Integrating sustainability concepts in an environmental law module

Subject/module: environmental law (year long elective)
Level: undergraduate (levels 2-3)
Pre-requisites: Legal System and Method
Cohort: 20-30 (lectures); 20 (tutorial groups, stage 2) 5-10 (tutorial groups, stage 3)
Summary: sustainability as a pervasive theme in the study of environmental law
Contact: Jason Lowther, University of Plymouth (e-mail: jason.lowther@plymouth.ac.uk)

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Environmental law offers a relatively straightforward means of introducing sustainability concepts into the law curriculum. Making sustainability pervasive, reflecting on the policy that identifies it as a guiding principle in the development of specific areas of regulation, ensures that the learner becomes increasingly aware of the concept and is able to demonstrate this literacy in their analysis and critique of the law as it stands.

UKCLE’s subject survey on the teaching of environmental law demonstrated that there is room for the sustainability concept within the majority of environmental law courses, and I have found it to be an excellent means to bring some life into some otherwise ‘dry’ statutory regulatory schemes.

A new iteration of Plymouth’s environmental law module was run for the first time in 2007-08. The module was extended to a full year with new content introduced, ensuring that a pervasive theme of the module became the relationship of sustainability principles to the shape and implementation of environmental law in the UK.

Mode of delivery

The approach is fairly traditional, with directed reading and questions for tutorials based on a general set of introductory discursive lectures examining the hierarchy of environmental principles and the place of sustainability concepts within environmental law generally. The ‘principles’ (such as the Polluter Pays Principle, the Precautionary Principle, the Proximity Principle, the Public Participation Principle) – and particularly sustainable development – are made pervasive, through reflection on their application in specialist and discrete areas of environmental protection regulation.

Lectures are undertaken in common, with tutorials split between stage 2 and stage 3 learners. The learners are required to prepare for tutorial discussion reflecting upon particular policy and ‘legal’ examples of sustainable development and other underpinning principles. Tutorials include group work where appropriate to present alternative views on the material under discussion.

Lecture handouts, providing guidance, structure and introduction, and material posted on the VLE supplement the learners’ use of set texts and other library-based work.

Members of the class have voluntarily attended seminars in the Centre for Sustainable Futures’ weekly seminar series, which invites speakers on a range of sustainability related discipline areas. I may consider linking a specific tutorial session to one of these seminars – there is room in the programme to do so, although it would necessitate making the group attend outside of their usual contact hours.

The VLE for the module supports news feeds of the BBC’s science and technology pages, which include the most obvious environmental/sustainability linkages.

Online materials identified as having particular value:

• UN Environment Programme
• European Commission environment pages
• UK Government sustainable development site

Learning approach and intended outcomes

The module aims to provide a grounding in environmental law and the principles crucial to its understanding. It provides a detailed, critical examination of the role of law and policy in the protection of the environment and the control of pollution, and aims to encourage critical reflection on sustainability issues in the context of law seeking to protect the environment.

For the particular aspect of sustainability, learners will be able to:

• differentiate meanings associated with the terms of ‘sustainability’, ‘sustainable development’ and ‘weak versus strong concepts of sustainability’ as they appear in legal literature and regulatory measures
• set specific environmental regulatory measures within a context of the principles that underpin them and assess their contribution to sustainable development policy indicators

Examples of learning tasks

The learners undertake Internet research exercises exploring issues in a global context, such as assessing the policy objectives set out in the UK’s sustainable development strategy and the place for law in delivering them. The centrality of the sustainability concept is a continuing theme – self-test questions on each handout and structured work for tutorials require the learners to think about the context within which law and policy is being made by a reflection on the application of sustainable development and other principles.

Examples:

• Consider the preambles to Directives 85/337/EEC and 97/11/EC (on environmental assessment) and observe the relationship between land use, development, environment and the elaborated principles for action set out in the preambles.
• Assess the policy determinants within the contaminated land remediation system, elaborated in the Environmental Protection Act 1990 and supplemented by a raft of other legislative and policy measures, and reflect upon the sustainability aspects of the re-use of brownfield sites, and the consideration of planning guidance which promotes the use of such sites for development purposes.
  In 2007-08 a task on waste management concerned the transboundary movement of hazardous waste, with a focus on shipbreaking. The dramatic imagery of the environmental and social harm caused by unregulated waste disposal provided a memorable and evocative means of demonstrating the context of the law in its aspiration to reflect the sustainability concerns within the waste and shipping industries. The option also demonstrated the challenges inherent in understanding the inextricability of the sustainable development concept from a wider view of environmental protection.

The wealth of easily accessible information on the subject provided contrast and differentiated the value of the material available. Directed resources included:

• Basel Convention and Basel Action Network
• International Maritime Organization
• Ship dismantling (European Commission) and Shipbreaking (Greeenpeace search)
• UK ship recycling strategy (DEFRA; PDF file)
• An additional learning resource for the module is offered through the materials held in the library for the Centre for Sustainable Futures (based at Plymouth).

This year two ‘spare’ tutorial sessions for the stage 2 students (the stage 3 group were invited to join in, and about half of the group did) were devoted to showing and discussing the film The power of the community: how Cuba survived peak oil. This was done partly as a bit of light relief from some rather dry regulatory subject matter around the International Plant Protection Convention, and partly to keep the focus on the wider landscape of the module. The sustainability content of the film was picked up by the group, and proved a useful means of including some of the economic and social dimension.

Assessment strategy

Feedback is verbal and generally instantaneous, both from the module leader and the class itself. Learners may receive feedback intrinsically, ie it may have arisen in the course of the activity itself, or it may have involved somebody (the tutor, other learners, or the learner themselves) making an explicit judgement about performance in response to activities within the session.

The principal means of assessing understanding of the sustainability concept is through discussion within the lecture/tutorial setting and by establishing the level of understanding of directed pre-reading. Formal summative assessment takes the shape of an assignment from a choice of topics taught in the first term, predominantly considering the structures and principles of environmental law. Feedback is provided.

Outcomes for learners

Tutorial discussion, general feedback and choice of assessment topic at stage 2 suggest the introduction of new content has been a success, and that there is a greater degree of sustainability literacy than previously. Formal module evaluation revealed that the learners enjoyed the module, with specific comments relating to the different perspectives on law they were introduced to, such as explanations for law, the potential for law to allocate responsibilities, the importance of remediation, and the lack of rights claimable on behalf of the ‘environment’ itself, necessitating a wider view of sustainable development in order to permit incidental protection.

I noticed a greater appreciation of the role of law in shaping aspirations of environmental protection, resource conservation and allocation. One of the stage 2 students became involved with the Centre for Sustainable Futures’ student greenhouse, a sustainability focused chat forum/social networking presence, coordinating law student input.

Assessment scores to date (the examination is forthcoming) are in line with previous iterations of the module, subject to some differences such as changes to the assessment base.

Reflections

A significant issue was the development of wider sustainability literacy. The development of an understanding as to how relatively vague ‘principles’ are able to crystallise into enforceable legal rules presents some challenges, as does the differential between aspirational and normative propositions, an aspect of the use of sustainable development in the development of law and policy.

At times, explaining the fallibility of international law was problematic – learner comments such as “what’s the point if it can’t be enforced?” and “it’s too vague and woolly” provided a challenge! However, after international law was explained in terms of its contribution to other legal systems (such as the EC and in UK policy and law) these problems seemed to be overcome.

There is a potential difficulty in ensuring that ‘all’ of the commonly accepted concepts of sustainable development (economic, social and environmental) are adequately rooted in the environmental law protective regimes. I am less confident that the economic and social aspects were given equivalence with the environmental aspect, but the nature of the subject makes that, to a degree, inevitable.

I would advise any practitioner to keep it interesting! Some learners will not immediately grasp the point of ‘why’ the law is as it is, and are more concerned with a process driven approach – ie ‘what’ it is. As the sustainability concept is inherent in understanding contemporary environmental regulation, it may appeal to wider ideas of ‘justice’ held by learners, and as such is a great way to promote discussion.

A cautionary note relates to the vast array of readily available material provided by NGOs with environmental agendas. It can prove useful, particularly to provide memorable imagery or commentary, but obviously needs to be treated with care on the basis of its often polemical nature.

Last Modified: 4 June 2010