Rights of nature and European Union law: Paths of dialogue
A study coordinated by Nathalie Hervé Fournereau, CNRS Research Director
For the 2019-2024 European mandate, the European Union's "Green Deal" was designed to equip us to face the climate and environmental crisis. We have certainly made significant progress: from the revision of the European directive on environmental crime (laying the foundations for the recognition of ecocide in EU law) to the (timid) raising of the EU's climate objectives, or the introduction of a due diligence for European companies, albeit largely stripped of its original ambitions. For the first time, the European Parliament also called for the world's forests to be recognized as a natural commons. But there are still far too many things to do: the EU has yet to make a firm commitment to a complete phase-out of fossil fuels. The law on the restoration of nature, which was supposed to be THE major text to protect European ecosystems, has been undermined by the alliance of the right and the liberals against ecology. European policies remain confined to a restorative approach based on compensation for environmental damage (we destroy, then repair on the margins), rather than an ecosystemic and preventive approach. Worse still, these policies sink deeper and deeper into the commodification of living things and their increasing financialization: to protect nature, we need to put a price on it, make it a market value like any other, and subject it too to the laws of the market.
Against this, we, ecologists, are defending another approach: recognition of the intrinsic value of nature and its rights. We want to bring about a real paradigm shift: from a utilitarian approach to nature to the recognition of its intrinsic value, from the multiplication of permits to harm and destroy nature to the recognition of the right of ecosystems to be protected, to regenerate at their natural pace and not to be polluted... By embarking on this path, the European Union would be taking part in a global movement that stretches from Latin America to Asia, via Africa. A movement that has already begun to take root throughout Europe in recent years: recognition of the legal personality of the Mar Menor in Spain, declaration of the rights of the Tavignanu in Corsica and the Salines in Martinique, recognition of the rights of nature in the Environmental Code of the Loyalty Islands in New Caledonia...
This study by Nathalie Hervé Fournereau analyses the various projects that need to be undertaken to better protect and preserve ecosystems, based on existing texts, innovative legislative proposals and radical structural changes aimed at revising the architecture of priorities on a European scale. Some of these proposals are already being negotiated within the European institutions, while others could be launched in the coming years, such as the adoption of a framework directive on biodiversity and nature, or a reform of primary law to recognize the intrinsic value of nature and its rights at the heart of the European treaties.
This study opens up ambitious prospects for action for the future of the EU. A real roadmap towards the recognition of the rights of nature.
