The UCC Law and the Environment conference has been scheduled for Thursday 11 April and will examine the imminent decoupling of economic growth from adverse environmental impacts, and the changes this will bring.

A forum for the expert presentation of legal developments and research results in environmental law, regulation and policy, the event will hear an exchange of views among policy-makers, regulators, regulated operators, the environmental NGO community, and Irish (and overseas) academic researchers and professionals.

The title of the 17th annual Law and the Environment conference is “The Role of Environmental Law in the Transition to Sustainability”.

The venue is UCC Boole Lecture Theatres 1, 3 and 4.

This year’s conference will focus on the noticeable shift in focus in the discourse on environmental policy, from one emphasising the management of environmental impacts from harmful activities by means of effective regulation, to one concerned with a more fundamental transition to sustainable patterns of living. 

Transition

Such a transition will require the decoupling of economic growth from adverse environmental impacts, which will necessarily involve radically new integrated and systemic approaches to environmental and natural resources management, along with dramatic improvements in environmental performance.

The effects of these transitions on substantive areas of environmental law; competing environmental pressures driving the transition to sustainability that may expose internal tensions within the overall framework of environmental law; the potential of any radical transition to sustainability to be hugely disruptive economically and socially, resulting in the challenge of securing a ‘just transition’ will all be considered at this year’s conference.

Details can be found through this link Conference Programme The Role of Environmental Law in the Transition to Sustainability 2019