SEMINAR – WEB EVENT: Rights of Nature in Europe
Yaffa Epstein, SCAS and Uppsala University, gives a seminar on "Rights of Nature in Europe". The talk will be followed by a Q&A session.
Abstract
The rights of nature, or natural entities such as rivers and ecosystems, have been recognized in over a dozen jurisdictions around the world. In Europe, this legal trend has raised a lot of interest, but has largely not led to the legal recognition of rights either in the EU or its Member States. But although rights of nature have thus far had little success in being explicitly recognized in the European Union or within Europe more broadly, I argue, nature already has legal rights in the EU legal order by virtue of the legal obligations owed to it under existing environmental laws. Further, although not explicitly recognized, nature’s rights are currently respected in the EU legal system, in that nature protection laws cannot be derogated from for mere utilitarian interests. In this seminar, I argue that the rights of nature that are already implicit in EU law may have consequences for how its interests may be represented in court, and what type of remedies may be attained.
For more information and the webinar link, please see http://www.swedishcollegium.se/subfolders/Events.html.