ALIGN: Enhancing understanding and improving practices
Active Project
Emily Polack
Senior researcher, law, economies and justice
Emily’s work focuses on legal empowerment processes in the context of natural resource investments, across sectors, particularly those associated with transition to a low carbon future (agriculture, carbon projects, critical mineral mining.
This work includes convening action research, peer learning and policy engagement oriented towards securing more sustainable or fairer investments with particular attention to the rights and agency of marginalised groups and unrepresented voices. It links local to global processes, and covers developing innovative and inclusive approaches in collaboration with local partners to, for example, collective land access, inclusive governance arrangements, organisation and movement building, more equitable contracting and policy reforms, and includes identifying gender transformative processes within these approaches. It centres on accountability mechanisms in investment processes and regulatory frameworks that secure spaces for greater citizen agency.
Previously, Emily has led research on rights-based approaches to climate change adaptation, with a focus on gender and intergenerational justice.
Expertise
Land and natural resource governance; socio-legal empowerment processes and citizen engagement in law reform; responsible agricultural investment; sustainable agri-food systems; exploring the role of law in sustainable development and a just transition.
Before IIED
- Researcher on climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction, formulations of climate justice with a focus on gender and intergenerational justice, child rights and child-centred adaptation, Institute for Development Studies
- Consultant on climate change research and advocacy, Practical Action
- Volunteer on support to Indigenous communities’ land, forest and river protection in Cambodia, including in relation to investments in large hydropower on transboundary waterways
Education
- LLM international development law and human rights, University of Warwick
- BA international relations and development studies, University of Sussex
Current work
Emily has played a technical coordinator role in the Empowering Producers in Commercial Agriculture project. She is co-convening the evidence generation and knowledge sharing workstream of the Advancing Land-Based Investment Governance project.
