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

Dr Helen Dancer is a member of the Programme Management Group of the Sussex Sustainability Research Programme (SSRP). Helen has been appointed to the UN Harmony with Nature programme as an expert in the field of Earth-centred law.

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.

• Meet our members

  • Chloe Anthony

  • Hannah Blitzer

  • Dr Helen Dancer

  • Dr Bonnie Holligan

  • Dr Helena Howe

  • Dr Emily Lydgate

  • Professor Donald McGillivray

  • Dr Emanuela Orlando

  • Dr Joanna Smallwood

  • Teresa Sutton

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”.

• Reimagining the Law of the Forest (AHRC Leadership Fellw Grant 2018)

  Reimagining the Law of the Forest leads and develops new empirical and theoretical research on human-forest relations and earth law. The project includes extensive fieldwork in ancient English forest landscapes, project partnerships with the Woodland Trust and Forest Research, as well as an interdisciplinary special issue People and Forests at the Legal Frontier for The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law. The special issue followed an interdisciplinary workshop for an international group of scholars on the theme of human-forest relations, which took place at Westonbirt Arboretum in 2019. Other project collaborations include co-organising the UK Environmental Law Association Wild Law and Activism conference at the University of Sussex in 2019, which was jointly funded by this project and the Sussex Sustainability Research Programme.

• The UK Earth Law Judgements Project

  The UK Earth Law Judgments Project addresses a critical global issue in a way that is new for the UK. Following in the footsteps of feminist judgments projects and the recent Wild Law Judgment Project led by Australian scholars, the project aims to challenge current anthropocentric approaches in legal decision making by reimagining important UK legal judgments from a range of perspectives within the field of earth law.

  The project was officially launched by Dr Helen Dancer and Dr Bonnie Holligan at the UK Environmental Law Association Wild Law and Activism Conference at the University of Sussex on Saturday 9 November 2019 and is generously supported by the Society of Legal Scholars.

• 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

• H. Dancer, (2021) ‘Harmony with Nature: Towards a New Deep Legal Pluralism’, The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law 10.1080/07329113.2020.1845503
• 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

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