You Can’t Eat Biodiversity: Agency and Irrational Norms in European Aquatic Environmental Law

Tim O’Higgins

doi:10.12924/cis2017.05010043

Abstract

Policies of the European Union cover a range of social, environmental and economic aspirations and the current environmental directives and laws have evolved from a suite of norms which have changed over time. These may be characterised loosely according to 'Three Ps': Practical, those taking an anthropocentric approach; Pure, those taking an ecocentric approach and Popular, those appealing to the general public. In this paper I use these three perspectives as a tool to analyse the complexity and identify contradictions in European aquatic environmental legislation. Some trade-offs between development and conservation are identified and used to characterise the potential qualities of more successful agency to achieve environmental goals in the governance of European aquatic environments.

Highlights

Policies of the European Union cover a range of social, environmental and economic aspirations and the current environmental directives and laws have evolved from a suite of norms which have changed over time
At nised the “intrinsic value” of the diversity of life [1], which ulcurrent efficiencies of resource use, and with current pat- timately contributed to the SDGs recognising the“integrated terns of resource distribution in global society, the goals of and indivisible’ balance between social economic and envieliminating poverty and hunger, promoting equality, provid- ronmental aspects of sustainability [2].The current outlook ing jobs, economic infrastructure and growth all demand an on the role of man and nature set out in the SDGs has increase in the resources available to many of the world’s changed considerably since the inception of the European seven billion population
[33] have distinguished between the techno-economic, Europe has been hailed as a leader in environmental socio-cultural and bio-ecological elements which go into environmental decision making

Summary

Argument

Human Development and Evolving tions are living beyond sustainable levels of consumption. The prevailing narrative in modern conservation sci- mative analysis of existing policies can serve as ence connects biodiversity with ecosystem processes and a baseline to assess the values on which existing environhuman well-being through ecosystem services, the ben- mental policies have developed and to compare these to efits obtained by humans from nature These may be di- current aspirations or visions such as those set out in the vided into supporting, regulating, provisioning and cultural SDGs or under the EU Biodiversity Strategy. The benefits provided by ecosystem nition of the multiple competing values underlying different services may be further categorised as active or pas- initiatives which aspire to sustainability, can serve as a firstsive use values as well as non-use values such as ex- step to analysing policy coherence, aligning multiple policy istence, option and bequest values [23] This narrative objectives and institutional recognition of the range of diveraccommodates the norms of the SDGs recognising that gent norms in existing policies. Norms are considered here in the general sense as sets of societal values or standards

Analysis and Discussion

Practical

Findings

Outlook