Even the Lawyers Went Back to Class: What Greenwatch Taught Our Litigators About Science and Climate Law

Why our legal officers spent time learning from Greenwatch about science, climate, and the art of suing in the public interest.

Here is a confession most lawyers will not make in public: a judge can be persuaded by a beautiful argument and still rule against you, because the science was not on the page.

When your cases are about seeds, pesticides, soil, food additives, and a changing climate, you cannot afford to be the person in the courtroom who does not understand the evidence. So this year our lawyers did something we think every advocate should do regularly. They went back to class.

Learning from the pioneers

Greenwatch is one of Uganda’s pioneers of environmental public interest litigation, an organization that has spent years showing that ordinary citizens can take environmental harm to court. Our legal team took part in two of its trainings: a workshop on Science and the Law, and a Continuing Legal Education course on Strategic Public Interest Climate Litigation run with the Uganda Law Society.

The Science and the Law workshop speaks to the gap that sinks so many public interest cases. How do you read a scientific study critically? How do you present expert evidence so a court can rely on it? How do you translate a laboratory finding into a legal argument? For an organization whose cases often turn on what is in our food and our soil, this is not theory. It is daily work.

The climate litigation course went further: building strategic cases, using Uganda’s Constitution and environmental law, managing the ethical pressures of public interest work, and understanding where climate law is heading next.

Litigation alone will not fix the climate. But a well-prepared case can force the people in power to take it seriously.

Why this matters to you

Climate change is not a distant story for the farmers we work with. It is a dry season that will not end, a harvest that fails, a family that goes hungry. Climate justice and food justice are the same fight wearing different clothes.

CEFROHT already uses strategic litigation to defend the right to food, challenge unfair land dispossession, and push for safer food environments. With sharper skills in science and climate law, our lawyers can take on bigger questions, from highly hazardous pesticides to the environmental harm that undermines smallholder farming, and argue them more powerfully.

We also believe in learning alongside other movements rather than competing with them. Spending time with Greenwatch strengthened a partnership between organizations that both believe the courtroom belongs to the public too.

Strong cases need strong lawyers, and strong lawyers need investment. Support our litigation team, refer a public interest matter, or partner with us at info@cefroht.org.