Finding Common Language: Communicating about Environmental Law
Environmental law is complex, technical, and often inaccessible to the very people it’s meant to protect. In this special episode of People, Places, Planet, host Dara Albrecht sits down with members of the ELI podcast team—Associate Vice President of Communications Nick Collins, Communications Associate Maya Sokoloff, and Research Associate and incoming host Sebastian Duque—for a candid conversation about the challenges and opportunities of making complex legal and scientific information accessible in a noisy, fast-paced digital world.
Together, they unpack why communicating environmental law and policy is so difficult and why getting it right matters more than ever. From navigating jargon and political polarization to telling stories that resonate with everyday experiences, the team reflects on the tools, trade-offs, and real-world examples that shape their approach.
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Creators and Guests
Host
Dara Albrecht
Dara Albrecht joined the Environmental Law Institute as a Research Associate in August 2023. She is currently working on the Climate Judiciary Project and the Global Marine Protected Areas project. Dara is also the host of People Places Planet Podcast. She has previously contributed to the Environmental Law Reporter, the Belize Fisheries Project, and ELI’s Global Environmental Facility (GEF) Evaluation. Prior to joining ELI, Dara pursued desert ecology research at the University of Sydney in Australia and served as a reviewer and writer for articles published in “Biodiversity Islands: Strategies for Conservation in Human-Dominated Environments (2022).” She co-authored “The biogeochemical boomerang: Site fidelity creates nutritional hotspots that may promote recurrent calving site reuse,” published in August 2024. Other work includes translating the Reef Environmental Education Foundation’s citizen science material to Spanish to increase accessibility for Latinx communities and leading conservation planning projects with the US Forest Service and California Bureau of Land Management. Dara is a two-time awardee of the Richter Fellowship, and is also a Curtis Travelling Fellow, Bruce M. Babcock Travel Research Fellow, and Tetelman Fellow for International Research in Sciences. Dara is passionate about using science to develop successful conservation planning and shape policy. As a Peruvian citizen with roots in the Amazon, she is an advocate for cross-cultural environmental collaboration and developing just solutions for vulnerable communities who are impacted by climate change. Dara is a 2023 graduate from Yale University with a B.S. in Environmental Science with a concentration in Biodiversity and Conservation. Her senior thesis was an independent research project focused on the stoichiometry of caribou diet across Newfoundland and its conservation implications. Dara would like to honor with gratitude all the ancestral stewards of this land, past and present, and acknowledge the ancestral and unceded native territory on which ELI sits today.
Editor
Sebastian Duque Rios
Sebastian Duque Rios joined the Environmental Law Institute as a Research Associate in August 2024. He provides editorial support for the People Places Planet Podcast.
