Of the People, by the People, for the People? The European Union’s Experience with Private Environmental Regulation and Enforcement

Kingston, Suzanne; Alblas, Edwin

doi:10.5040/9781509919550.ch-006

Cited by 2 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In defining and demarcating nature governance rules, meaning the legal tools used to promote compliance with nature conservation rules, we build upon prior work (Kingston & Alblas, 2020;Kingston et al, 2017) to distinguish between laws imposing a criminal penalty for breach of a substantive rule; laws imposing a fine for breach of a substantive rule; laws or other rules creating economic incentives to engage in compliance (such as payments and subsidies granted to farmers and landowners for the provision of eco-system services); and laws promoting the principles of transparency, participation and/or access to justice in environmental matters. The last category encompasses the private environmental governance principles set out in the Aarhus Convention, which we term collectively the "Aarhus mechanisms".…”

Section: Defining Nature Governance Rulesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While doctrinal legal and regulatory scholarship on this embrace of "bottom-up" private environmental governance is now substantial (see, e.g., see Alblas, 2020, andWurzel et al, 2013), there has been relatively little quantitative research in the field. This is in part because of the challenge of measuring different levels of environmental rules (international, EU, national) and the very wide variety of rules of relevance to environmental governance (e.g., criminal penalties, civil fines, rules on legal standing, and rules on legal costs).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The democratisation of European nature governance 1992–2015: introducing the comparative nature governance index

Kingston

Wang

Alblas

et al. 2021

Int Environ Agreements

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

European environmental governance has radically transformed over the past two decades. While traditionally enforcement of environmental law has been the responsibility of public authorities (public authorities of the EU Member States, themselves policed by the European Commission), this paradigm has now taken a democratic turn. Led by changes in international environmental law and in particular the UNECE Aarhus Convention (UNECE, United Nations Economic Commission for Europe Convention (1998). Convention on access to information, public participation in decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (the Aarhus Convention), signed on June 25, 1998.), EU law now gives important legal rights to members of the public and environmental non-governmental organisations (“ENGOs”) to become involved in environmental governance, by means of accessing environmental information, participating in environmental decision-making and bringing legal proceedings. While doctrinal legal and regulatory scholarship on this embrace of “bottom-up” private environmental governance is now substantial, there has been relatively little quantitative research in the field. This article represents a first step in mapping this evolution of environmental governance laws in the EU. We employ a leximetrics methodology, coding over 6000 environmental governance laws from three levels of legal sources (international, EU and national), to provide the first systematic data showing the transformation of European environmental governance regimes. We develop the Nature Governance Index (“NGI”) to measure how the enforcement tools deployed in international, EU and national law have changed over time, from the birth of the EU’s flagship nature conservation law, the 1992 Habitats Directive (Directive 92/43/EEC). At the national level, we focus on three EU Member States (France, Ireland and the Netherlands) to enable a fine-grained measurement of the changes in national nature governance laws over time. This article introduces our unique datasets and the NGI, describes the process used to collect the datasets and its limitations, and compares the evolution in laws at the international, EU and national levels over the 23-year period from 1992–2015. Our findings provide strong empirical confirmation of the democratic turn in European environmental governance, while revealing the significant divergences between legal systems that remain absent express harmonisation of the Aarhus Convention’s principles in EU law. Our data also set the foundations for future quantitative legal research, enabling deeper analysis of the relationships between the different levels of multilevel environmental governance.

show abstract

Section: Defining Nature Governance Rulesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The democratisation of European nature governance 1992–2015: introducing the comparative nature governance index

Kingston

Wang

Alblas

et al. 2021

Int Environ Agreements

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The European Union (EU) has some of the world's most ambitious and highly developed environmental laws on its books, but their effectiveness is severely compromised by non‐compliance. Encouraging private, “bottom‐up” enforcement has formed a central plank of the EU's efforts to deal with this serious problem (Kingston & Alblas 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Magnetic law: Designing environmental enforcement laws to encourage us to go further

Kingston

Alblas

Callaghan

et al. 2021

Regulation & Governance

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The European Union has some of the world's most ambitious and highly developed environmental laws on its books, but their effectiveness is severely compromised by non‐compliance. With the UNECE Aarhus Convention (1998), Europe launched an innovative legal experiment, democratizing environmental enforcement by conferring third party citizens and environmental non‐governmental organizations (ENGOs) with legal rights of access to environmental information, public participation, and access to justice in environmental matters. Based on some 2000 surveys and over 150 interviews with stakeholders from three Member States – France, Ireland, and the Netherlands – we adopt a holistic, 360° perspective, capturing the views of regulated parties, NGOs, and the general public on this private governance experiment. Our data provide important new insights into the practical effectiveness of Europe's laws enabling private environmental enforcement, its (intended and unintended) effects on farmers' compliance decisions in the vital area of nature conservation, and how law might be used to stimulate pro‐environmental predispositions.

show abstract

Of the People, by the People, for the People? The European Union’s Experience with Private Environmental Regulation and Enforcement

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

The democratisation of European nature governance 1992–2015: introducing the comparative nature governance index

The democratisation of European nature governance 1992–2015: introducing the comparative nature governance index

Magnetic law: Designing environmental enforcement laws to encourage us to go further

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About