Environmental Law Online is a free resource offering people a broad range of information on environmental law in Victoria in a single website.

The Environment Defenders Office (Victoria) (the “EDO”) works to meet the need in the community for a legal service providing advice and assistance to people who wish to protect the environment. The EDO attempts to redress the considerable imbalance in resources that exists between the public and those who initiate planning and development proposals.

Environmental Law Online is another way in which we are trying to redress this imbalance.

Environmental Law Online helps people to find a broad range of information from one place. To keep the information on this website up to date and relevant, we have developed a simple largely text-based website that could be easily edited from anywhere.

Selected lawyers with particular expertise directly contribute to the content of this website.

This site was developed with the generous assistance of the Victoria Law Foundation and The Ian Potter Foundation.

Environmental Law Online is based on the following philosophies:

Many of the materials which form the initial site will be based on Environment Defenders Office (Vic)'s current paper based publications. This site will bring these together into a resource to avoid duplication and to help people who seek information to get broad ranging answers from one place.

Selected lawyers with particular expertise are able to directly contribute to content, expanding on the EDO's current pro-bono support and harnessing the same energy and commitment that has been important to the success of the paper based publications of the past. This 'wiki' has been developed to allow ease of multiple authorship without putting blocks in selected contributor's way.

The site will have the potential to grow in the future, including integration with similar sites. Quality control is to be achieved by limiting who contributes to those with suitable expertise.

This site can be updated immediately.

This site is constantly under review, rather than being subject to an annual cycle of review. This means an emphasis is placed on stating which pages are complete, or being revised, and when last revisions were made.

The use of the 'Dokuwiki' software will allow the website to develop in response to users and contributors rather than in a pre-planned fashion.

The frequent use of both internal and external links should ensure the site is a road map to navigate the material, as much as a source of information.

One way in which the quality of the site is maintained is by carefully considering who can contribute. As a result different contributors will have varying levels of access to the editing of the site. If you are interested in contributing more information can be obtained here.