental law or human rights because it hasn't really served the bernie's regime to teach about rights or to teach about environmental law so that was fascinating and really amazing people to be working with and we were out there for a few years until i had my first daughter and then we ended up coming back to the uk and i haven't worked full-time since then so i've done lots of part-time roles but trying to juggle parenthood and work as a whole different ball game um so the oxfam role that i had with them was part-time and that was working on a number of projects around how to engage lawyers outside oxfam and use use the legal community to support some of oxfam's work and also how to engage lawyers in a project called lawyers against poverty which is trying to kind of get lawyers to volunteer some of their time around specific projects and also um working with things like in-house lawyers trying to get in-house lawyers to recognize that you can use your skills within your job to push for change even you know without you don't have to quit your work you can kind of use your skills and your perspective within the role you've got um so that's taken me up to this last role that i'm in well sort of role that i'm in at the moment um when i then had my second daughter and the school strike movement started so you'll note that none of that so far has mentioned climate change i'd never worked on climate change until this the work that i'm doing now which was after my youngest daughter who's now two was born um and then the ipcc report in 2018 came out which painted a extremely gloomy frankly terrifying picture of the state of climate change and the amount of time that we've got to actually take action on climate change and that plus a couple of other things kind of spurred me to really engage on climate i think for a long time i'd felt that climate was too big and too scary an issue and i had to be an expert to engage around climate change and i think that report in the school strike movement made me realize that actually i didn't have to be an expert i could get involved as an activist and all i had to do was care and the fact that i had children and cared about their future was enough for me to engage around climate change so i did and just got stuck in as an activist and went along to the school strikes in oxford and got in touch with various groups who've been um engaging and you know helping the youth right movement um and helping to try and engage adults in that movement too and quickly realize that there aren't many other lawyers in that work and so i've also been trying to link up both the youth movement and the adult parents for future movement with lawyers and with kind of external support my career path has been very wiggly and there have been lots of times where i've kind of had to leap and not quite know what the next step is going to be and and i appreciate that that's not easy for everybody to do um i haven't sort of i don't come from a massively wealthy family or anything but i do appreciate the privilege i've had to be able to take risky choices financially and that this career path can be really difficult if you haven't got those kind of financial safety nets um so i i really appreciate that you know the fact that i've been able to take some of those choices to to jump and not quite know what the next thing is i think if you're able to trust yourself and trust that you will find the right thing next that's great but also not put pressure on yourself if you've got to make ends meet i think figuring out how to trust yourself is really important figuring out that actually the things that feel deep down important to you like i've always wanted to work on something that's related to the environment and something that feels like i'm able to use my voice in some way to speak up for people who are not able to speak up for themselves and for me the environment is one of those people you know the natural world in a wider sense um so find a way to kind of trust the bits that actually feel really important to you that really kind of make you you know thing in some way and find ways to to do that work in and even if it's you know the bits that are not where you have to be super qualified so a lot of the work i'm doing at the moment and i call it work even though it doesn't all pay i'm i work as a consultant and some of what i do i get paid for and a lot of what i do i don't get paid for but it's still work um and a lot of it i don't have to be a lawyer to do it but it still feels like it's important work to do i think it is useful to have something that you're bringing to the charities kind of sector but also i would say that experience counts for an enormous amount so i don't think and practical experience i think law is quite a practical kind of skill or qualification but i don't think that necessarily just having um you see some people kind of applying for jobs in in the charities sector certainly who've got a lot more masters qualifications and master's level qualifications than i have um i don't have any master's levels qualifications um but i think that practical skills do count for a great deal so if you're able to get some experience that feels like it would be kind of practically applicable then that's actually that's really helpful um rather than just the theory theory is great too and theory can definitely help you figure out what it is that you're interested in and which bits feel really um relevant to you but i think that practical skills are really valuable and that's often reflected in recruitment when you're looking for roles or internships or whatever people with kind of practical skills and a bit tricky at the moment but overseas experience and travel experience so that kind of international cultural experience and appreciation of working with different groups um is is also really valuable i think that the main thing that still informs my climate work is the fact that i'm a parent um and the fact that i feel that kind of connection to the future that i feel through my kids and i don't i know that you don't have to just feel that through children um but that's a big factor that influences my work or you know the ways i engage um they're certainly kind of the other skills and the other experiences i've had of you know things like working with vulnerable communities is enormously important in climate change because there are huge numbers of vulnerable communities so being able to work sensitively with different groups um is really really important so yeah there's lots of ways that you can do yes things that are not climate labeled that are still useful in the climate space itself but i think there's lots of ways that young people are raising their voice on climate issues right now and so finding ways to connect with them and engage with them i would really recommend the activists from within fridays for future and ukscn which is the uk student climate network um kind of the uk equivalent of the school strikes network have been so deeply inspiring and just wonderful people to work with and really welcoming so if you're interested in finding ways to engage in climate as a young person i really recommend reaching out to them and you can find all the groups are on any of the social media channels and they're really welcoming international level too so if you're wanting to kind of get involved then there's lots of scope there to to engage and find out who's doing what and see about helping um and you know the ways that people are engaging are different at the moment because of covert obviously there's a lot less street protest but protest is not the only way that you can engage there's lots of other options too around different types of advocacy and different types of kind of engagement and just talking about it i think one of the most important things that we all need to do more around climate is talk about it and show that it's an issue that's important to us and try and engage other people to think about it too there's a great a great campaign called teach the future which has come out of ukcn um and yes you know networks in schools in involving both students and parents because lots of parents also care deeply about making sure that children are being taught about not just about climate but also about how to deal with climate how to emotionally as much as practically because it's a it's this kind of psychological thing to deal with too rather than just being overloaded with information about um climate sort of the forecasts there's some really interesting work coming out of wales which i i'm personally really enthusiastic about where they have legislation about the well-being of future generations um and they've used that to reform their whole education curriculum because they've realized that the education curriculum wasn't going to support children young people in the way that it is going to need to in light of climate change and other issues that are coming down the road

Channel: Kim Polgreen

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Id: n-owD2a6Zhw

Length: 15min 38sec (938 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 12 2020