Environmental Law

Essex Law Scholars’ Contributions to the ICON•S Conference in Madrid 2024

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The main chamber and the sala constitucional of Congreso de los Diputades in Madrid. Credit: Dr Tom Flynn.

By Yseult Marique, Theodore Konstadinides, Joel Colón-Ríos, Tom Flynn, Giulia Gentile, Esin Küçük, Etienne Durand, and Zhenbin Zuo

Essex Law School made a significant contribution to the ICON•S conference in Madrid in July 2024, with a substantial contingent of faculty and scholars in attendance. ICON•S is an international learned society with a worldwide membership of scholars – at all levels of seniority – working on different areas of public law and cognate disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. The Society was officially launched at its Inaugural Conference in Florence in June 2014, sponsored by the European University Institute and New York University School of Law. Since then, the Society has held annual meetings in New York (2015), Berlin (2016), Copenhagen (2017), Hong Kong (2018), Santiago de Chile (2019), online with ICON•S Mundo (2021), Wrocław (2022), and Wellington (2023). This year’s meeting (8-10 July), hosted by IE University in Madrid, attracted more than 2,000 delegates and was the largest meeting of the Society up to date.  

The conference’s plenary programme was organised around the theme of The Future of Public Law: Resilience, Sustainability, and Artificial Intelligence. The theme, as explained in the conference’s Call for Papers, sought to “foster reflection and discussion on the different transformations that public law is going through as a result of the major societal challenges of our time: the quest for sustainability, the AI revolution and, more generally, the need for resilience in a world of exponential change.” Alongside the plenary programme, there were hundreds of parallel panels allowing scholars and the broader community (including practitioners, judges, and policy makers) to present their work and/or take part in thematically organised panels on legal pluralism, global warning, freedom of speech electoral law, democratic theory, human rights, judicial review, and many other areas.  

The Essex Constitutional and Administrative Justice Initiative (CAJI) was in an excellent position to showcase the diversity of its interests and strengths both in terms of academic research and partnerships/collaboration across the world. CAJI Co-Director and Public Law Academic Lead, Professor Theodore Konstadinides noted how excellent the conference was to foster new collaborations and rejuvenate older relationships. For instance, he met with Professor Vanessa McDonnell (Associate Professor and Co-Director, uOttawa Public Law Centre) to discuss among else our respective partnership with Ottawa in public law and our newly-launched Canadian Constitutional Law module. He also reconnected with Giuseppe Martinico (Santa Anna in Pisa) in Madrid. Theodore also mentioned how the very stimulating environment of ICON•S kindled interests among our representatives to be more actively involved in the British Chapter of ICON•S in the future. 

We have contributed to a number of different themes and panels this year, some specific to sustainability (Etienne Durand), some specific to digitalisation (Dr Giulia Gentile) and some more general (Professor Theodore Konstadinides, Dr Esin Küçuk, Dr Tom Flynn, Professor Yseult Marique). In a nutshell, here some of the main highlights of the conference for our team.   

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Professor Theodore Konstadinides chaired and participated in a panel entitled ‘Assessing the sub-constitutional space of the UK constituent nations in the post-Brexit constitution’. This panel discussed how within the EU multi-level order, governmental and legislative powers can be largely apportioned vertically at three tiers moving from regional to supranational: (i) substate-regional (e.g., Catalonia, Flanders, and Lombardy); (ii) (Member) State-national (e.g., Spain, Belgium, and Italy); and (iii) supranational, i.e., the European Union itself. The UK’s withdrawal from the EU apart from marking the first time that a Member State decided to put an abrupt end to the federalist ’sonderweg’ of ‘an ever closer union’, it meant that a number of powers that were exercised at the supranational level were ‘repatriated’. Four years after Brexit, this panel analysed the effect of such ‘repatriation’ on the sub-constitutional space of the UK constituent nations. It assessed whether this has happened at the expense of the devolved nations.

To do so, the three papers looked at the following areas of the UK’s post-Brexit territorial constitution: (i) foreign affairs (Professor Konstadinides, Essex and Professor Nikos Skoutaris, UEA); ii) the internal market (Ms Eleftheria Asimakopoulou, QMUL); and iii) digital governance (Dr Giulia Gentile, Essex). The picture that emerged from the papers highlighted the extent to which the UK constitutional order has proved its resilience – one of the themes of the 10th Annual conference. 

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For her third participation to an ICON•S conference (after Copenhagen in 2017 and online at the ICON Mundo during the pandemic), Professor Yseult Marique was invited to take part in a panel, part of a twin session on judicial deference following the reversal of Chevron by the US Supreme Court in Loper a few weeks earlier. This twin session was organised by Professor Oren Tamir (Arizona) and Professor Mariolina Eliantionio (Maastricht).  This session was devoted to a comparison from European jurisdiction. Professor Marique’s co-presenters were colleagues drawn from past or present members of REALaw : Professor Luca de Lucia, Professor Luis Arroyo Jimenez, Professor Ferdinand Wollenschläger and Dr Pavlina Hubkova. The panel  discussed whether their respective jurisdictions (Italy, Spain, Germany, Czech Republic and Belgium) have a similar concept or functional equivalent to deference.

The other session proceeded in a similar manner for Common law jurisdictions (USA – Professor Susan Rose Ackerman; South Africa – Professor Cora Hoexter; New Zealand – Professor Dean Knight; and Canada – represented by a long-standing collaborator of CAJI, Professor Matthew Lewans). A series of blog pieces on this topic is likely to be published on REALaw blog in the upcoming year.  

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Also very familiar with ICON•S, having presented in Wrocław in 2022 and in Wellington in 2023, Dr Tom Flynn was invited to take part in two sessions. One was a roundtable discussion of Radical Constitutional Pluralism in Europe (Routledge 2023) by Orlando Scarcello (KU Leuven). Dr Flynn had previously taken part in the book’s launch event on Zoom, and it was great to meet with Dr Scarcello and others in person to continue their discussion of the book. Dr Flynn’s presentation was entitled ‘Two Cheers for Substantive Pluralism’, and was a partial defence of the kind of substantive constitutional pluralism that Scarcello’s approach, with its specifically radical focus, discounts. 

The other was a panel organised by Professor Mikel Díez Sarasola (Universidad del País Vasco/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea) on ‘Plurinational States and their Constitutional Shape’. Dr Ewan Smith (UCL) and Dr Flynn presented together on ‘The idea of parity of esteem as a constitutional principle in Northern Ireland and beyond’, which will be the focus of a BA-funded conference they are organising in Belfast in April 2025 with colleagues Prof Katy Hayward and Anurag Deb (both QUB). 

After the panel, Professor Díez Sarasola was kind enough to organise a tour of the Congreso de los Diputades in Madrid, during which Tom was able to see the main chamber and the sala constitucional, among other parts of this magnificent building.

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Also a former participant of  the ICON Mundo conference, Dr Giulia Gentile was involved in three panels as a speaker. The panels concerned (a) AI and good administration, with a presentation covering AI and actions for damages; (b) the future of EU rights in the Brexit era, with a presentation discussing data protection in the UK post-Brexit landscape; (c) AI and courts, with a paper unpacking the interplay between judicial independence and the EU AI Act. 

The panel on AI and actions for damages was a spin-off of a collaboration with Melanie Fink and Simona Demkova (both Leiden University) on AI and good administration. Her findings were published on DigiCon. The panel on EU rights after Brexit stems from collaboration and discussions with Essex colleague Theodore Konstadinides, with whom she is applying for a research funding bid on EU Citizens rights after Brexit. The final panel organised by Monika Zalnieriute offered Giulia the chance to discuss her forthcoming chapter on the AI Act and Judicial Independence to appear in the Cambridge Handbook on AI and Courts, edited by Dr Zalnieriute.  

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Dr Esin Küçük was involved in two panels, presenting papers. The first presentation, titled “Resilience of the EU Constitutional Order in Times of Crises”, was part of a panel on EU solidarity during crises. The debate centred on how recent measures to manage crises have reshaped our understanding of solidarity within the EU framework. This paper is now under review for publication.

The second paper Dr Küçük presented, “EU’s Externalised Smart Borders: Türkiye as a Case Study”, explores the externalisation of EU borders in migration management and the implications of emerging technologies in the process from a human rights perspective. This paper, co-authored with Elif Kuşkonmaz, is currently under development, and we aim to evolve this initial research into a broader project. 

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For his first participation to an ICON.S Conference, Dr Etienne Durand chaired the panel entitled ‘The Future of Energy Law: a Consumer-centric Legal Framework’, which featured Marie Beudels, (PhD Student in Law, University of Brussels, Belgium) and Dr Luka Martin Tomaszic (Assistant professeur, Alma Matar European University, Slovenia) as speakers.

The general aim of the discussions was to observe the changing nature of the role of energy consumers in their interaction with EU Law. The discussion was based on current developments in law and technology that enable energy consumers not only to benefit from the energy transition, but also to participate in bringing it about, thus playing an active role in (re)shaping the EU energy law itself. Taking these developments into consideration, the panel sought to identify the transformative power that energy consumers have or could have in shaping the future of European energy law, a hypothesis which we now aim to integrate into a broader research project.  

Dr Etienne Durand on the right at the ICON conference. Credit: Dr Etienne Durand.

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Professor Joel Colón-Ríos first participated a panel titled “Navigating the Paradox: The Doctrine of Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendments”, where he commented on a paper by Sergio Verdugo (IE Madrid). His paper on the concept of a permanent constituent power was also presented in that panel by his co-author, Mariana Velasco Rivera (Maynooth). Later that day, Professor Colon-Rios chaired a roundtable titled “Deliberative Constitutionalism under Debate”, which featured papers by Cristina Lafont (Northwestern), Chiara Valentini (Bologna), Ana Cannilla (Glasgow), Roberto Gargarella (Pompeu Fabra, Torcuato di Tella), Yanina Welp (Albert Hirshman Democracy Centre), and Ignacio Guiffré (Pompeu Fabra).  

On Tuesday, Professor Colon-Rios participated in a panel on “Constitutional Identity in Times of Illiberalism”, where some of the papers that will appear in an International Journal of Constitutional Law symposium where presented, including his piece (“Constitutional Identity, Democracy, and Illiberal Change”), co-authored with Svenja Behrendt (Max Planck, Freiburg). Finally, he was one of the speakers in the book roundtable of Guido Smorto’s and Sabrina Ragone’s Comparative Law: A Very Short Introduction. This was Professor Colon-Rios’ fifth ICON’s conference, also having co-organised last year’s annual meeting in Wellington. 

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Overall, the ICON•S provided a fascinating opportunity to learn from the Presidents and former President of the Human Rights Courts in Europe, Africa and South America; to meet up with old acquaintances and to catch up with the representatives of international publishing houses, always ready to provide feedback and chat about current and possible publishing projects. We were much bemused by how much Italians love Spain and very pleased to hear how lively the regional chapters were actively planning together for further activities (such as for instance the Benelux ICON•S Chapter.) The Essex Law team greatly enjoyed the event, and the team’s diverse work in public law contributes to excellent academic exchanges that we bring back to our undergraduate and postgraduate community as we are developing further our education curriculum and expanding our postgraduate research community in public law. We look forward to building stronger academic ties and impact at both in the UK and  globally.  

Building Better Communities? Examining How Section 106 Agreements Shape Local Development

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Photo by Breno Assis on Unsplash

By Dr Edward Mitchell, Essex Law School

Picture a city with an acute housing shortage. Now, envision a plot of land formerly used for industrial purposes, now vacant following a fire that razed most of its buildings two decades ago. Next, imagine a property development initiative set to deliver 150 shiny new houses and 100 smart apartments on that very site. Finally, consider that the project also includes plans for landscaped stretches of open space and a dedicated area earmarked for on-site biodiversity protection.

In this fictional setting, 250 new homes sound great. The open space and the bio-diversity protection area sound good too. But let’s also imagine some potential adverse effects of the development. Perhaps there are many families in acute housing need in the local area who will be priced out of the development. Maybe local primary and secondary schools are already oversubscribed. Perhaps traffic crawls along local roads at the pace of a sedated snail.

Can a local authority compel the developer carrying out this type of development project to mitigate these adverse effects?

In a recent article published in the journal Current Legal Problems, I explore this complex issue.

My article develops ideas I discussed in a lecture I gave in December 2023 as part of UCL’s flagship Current Legal Problems lecture series and expands upon work I previously discussed in a blog on the role of contracts in contemporary town planning. In my lecture and blog post, I highlighted tensions in current planning practice that arise when local authorities rely on private developers to provide public goods that the local authority has identified as important.

UCL Current Legal Problems Lecture: Contracting in the public interest? Re-examining contract in contemporary town planning processes

I build on my earlier work in my latest article by investigating how local authorities and developers create ‘planning obligations’ to mitigate the potentially adverse effects of property development on local communities and on local infrastructure needs. The planning obligations that I discuss are made by local authorities and developers by agreement pursuant to section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. The article asks important questions about the detailed and highly intricate framework of duties, rights and powers that these ‘section 106 agreements’ create.

I base my analysis in the article on two case study developments. Examining the section 106 agreements created for these developments enables me to provide rich insights into this complex area of legal and planning practice.

I summarise my findings below.

Finding 1: A limited role in ordering ‘private’ relations

In most property development projects, the developer will seek to obtain planning permission by applying to the planning part of a local authority. Before the local authority grants planning permission, the local authority and the developer will usually identify potential negative effects of the proposed development, and the two parties will negotiate planning obligations to be secured in a section 106 agreement. These obligations might aim to mitigate the development’s negative impacts through the provision, by the developer, of funding for local schools, affordable housing, and local amenities, amongst other things.

When a developer and a local authority enter into a section 106 agreement, the developer should perform the planning obligations and the local authority can enforce them.

The first key issue that my article considers is the nature of the ‘private’ bilateral contractual relations between a developer and a local authority that a section 106 agreement creates.

I ask an important question about this in my article: How do section 106 agreements contribute to a development culture in which private developers do not always perform their public policy obligations?

In the pursuit of answers to this question, I examine the content of the obligations in the section 106 agreements created for my case study developments, I scrutinise monitoring arrangements and I investigate enforcement powers.

In the article, I explain the first key insight from my case studies as follows:

My [case studies] show how these agreements consist of administrative clauses that appear to create an intricate framework of rights, responsibilities, duties and powers relating to the performance of planning obligations. But I also showed how the detail, complexity and apparent rigidity of the obligations in the agreements belies the one-sidedness and the haphazardness of these arrangements. This is important, and suggests that these agreements are ill-equipped to serve as effective instruments for ordering the ‘private’ relations between a [local authority] and a developer.

Finding 2: New questions about the ‘expressive force’ of section 106 agreements

A further crucial finding that my article presents relates to the public-facing work that section 106 agreements do.

My second case study involved a development proposed for a site where ownership of the land was divided amongst multiple unwilling sellers. The local authority had granted a developer planning permission for that development and, to enable that development to take place, had agreed to use its compulsory purchase powers to acquire the entire site.

The land acquisition context of this development enables me to analyse the operation of section 106 agreements as a justificatory device local authorities and developers deploy at planning inquiries convened to consider the use of compulsory purchase powers.

Alongside this, another striking aspect of my second case study development was the way that the section 106 agreement addressed local policies relating to affordable housing provision.

In my article, I ask a second important research question: How does the presence of ostensibly binding promises in section 106 agreements facilitate the exercise of regulatory decision-making in planning and property development processes?

By examining my second case study development, I conclude in my article as follows:

My discussion here presents new findings showing how these agreements can have a powerful expressive force in signalling a commitment to public policy interests that ‘de-risks’ these contentious land acquisition and affordable housing issues for developers and local authorities (Legacy and others 2023). But the crucial point in this section is that these agreements do this despite the emptiness of the commitments that they sometimes contain. These findings demonstrate how planning scholarship needs to look beyond the impression of binding force that a section 106 agreement creates to scrutinise the way that these agreements reinforce uneven outcomes and marginalise certain interests.

Photo by Maximillian Conacher on Unsplash

Finding 3: The need for greater transparency and community participation

My second case study provides an opportunity to examine a section 106 agreement containing developer obligations designed to discharge a local authority’s public sector equality duty.

The third research question that my article asks relates to this public sector equality duty. I ask: How do local authorities manage the implementation of novel developer obligations designed to shape broader community relations?

In my article, I describe my findings in response to this question as follows:

[Making] a section 106 agreement containing developer obligations designed to discharge a local authority’s public sector equalities duty … is an innovative and under-explored way of using a section 106 agreement, so this part of the paper provides a rare insight into the more unusual obligations in these agreements and into the practical challenges local authorities can face when monitoring the implementation of novel planning devices.

My findings also enable me to explain how equalities considerations created a focal point for opposition to an apparently settled development trajectory.

I argue that this highlights the need for greater transparency and public involvement in setting and implementing planning obligations.

Agenda for further research

Planning, public law and contract law scholars will find helpful insights in my article about the diverse and multilayered roles contractual arrangements play in current regulatory practices.

But while my article highlights various problems with the current use of section 106 agreements, understanding how local authorities might more effectively compel developers to mitigate the impacts of property development requires further research.

Here are some key areas where a greater understanding of section 106 agreements and their use might enable insights that would inform better practice:

  • How might planning law and planning practice enable greater transparency and public involvement in setting and implementing planning obligations?
  • How do planners and lawyers gather and use the monitoring information about developer behaviour theoretically made accessible through the section 106 agreements studied in my article?
  • How do planners and lawyers use the enforcement powers contained in section 106 agreements, and could they use those powers differently?

Examining the Transformational Power of Environmental Law

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By Professor Karen Hulme, Essex Law School

I wanted to share some highlights of last week’s IUCN Third International Environmental Law Conference in Oslo. The title of the four-day conference was ‘The Transformative Power of Law: Addressing Global Environmental Challenges’.

The backdrop of the conference was not lost on the 400+ participants (with more joining online), with the ongoing destruction being inflicted on Ukraine, devastating hurricanes in central and northern America, recent unprecedented heatwaves in Europe and massive floods in Pakistan. Thus, we heard about the importance of the rule of environmental law in the face of such unprecedented and monumental threats to human and environmental security – including the triple threat of climate change, the fastest rate of biodiversity loss on record, and escalating global pollution levels.

Yet, there was also time to celebrate what is, indeed, a monumental anniversary year in environmental circles, with the recently celebrated 50th anniversary of the 1972 Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment, and its successor landmark instruments (1982 World Charter for Nature, 1992 Rio Earth Summit, 2002 Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development) plus anniversaries of the three 1992 treaties on Climate Change, Biological Diversity and Desertification; and the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention. Finally, in my own area, it is also 45 years since the adoption of the 1977 Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions which included provisions for the first time on the protection of the environment in armed conflict. 

One of the best Plenary sessions in my opinion was that composed of the Supreme Court Justices from around the world. They were tasked with answering the conference’s themed question in relation to the ‘transformative power’ of the judiciary. We all know that members of the judiciary have a very difficult job to do at times, and their bravery in the face of Government repression often draws little attention or goes largely unnoticed. While several justices argued that their role on the bench was a rather restrained one, due to their own particular legal systems, others demonstrated a more creative, transformational approach to their role in interpreting the law. Often the need for such creativity stems from Government inaction on existing promises. Fewer are more legendary than WCEL’s former Chair, Dr. Parvez Hassan, who in 1994 argued the landmark public interest litigation case of Shehla Zia vs. WAPDA in the Pakistan Supreme Court, citing similar rulings in the Indian Supreme Court, to expand the human right to life to also include the right to a healthy environment.

Among the many excellent panellist contributions though were the words of Dr. Emmanuel Ugirashebuja, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Republic of Rwanda and former President of the East African Court of Justice. He spoke of the wider ripple effects that just initiating a legal case can create. While in some situations, he said, simply the commencement of a legal action might force the Government or other public actor to drop a planned environmentally-damaging project, or at least to mitigate its potential environmental impacts. Yet, Dr. Ugirashebuja also said that such litigation may also give the judges a vital opportunity they can then use to advance legal interpretations to better protect the environment in the future.

The final day also saw an interesting panel covering a wide range of new and emerging norms of international environmental law. Dr. Nick Bryner reminded us that since Covid, many states had rolled back on their environmental promises and reduced their mitigation efforts, arguing that other emergencies now needed to take precedence. Note the timely World Bank Report on just this topic in relation to escalating poverty levels. But, he said, under the norm of non-regression, removing environmental protections should only be done where the science has changed, thus where such measures are no longer scientifically necessary – not due to political expediency. Clearly, with the triple planetary threats facing the planet, now is also not the time to be regressing on environmental protection.

Professor Nicholas Robinson suggested a principle of resilience, notably of building resilience into environmental impact assessments to ensure that planned projects are resilient to such threats as climate change. And finally, Professor Michel Prieur’s words focused on the lack of legal indicators in relation to implementation and compliance. The Sustainable Development Goals, he said, contained only indicators of a scientific or economic nature, and thus legal indicators are much needed to ensure states fulfil their legal obligations.

Prof. Hulme, Chair of the WCEL Specialist Group on Environmental Security and Conflict Law, presenting at the IUCN 3rd International Environmental Law Conference in Oslo (Oct. 2022)

There were plenty more plenary sessions as well as some 34 parallel sessions to choose from covering plastic pollution, nature-based solutions, rights of nature, wildlife crimes, BBNJ and sea-bed mining developments, energy governance, reversing the biodiversity decline, the rights of future generations, and on armed conflict and ecocide. Consequently, the discussion was very rich and varied. There were many mentions of the need to achieve the goal to be nature positive by 2030, as well as for a circular economy, including in relation to UNEA’s plastics pollution treaty currently being drafted, and the need to change consumption and production patterns to meet the biodiversity post-2020 framework due to be discussed (and hopefully adopted) at December’s CBD COP 15.

With July’s adoption by the General Assembly of a resolution recognising the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, Professor David Boyd, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to a healthy environment advocated the need for the right now to be enshrined in all legal instruments, such as the new plastics treaty, the Post-2020 Biodiversity Framework and in a Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights, amongst others.

The IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law (WCEL) website will showcase many of these presentations shortly, and for environmental lawyers please note that the WCEL is the legal branch of the International Union of Nature Conservation (IUCN), and you can become a member here – membership is free. There are many specialist groups of WCEL which you may like to join also, including environmental security and conflict law, climate change, biodiversity, oceans law, ethics, water and wetlands, soils, as well as the early career group, and two task forces on the plastics treaty and rights of nature.

IUCN WCEL 2022 Oslo International Environmental Law Conference

Prof. Karen Hulme has particular interests in environmental law, the laws of armed conflict and environmental rights. She is also the Chair of the WCEL Specialist Group on Environmental Security and Conflict Law.

Giving Nature A Voice

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Faith In Nature has become the world’s first company to officially appoint Nature to its Board of Directors. The precedent-setting move gives Nature a vote on key business decisions with Essex Law School academic and Co-Founder of Lawyers for Nature Brontie Ansell joining the Board as the first representative for Nature.

In a fundamental change to their corporate governance structure and in a first for the business world, the decision from the natural hair care and soap company gives the natural world a voice and a vote on the future of the business.

The company has formally amended its constitution, with the result that Nature is now represented on the Board by an individual who is legally bound to speak on behalf of the natural world. The nominated proxy will speak and vote on behalf of Nature, much as a guardian acts on behalf of a child in the courts of law.

This decision extends a growing legal precedent around environmental personhood – the attribution of legal rights to non-human entities – and presents a fresh opportunity for businesses wanting to reduce their environmental impact.

Simeon Rose, Faith In Nature’s Creative Director and driver of the initiative, said: “We’re delighted to be the first to do this but we don’t want to be the last. Our hope is that other businesses who take their responsibility to the natural world seriously will follow suit – and we’re really happy to share details of how and why we did this. We’ve always wanted Nature to be at the heart of what we do and this felt like this is the next serious step we could take to make that a reality. This is much more than spin: by changing our governance structure we are making sure we’re legally accountable and that what’s good for Nature informs our strategy.”

Rose’s vision has been realised by lawyers that helped pioneer the concept of environmental personhood, Paul Powlesland and Brontie from Lawyers for Nature, and Grant Wilson from Earth Law Centre. Earlier this year, the Earth Law Centre assisted with the high profile legal case to attribute legal rights to Nature in Panama. The legal process with Faith In Nature also received significant support and expertise from a pro bono team of corporate experts at international law firm Shearman & Sterling LLP.

In what will be a rotating position, Brontie will be the first board representative for Nature. Brontie is Director and Co-Founder of Lawyers for Nature and is also a Senior Lecturer in Essex Law School at the University of Essex.

Brontie said: “This will hopefully spark a big change in how the business world perceives and acts on its responsibility to the natural world. For too long Nature has been seen purely as an expendable resource: this kind of thinking has led us to the brink of ecological collapse. It can and must change.”

Grant Wilson at the Earth Law Centre, added: “The movement for the Rights of Nature is picking up momentum across the world, but businesses have been slow to recognise that they are a crucial part of this story. Making Nature a Director is a tangible step that businesses can take to ensure that their operations take into account the rights and needs of the natural world.”

The board representative will work in concert with a committee of environmental experts, to make Nature’s case on all major board decisions. Faith In Nature has decided to open-source the legal process to allow other companies to follow its lead.

This story was first published on the University of Essex’s news webpages and is reproduced on the ELR Blog with permission and thanks.

Rethinking International Law from Amazonian Onto-epistemologies: the Kukama People and the Amazonian Waterway Project

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Cristina Blanco, PhD candidate at the School of Law, University of Essex, was awarded the PhD Fieldwork Grant 2021-22 by the Socio-Legal Studies Association (SLSA). Cristina’s research focuses on the interactions between Amazonian onto-epistemologies, international law (IL) and human rights in the context of an investment project.

In the Amazonian rivers, water flow varies significantly with the seasons. During the dry season, low water levels hinder the navigation of large vessels. Although the peoples inhabiting the Amazon rainforest have travelled and traded using these rivers over centuries, the fluctuating navigability prevents uninterrupted large-scale transport. This is the main reason why the Peruvian state is promoting the “Amazonian Waterway”, an infrastructure project that consists of removing sediments from the bottom of the main Amazonian rivers.

The Amazonian Waterway is far from being an isolated project. It rather reflects the neoliberal developmental paradigm favoured by IL (Escobar 2011, Pahuja 2011, Eslava 2019). In addition to generating serious socio-environmental impacts, the project hides a profound conflict of ways of understanding the world.

The Amazonian indigenous peoples conceive the territory as a space inhabited by human and non-human entities, a conception that challenges the very definition of what we call “nature”. The sharp distinction between humans and non-humans that governs the Western world and underlies modern (international) law is not necessarily present in Amazonian cosmologies (Viveiros de Castro 2004, De la Cadena 2010, Descola 2013).

For the Kukama-Kukamiria people, for instance, the territory is inhabited by different “categories of people” living in a “plurality of worlds” (Tello 2014). The river is an (aquatic) world in itself, inhabited by beings endowed with their own subjectivity and intentionality (Rivas 2011). Therefore, thinking from the Amazon means not only standing in a geographically different place but also thinking onto-epistemically different.

In this scenario, the main problem the research seeks to explore is that IL does not take this onto-epistemic diversity seriously. Instead, it frames the issue as a cultural question of relevance to indigenous collective rights. While such rights play an indispensable role in protecting indigenous worldviews, they are insufficient to prevent their elimination.

This, in turn, has important implications in areas as critical as the Amazon. Trying to make sense of IL from the Amazon, this case study provides the opportunity to explore how to move from the impact of IL in the Amazon (historically aimed at its internationalisation) to enable the influence of Amazonian epistemologies on IL. This exercise of “Amazonising IL” enables us to reveal the epistemological richness of the Amazonian cosmovision and explore its potential for rethinking IL.

The research has three main methodological components. Substantively, it is a socio-legal research that takes as the unit of analysis the interactions between IL, human rights and the Amazonian worldview relevant to the case study. In analytical terms, it has an interdisciplinary approach theoretically informed by Amazonian studies and critical approaches to IL. As for the empirical component, it uses a case study method based on qualitative analysis of documentary and visual information, as well as in-depth semi-structured interviews.

The fieldwork was possible thanks to the valuable support of the SLSA.

Bibliographic references

De la Cadena, M. (2010). “Indigenous cosmopolitics in the Andes: Conceptual reflections beyond “politics”.” Cultural anthropology 25(2): 334-370. https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1548-1360.2010.01061.x

Descola, P. (2013). Beyond nature and culture, University of Chicago Press. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/B/bo9826233.html

Escobar, A. (2011). Encountering development: The making and unmaking of the Third World, Princeton University Press. https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691150451/encountering-development

Eslava, L. (2019). The Developmental State: Independence, Dependency, and the History of the South. In: The Battle for International Law: South-North Perspectives on the Decolonization Era. J. von Bernstorff and P. Dann, Oxford University Press: 71-100. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-battle-for-international-law-9780198849636?cc=gb&lang=en&

Pahuja, S. (2011). Decolonising international law: development, economic growth and the politics of universality, Cambridge University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/decolonising-international-law/7E8B4FB0AAECFD08355914EE41DDB5C7

Rivas Ruiz, R. (2011). Le serpent, mère de l’eau: chamanisme aquatique chez les Cocama-Cocamilla d’Amazonie péruvienne, Paris, EHESS. http://www.sudoc.abes.fr/cbs/xslt/DB=2.1//SRCH?IKT=12&TRM=160329019&COOKIE=U10178,Klecteurweb,D2.1,E192cfbd9-1f1,I250,B341720009+,SY,QDEF,A%5C9008+1,,J,H2-26,,29,,34,,39,,44,,49-50,,53-78,,80-87,NLECTEUR+PSI,R95.151.73.225,FN

Tello, L. (2014). “Ser gente en la Amazonía, fronteras de lo humano: aportes del pueblo kukama.” Amazzonia indigena e pratiche di autorappresentazione. Milano, Franco Angeli: 39-48. https://www.francoangeli.it/Ricerca/scheda_libro.aspx?Id=21593

Viveiros de Castro, E. (2004). Perspectivismo e multinaturalismo en la América indígena. Tierra adentro: territorio indígena y percepción del entorno. A. Surrallés and P. Hierro. Copenhague, IWGIA: 37-82. https://www.iwgia.org/images/publications/0331_tierra_adentro.pdf

New Legal Protections for the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflict

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By Professor Karen Hulme (School of Law, University of Essex) and Elizabeth B. Hessami (Johns Hopkins University)

Nature and conservation are inevitably harmed during armed conflict. The laws of armed conflict do provide some measure of legal protection for nature, but these rules are limited and vague. The recent adoption by the International Law Commission (a legal body within the United Nations) of a set of Draft Principles for environmental protection in relation to armed conflict is to be lauded. This post will briefly examine some of the main additions to the law in this area.

Armed conflict pollutes and destroys the environment, often leaving a permanent scar on the landscape and biodiversity of affected states. The Russian conflict in Ukraine, for example, demonstrates the devastation caused to fauna and flora when states engage in warfare on a massive scale in areas rich in biodiversity. It also witnessed a horrifying few weeks as the world saw what happens when warfare takes place in a nuclear-powered state. Thus, from the destruction of targets in forests or protected areas, to collateral harm caused by oil spills in the marine or desert environment, toxic chemical pollution from abandoned munitions, destruction of agricultural lands, and destruction of wildlife – armed conflict inflicts a multitude of harms on the natural world.

The WCEL Specialist Group on Peace, Security and Conflict has, therefore, been following closely the work of the International Law Commission (ILC) on its programme of work on the Protection of the Environment in relation to Armed Conflict. In May 2022 the ILC adopted the final version of its recommended 27 Draft Principles, sending them to the General Assembly for final consideration before adoption. Many of the Draft Principles are already rooted in international law, while some provide best practice guidance.

The culmination of over ten years work, there is no doubt that the Draft Principles represent a significant moment in the advancement of legal protection of the wartime environment. Before the creation of the Draft Principles, the current ILC Special Rapporteur, Ambassador Marja Lehto, opined that there was no “coherent legal framework for the protection of the environment in relation to armed conflict”. The approval of the ILC mandate by states, therefore, reflected an acceptance that the law in this area was inadequate, ill-defined and outdated. Certainly, there are limited treaty rules protecting the war-torn environment, particularly in civil wars – the most prevalent type of conflict. Thus, the Draft Principles draw together an extensive body of rules covering both international armed conflicts as well as civil wars (non-international armed conflicts) and are addressed to a wide range of non-state actors.

Two key dimensions of the ILC’s analysis warrant fanfare. Innovative was the decision to take a holistic approach, ensuring analysis of the legal protections afforded not just during conflict, but prior to the outbreak of conflict and post-conflict. Methodologically unique, this temporal approach allowed for the second innovative approach, namely a focus beyond the laws of armed conflict. Any area of law today is a complex web of interactions between hitherto distinct areas of law. Throwing off the shackles of a pure laws of armed conflict analysis, the ILC undertook a comprehensive analysis of the issues, drawing from areas such as environmental law, human rights law, arms control and business and human rights obligations. Having said that, it is still less than clear how these other legal regimes apply during the combat phase of conflict.

The Draft Principles are, thus, a blend of treaty law, including the laws of armed conflict, and novel guidance or best practice (known as ‘progressive development’) – which states and other actors are encouraged to follow. For example, Draft Principle 16 reiterates the clearly established treaty rule that pillage of natural resources is prohibited (effectively theft during conflict), and Draft Principle 14 the equally clear application of the foundational laws of armed conflict to the environment, such as the principles of distinction, proportionality and precautions. Novel rules are included on cooperation for post-conflict environmental assessments and remedial measures (DP 24) for example. A key one of which is the obligation for removal of toxic or other hazardous remnants of war (DP 26).

The novel structure has certainly helped the Special Rapporteurs to approach the issues from new angles, highlighting novel issues for consideration. One example being the post-conflict part, which analysed obligations of environmental remediation, liability and cooperation – issues which are generally omitted from legal instruments and are proving rather elusive in the current Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The recent humanitarian crisis created by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, when added to the plethora of other events causing people to flee their homes and lands, such as climate-related events, has pushed the number of IDP’s and Refugees above an estimated 100 million people globally according to UNHCR. Thus, displaced people must be considered during armed conflict, as must the environment that they are inhabiting. Environmental protection of lands housing displaced persons is, therefore, a welcome addition to the Draft Principles, particularly in a world where displacement is increasing at a dramatic pace. Draft Principle 8 on Human Displacement takes a novel look at the issue, recommending that states not only ‘protect the environment where they are located’, but also provide ‘relief and assistance for such persons and local communities’. Importantly, environmental protection also extends to areas of transit.

Draft Principles 10 and 11 on Corporate Due Diligence and Corporate Liability respectively require that states ensure business enterprises ‘exercise due diligence and protect the environment and human health’ in conflict-affected areas. These two provisions are an important addition to the field to deter corporate actors from preying on local populations and natural resources during such turbulent times, and preventing conflict financing through the exploitation and trade in such commodities.

Implementation of the Draft Principles will be the final step with states expected to implement them through domestic law and military manuals. They present a concise statement of law in one document, undoubtedly expanding the law on certain issues. Thus, the Draft Principles will undoubtedly serve as a point of dialogue for states to further the discussion of how to protect the environment during the conflict cycle.

Fernando Bordin wrote “Codification conventions and draft articles completed by the International Law Commission are often – and increasingly – invoked by courts, tribunals, governments and international organizations as ‘reflections of customary international law’.”

The Draft Principles, therefore, represent, an important opportunity to make a tangible, meaningful difference in the lives and environment of people caught in the crosshairs of conflict.

This article was first published on the website of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and is reproduced on the ELR Blog with permission and thanks. You can read the original piece here.

More about the authors:

Professor Karen Hulme, School of Law, University of Essex, UK, specializes in the legal protection of the environment during armed conflict. She has published on environmental human rights, environmental security, post-conflict obligations, the legality of specific weapons, as well as climate change, biodiversity/nature protection, oceans and protected areas. Karen is Chair of the IUCN WCEL Specialist Group on Environmental Security and Conflict Law.

Elizabeth B. Hessami

Elizabeth B. Hessami, J.D., LL.M. (Environmental Law), is a licensed attorney and Faculty Lecturer of International Environmental Policy and Environmental and Natural Resources Security for Johns Hopkins University. She has also served as a Visiting Attorney for the Environmental Law Institute (remote) for several years.

Affordable, Clean Energy and Climate Action in Sub-Saharan Africa

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How can energy policy measures for realizing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy) and 13 (Climate Changes and Its Impact) in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) be framed toward achieving energy justice?

This position is quite challenging for developing countries that seek to resolve the rising inequality of access to modern and affordable energy systems as stipulated in SDG 7, whilst simultaneously working to meet their international obligations towards the attainment of SDG 13.

Both goals highlight interdependent and conflicting interactions that policymakers should be aware of whilst working to realize them.

Godswill Agbaitoro, Lecturer in Law at the University of Essex, and Kester Oyibo, an Associate at Punuka Attorneys & Solicitors in Lagos (Nigeria), aim to resolve this conflict by proposing some viable measures for a synergy between SDGs 7 and 13.

Their article in The Journal of World Energy Law & Business examines the paradoxical situation faced by countries in the SSA region and argues for a contextualization of the two goals within the energy justice framework.

The proposed approach entails a systematic transition from fossil fuels to low-carbon through socio-economic policies that take into account social injustices and further incorporate sustainable actions such as developing renewable energy technologies, diversification of energy options, energy efficiency, and regional alignments and/or cooperation.

The measures outlined in their article aim to help the SSA region achieve energy justice by 2030.

Essex Law School academic joins the UN’s Harmony with Nature expert network

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Photo by Noah Buscher

Dr. Emily Jones, Senior Lecturer in the School of Law and Human Rights Centre at the University of Essex, became a member of the United Nations Expert Knowledge Network on Harmony with Nature.

Dr. Jones offers below her input on the theme of Earth Jurisprudence.

Earth Jurisprudence is a philosophy of law and human governance that is based on the idea that humans are only one part of a wider community of beings and that the welfare of each member of that community is dependent on the welfare of the Earth as a whole.

What would the practice of Earth-centered Law look like from an Earth Jurisprudence perspective? How is that different from how Earth-centered Law is generally practiced now? And, what are the benefits of practicing Earth-centered Law from an Earth Jurisprudence perspective?

I am an international lawyer so I will comment mostly from within that field. Right now, I don’t think the law accommodates an Earth jurisprudence approach at all. Even international environmental law, the area of international law that is there to protect the environment, is very anthropocentric. We can see this by looking at the principle of sustainable development.

This is arguably the main overarching principle of international environmental law. This principle broadly notes that development needs must be sustainable for the environment. However, as scholars Usha Natarajan and Kishan Kohdy have noted, the principle is seldom used ‘to call for less development.’ Overall, this principle sets up a system whereby the environment is seen as a resource to be exploited, an object, with humans being the only subjects in this paradigm.

An Earth jurisprudence perspective would challenge that paradigm. We need to move from the current legal position which sees the environment as an exploitable object and start challenging human exceptionalism. Humans are deeply connected to their environments, impacting on and being impacted by them. An Earth jurisprudence perspective will push the law to see those relationships as opposed to always seeing humans as distinct from and superior to their natural environments. This shift will be urgently needed if we are to address the pressing environmental challenges of our times.

What promising approaches would you recommend for achieving the implementation of an Earth-centered worldview for Earth-centered Law?

I find a lot of hope in the emerging recognition of the Rights of Nature. The Rights of Nature are increasingly gaining traction and have now been recognized in over 27 countries on all continents. States are increasingly interested in applying Rights of Nature approaches and so this is something I think we need to push for.

Personally, I am interested in how we can start applying the Rights of Nature in international law. So far, the Rights of Nature have mostly been applied in local contexts e.g. to a river or a specific area where the boundaries are legally defined. However, for the Rights of Nature to have a global impact, they need to be applied globally. After all, ecosystems are not bounded entities but are deeply connected to one another. The UN Harmony with Nature Program has been key in getting the Rights of Nature on the international agenda, but there is a lot more work that still needs to be done.

I also think we need to do a lot more work to continue to amplify the voices of Indigenous peoples. There is so much knowledge that has, for centuries, been ignored and silenced. It can also not be forgotten that, while Indigenous peoples have not been involved in all instances of the recognition of the Rights of Nature, and not all Indigenous peoples support the Rights of Nature, with some questioning the Eurocentrism of the term “rights”, Indigenous worldviews instigated this movement. The Rights of Nature, as noted, represent a key shift in re-thinking out currently anthropocentric legal frames, and it is no coincidence that Indigenous peoples have played such a vital role in this moment thus far.

I also find hope in emerging calls for degrowth approaches. This is one way that we may start to challenge some of the dominant economic models and ways of thinking that justify the exploitation of the environment for so-called economic needs.

What key problems or obstacles do you see as impeding the implementation of an Earth-centered worldview in Earth-centered Law?

I think the key challenge, and one that international environmental law as a field has long faced, is getting things done. International law is based on state consent and states, as we know, are not always very forthcoming when it comes to protecting the environment.

There are many factors at play here, including the state’s need to promote its own economic development but also the pressure put on by powerful corporations. Our global order is so focused on neoliberal economics, on profit and on prioritizing the needs of corporations.

Pushing people to think differently, to think beyond those entrenched systems of thought and power, will be difficult, but I think we will get there – we have to!

What are the top recommendations for priority, near-term action to move Earth-centered Law toward an Earth Jurisprudence approach? What are the specific, longer-term priorities for action?

  • Promote the Rights of Nature globally. This means taking local, regional and international actions to get this on the agenda of lawmakers.
  • Engage the public. For us to move towards a legal system based on Earth jurisprudence, we need to ensure people are on board and are calling for this. The Rights of Nature sounds interesting to people when they first hear it but we need to work harder to explain this to people and why it matters.
  • In terms of getting the Rights of Nature on the international legal agenda, I think the next step will be applying the Rights of Nature to case studies. We have some examples from domestic legal systems where the Rights of Nature have been applied but, for the most part, how we can put this into action in international law remains unclear. We need to start doing that detailed work to show states and other stakeholders exactly how it can be done.

This Q&A is available on the UN’s Harmony with Nature Experts’ Library.

Research Seminar: Posthuman International Law and the Rights of Nature

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Dr. Emily Jones, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Essex, will lead a seminar on the theme of ‘Posthuman International Law and the Rights of Nature’.

The rights of nature are beginning to be recognised in many countries but have yet to be recognised in international law.

Seeking to challenge and re-think the anthropocentrism that permeates International Environmental Law, this seminar will discuss the synergies between posthuman theory and the legal recognition of the rights of nature, reflecting on the application of both to international law.

The lecture will draw on multiple examples of contexts where nature’s rights have been recognised, including in New Zealand, India, Ecuador, the US, and beyond, to think through the similarities and differences between these contexts and the lessons to be learned.

Reflecting on the possibility of the recognition of the rights of nature in international law, the talk will conclude with an evaluation of the ways that posthuman theory can be applied to help inform the rights of nature project, seeking to ensure that the rights of nature live up to their transformative posthuman potential. 

The seminar is organized by Dr. Matilda Arvidsson, as part of the project ‘AI, the social contract, and democracy’, financed by WASP-HS in collaboration with the international law and environmental law groups at the Department of Law of the University of Gothenburg.

The seminar is open to researchers, students at an advanced level, and the public.

No registration is needed.

International Law and Transformation: Environmental Justice

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Dr. Emily Jones, Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Essex, alongside her colleague, Dr. Marie Aronsson-Storrier, Lecturer in Law at the University of Reading, has been successfully awarded just under £5000 by the Modern Law Review to run a seminar on the theme of International Law and Transformation: Environmental Justice.

The seminar will be held at the University of Essex in May 2022 and will bring a series of experts together to discuss key issues in environmental law.

It will centre around the ability to seek transformative environmental justice by working with and through international environmental law.

Key topics of discussion will include:

  • the epistemic basis of international environmental law;
  • recent attempts to transform international environmental law such as the ongoing negotiations to create a Global Pact for the Environment or the recent recognition by the Human Rights Council of a human right to a healthy environment; and
  • the application of the law in case studies, including in crises and disasters.

Further details will be announced in due course, so keep an eye on our blog for updates.