Using citizen power and the law for a healthy living environment
How do you achieve a healthy living environment? Adessium Foundation supports a variety of interventions. For example, by backing organizations that use the law to protect nature and boosting citizen initiatives. Here are three examples.
Stichting Advocaat van de Aarde
“The Netherlands has good legislation to protect nature”, explains Robert Amelung, secretary of Stichting Advocaat van de Aarde. “But the authorities don’t enforce these laws, so the state of nature keeps getting worse. Citizens play an important role in calling government bodies to account for this. They’re familiar with the nature in their surroundings and they notice when it’s suffering, which is what makes their efforts so valuable.”
The organization has a legal help desk team that answers citizens’ questions quickly. It also has an expert network for complex issues, which can put citizens’ initiatives in touch with lawyers when a case goes to court. “We see that the authorities consistently prioritize economic interests over the interests of nature and humans, partly due to fear of job losses. In my experience, companies aren’t that quick to leave if government bodies do enforce, but they actually become more innovative. For example, some lily growers now use robots to check whether bulbs are diseased, instead of spraying pesticides preventively. That’s an important improvement for residents of those areas, who have been advocating for this for years.”
Stichting Rechten van de Natuur
Stichting Rechten van de Natuur advocates an idea that’s quite new in the Netherlands: recognition of the rights of nature in law, for its voice to be heard in governance and for decisions that take its interests into consideration. “Setting up the movement required pioneering spirit”, director Jessica den Outer explains. “It means not only changes to the legislation, but also a different way of looking at nature. At first, people kept asking is this possible?’ Now they ask ‘how can we put it into practice?’ This evidences a gradual shift from making decisions about nature to making them with nature.”
“By now, proposals to take the voice of nature into consideration in decision-making have been submitted in sixteen municipalities. In some cases, they’ve been adopted with an overwhelming majority. A good example is Gooise Meren municipality, which intends to make structural changes to incorporate the rights of nature in municipal policy. They’re considering appointing an urban ecologist, who will contribute nature’s perspective in discussions about policy development.”
ClientEarth
ClientEarth strengthens the whole system: from legislation and enforcement to access to participation and law, so that people and communities can protect their rights. For example, in Belgium ClientEarth has started court cases against building plans for a large chemicals factory in Antwerp harbour. The factory would use gas from environmentally harmful shale gas extraction in the United States to produce raw materials for plastic.
Lawyer Tatiana Luján, who is leading the case: “The consequences for the climate, biodiversity, air, health and fresh water haven’t been adequately investigated. So the permits should never have been granted. Besides, companies are already exceeding the legal pollution limits in the area now and an extra source of pollution would increase the burden on this region further. The factory would also take water from the Maas. A river that supplies drinking water to 7 million people in Belgium and the Netherlands and already struggles to do so in the summer months due to low water levels.”