Property, Land and Environment Research Group
We develop existing Law research interests, with a special emphasis on natural resource conservation.
Research themes
The Property, Land and Environment researc group focuses on areas such as:
- natural resource conservation, including climate change, biodiversity conservation, sustainable food and farming (including trade law aspects), species conservation and renewable energy
- development of principles of liability for environmental harms
- Brexit implications for environmental governance
- theoretical themes of Wild Law, human/nature connections and Rights of Nature
- ethics of care and connection to place in the contexts of preserving green space and in renewable energy decision-making
- conceptions of property and commodification in environmental contexts such as emissions trading, forestry and conservation covenants.
Further approaches include environmental human rights and environmental constitutionalism, as well as legal pluralism, anthropology of law and legal history.
Our expertise
Bonnie Holligan is a board member of the Modern Studies in Property Law research network. At Sussex, she is a member of the Programme Management Group of the Sussex Sustainability Research Programme (SSRP), where she convenes an interdisciplinary research cluster, the Rights and Justice research cluster
Emily Lydgate was appointed as a Specialist Advisor (Senior Committee Specialist) to the House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee (appointed January 2021), relating to its work on trade deals and environment, food and agricultural interests.
Prof McGillivray is on the Academic Panel of the Barristers Chambers Francis Taylor Buildings, London and a Non-Executive Director of Air and Space Evidence and was Consultant Editor to Halsbury’s Laws of England (volume on Open Spaces and Countryside), 5th Edition Volume 78 (2018), (pp318).
Dr Emanuela Orlando is part of the Avosetta Network of Environmental lawyers.
Projects
Read about our research projects.
- Governing urban food growing spaces for community resilience: the role of legal and policy (2021)
Dr Bonnie Holligan and Dr Helena Howe, Governing urban food growing spaces for community resilience: the role of legal and policy.
There has been significant interest in local food growing projects and produce in the wake of the pandemic. Urban growing spaces can promote social-ecological resilience, especially during crises, by increasing social cohesion, opportunities for collaboration, connection with nature and food production. However, there is a lack of evidence regarding the role of different legal and policy structures in constraining or facilitating mobilisation of these assets by communities and local authorities. Our research fills a gap in knowledge regarding the impact of legal and governance arrangements upon the way that urban growing spaces are experienced, and on their outputs and benefits.
We work closely with academic and non-academic partners including: UK Trade Policy Observatory (UKTPO), Sussex Sustainability Research Programme, UKELA, Pesticide Action Network, Brighton Hove Food Partnership Members of the research group have also been involved in creating a new Environmental Justice Law Clinic in collaboration with the Environmental Law Foundation piloted in 20/21 and offered to final year LLB students 21/22.
In spring 2021, Dr Bonnie Holligan, Chloe Anthony and Hannah Blitzer will work with law clinic students on the interdisciplinary research project “‘Rewilding Sussex to help reach Carbon neutrality in Brighton-Hove and its surrounding region”.
- The UK Earth Law Judgements Project
This project brought together legal scholars, artists and young people to address a critical global issue in a way that is new for the UK. Following in the footsteps of other alternative judgments projects, the authors rewrote and imagined judgments across a range of legal areas within the field of Earth law.
The project resulted in an open access anthology 'UK Earth Law Judgments: Reimagining Law for People and Planet' (Hart 2024), edited by Helen Dancer, Bonnie Holligan and Helena Howe, which was officially launched at the Annual Law Reform Lecture of the Bar in July 2024. The project was supported with funding from the Society of Legal Scholars and the University of Sussex.
- Bridging the gap between international and domestic law – an interactional analysis of the UK’s internationalisation of the CBD Aichi Targets
Dr Jo Smallwood, funded postdoctoral research project ‘Bridging the gap between international and domestic law - an interactional analysis of the UK's internalisation of the CBD Aichi Targets’ (ESCR/SeNSS funded postdoctoral research).
Publications
- B. Holligan, (2020) “Commodity or Propriety? Unauthorised Transfer of Intangible Entitlements in the EU Emissions Trading System” 83(5) Modern Law Review 979-1007
- H. Howe and M. Ross, ‘Brexit’s shades of green – (missing) the opportunity to transform farming in England?’ (2019) 31 Journal of Environmental Law 413-441
- E. Lydgate and L. A. Winters (2019) Deep and not comprehensive? What the WTO rules permit for a UK-EU FTA. World Trade Review, 18 (3). pp. 451-479
- E. Lydgate and C. Anthony, ‘Maintaining the UK internal market for food standards: fragmentation, cooperation or control?’ (2020) UKTPO Briefing Paper 49
- D. McGillivray (with J Holder) ‘Recognising an Ecological Ethic of Care in the Law of Everyday Shared Spaces’, (2020) 29(3) Social and Legal Studies 379-400
- E. Orlando and L. Kramer (eds.) Principles of Environmental Law, part of the IUCN/Edward Elgar Encyclopaedia on Environmental law
- E. Orlando, 'Principles, Standards and Voluntary Commitments' in Routledge Handbook on International Environmental Law (2nd ed.) 2021
Events
No items are currently available.
Contact
If you have any queries, email slish@sussex.ac.uk.