RES · Rights for Ecosystem Services (RES): a framework to protect the environment and sustainable local communities in the EU.

Is currentIs current legal protection adequate to prevent local communities in the EU from abandoning their traditional and environmentally sustainable practices? Environmental protection is increasingly gaining recognition as essential for the fulfilment of human rights. However it remains unclear whether human rights offer sufficient protection for local communities that contribute to environmental protection. The project will break new ground compared to current scholarship, which focuses on indigenous peoples in developing countries. It will focus on non-indigenous local communities in the EU, investigating the intersection of international, EU and national law. The experienced researcher (ER) will build on her research on biocultural rights (monograph published by Oxford University Press) to develop an innovative theoretical and legal framework – Rights for Ecosystem Services (RES) – according to which local communities could be recognized the rights needed to maintain their sustainable practices, in so far as they are bound to remain sustainable. If the hypothesis is correct, RES would be ‘rights with duties’, leading to the identification of needed legal and policy changes to protect the environment and the interests of sustainable local communities. Methodologically, the ER will originally integrate: legal theory; analysis of international, EU and national law; conservation science; religious studies; empirical legal research (fieldwork). The ER will be supervised by Prof. Elisa Morgera (world-leading expert in international and EU environmental law and human rights) and hosted at Strathclyde Centre for Environmental Law and Governance (SCELG) - centre of excellence on human rights and the environment. SCELG will benefit from the ER’s expertise in legal theory, religious studies and conservation biology, and the ER will be engaged in embedded peer-learning and peer-review approaches to develop research, teaching, knowledge exchange, and policy advice skills.