Trial lecture - time and place
Adjudication committee
- Professor Inge Lorange Backer, University of Oslo (leader)
- Professor Helle Tegner Anker, Copenhagen University (1. opponent)
- Associate Professor Kars de Graaf, University of Groningen (2. opponent)
Chair of defence
Dean Hans Petter Graver
Supervisor
- Professor Christina Voigt
Summary
The ecosystem approach, as endorsed in many legal instruments on the international, European, and national level, has been developed as a strategy to halt the degradation of our ecosystems. Despite the conceptual variations among these instruments, the core of the ecosystem approach is considered to be a governance regime focusing on the structure and functioning of the ecosystem within its own ecological boundaries, with the objective of sustainable use of ecosystem services and the maintenance of ecosystem integrity. Despite this dual objective, the maintenance of ecosystem integrity is to be considered of overarching importance. Ecosystem services for human use will only be provided by the ecosystem when the system’s integrity is being maintained.
Given the trend of degradation of essential ecosystems around the world, the application of an ecosystem approach in environmental governance has become a highly timely necessity by now. However, we are facing a paradox: while the application of an ecosystem approach has been widely encouraged in international and EU legal instruments, its implementation is complicated by the nature and design of national environmental law.
Administrative discretion in environmental law may jeopardise ensuring the maintenance of ecosystem integrity. For sure, this is not caused by administrative discretion in isolation. Rather, the combination of discretion with fragmented structures of law and governance, in addition to the difficulties of weighing and balancing very divergent values in decision-making procedures, and the unpredictability and complexity of ecosystem behaviour all contribute to the challenge of governing ecosystems sustainably. These difficulties are interrelated and in conjunction they may lead to ecosystem degradation rather than to the maintenance of ecosystem integrity.
Against the background of these difficulties, the implementation of the ecosystem approach requires consistency and coherence in environmental law, and substantive ecosystem-protective rules which are being applied predictably in accordance with the notion of the rule of law.