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C-EENRG

Cambridge Centre for Environment, Energy and Natural Resource Governance
 

Professor Jorge Viñuales, C-EENRG fellow and founding Director, and Professor Yann Aguila, Sciences Po Paris, were recently interviewed in Nature Sustainability journal about the Global Pact for the Environment.

In response to the question about the ways in which the Pact could contribute to sustainability, Professor Viñuales noted:

The Pact is a compass defining a direction by means of converging binding principles. Such principles should be used first and foremost as legal parameters to design policies, both domestic and international, that prevent further environmental harm.

The principles can provide a solid legal basis for those within the government apparatus, whether legislators, courts or administrations, to undertake environmental action, such as green deals to transform the energy, transportation, building and agricultural sectors; terrestrial and marine protected areas; subsidies reforms to eliminate overfishing and fossil-fuel distortions; measures to tackle consumption-driven environmental degradation and phasing-out plastic packaging in the food industry, and many others.

The Pact also includes the rights of access to environmental information, justice and public participation in environmental decision-making, which are not yet included in any binding instrument with global scope. These rights would allow civil society to more strongly scrutinize the State and private activities.

Read the full interview in Nature Sustainability: The Right to a Sound Environment.

 

 

 

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