Second research seminar on legal indicators

The second seminar on legal indicators for the right of future generations will be held at the MRSH on March 30 and 31. Purpose: to carry out an experiment to test the feasibility of drafting two questionnaires intended to formulate legal indicators to assess the effectiveness of environmental law in two specific areas

The research group of the Normandy Chair for Peace of the MRSH of the University of Caen has chosen on November 23, 2019 two particular fields which do not have the ambition to account for the reality of environmental but only to serve as a methodological test.

The selected themes will be tested in France (Normandy region), Brazil, Portugal and Tunisia:

1. A national protected area
2. SDG 14 on oceans

Specificity of the test in France :

1. The selected protected area is the national nature reserve of Cerisy of Cerisy in a state-owned forest: it was chosen because it is close to Caen, allowing a visit of the place and an exchange with the manager.

But this choice is not representative, neither of the law of protected areas in general, nor of a common protected areas in general, nor of a common nature reserve, since it is entirely in the entirely in the private forest domain of the State.

Moreover, the law that is applied there is more forestry law than environmental law.

Therefore, it is not possible to draw any substantive conclusions from this test from this test, but only an experience of the drafting of the questions accompanied by the exercise of weighting, i.e. the importance given to each indicator in the effectiveness of the legal theme.

The respondents are not people chosen at the national level, but only local actors in order to raise awareness in the Normandy region about legal indicators.

• SDG 14 was chosen for strategic and political reasons, but as it is not an environmental law text in the strict sense, this choice is intended as a test of the effects of international law on national law.

However, the diversity of the sub-themes addressed in the SDG 14 makes a reliable and representative exercise very difficult.

We must therefore, once again, consider that the choice of questions is questions remains arbitrary, and that the result only serves to improve the method.

The respondents should have been selected on a national basis or for each maritime façade. For the same local reasons as above, the respondents were chosen only from the Normandy region.

This exercise will be replicated during 2020 in Brazil, Portugal and Tunisia

Insofar as no comparison between the 4 countries will be made, we only seek to draw lessons from the difficulties encountered in drafting the questions, in weighting them and in choosing the for the choice of the panel of respondents. Each of the experts chooses both the type of protected area and the panel of respondents (either national, regional or local).

For SDG 14, each country chooses a local or national panel according to its possibilities.