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This summer, when the roads in the Netherlands were covered with farmer's protest flags, Frank Groothuijse was appointed full professor of European and national environmental law. More than ever, there is a heated discussion about the use of our living environment. Groothuijse: “I am researching how the law can contribute to major and far-reaching sustainability challenges in the Netherlands and Europe.”

We have made agreements with each other: the Paris climate agreement (CO₂ reduction), the conservation of flora and fauna and their habitats (including nitrogen deposition reduction), agreements on water and air quality. Their political elaboration poses major challenges; their legal one as well?

The legal significance of European and international sustainability and environmental objectives and obligations, and their legal impact on Dutch environmental law, play an important role in my research. In addition to sustainability and environmental objectives, the extensive housing task and climate adaptation (partly due to our low altitude) also play a role in the Netherlands. All these objectives and tasks will have a major impact on spatial planning in the Netherlands. Far-reaching spatial choices will be inevitable. Spatial planning law therefore plays an important role in this. The key question is: which forms of land use – in what areas and under which conditions – are still possible, and where should certain types of land use be changed or banned.

This also includes the question at which government level – i.e. central government, province, municipality (or water board) – those choices should be made, which legal instruments can be used for this purpose and which government should be responsible for any payment of compensation. Answering these legal questions is of great importance for the political elaboration, and in my view at least as exciting – if not more exciting!

It seems to an outsider as if the transition is a lot about restricting rights?

The trick is to get and keep the right balance in protecting and utilizing the physical living environment. How environmental and other law can contribute to this is an important research question. This almost always involves the distribution issue: how is the 'environmental utilization space' (i.e. the sum of all natural resource use below the environmental threshold) – which is limited amongst others by international, European and national objectives for the physical living environment – to be distributed between the various activities that all lay claim to that (finite) space.

If all of the available environmental utilization space has already been allocated, new activities can no longer be allowed, so a redistribution of this space is necessary to allow new activities. This means that as a government you will have to intervene in existing activities. If the limits of the environmental utilization space are exceeded, existing activities will have to be intervened in anyway. That is essentially what is happening in the current nitrogen crisis. First, the nitrogen overload of Natura 2000 areas will have to be fixed, before new activities can be allowed that will increase the nitrogen load in those areas, such as housing and infrastructure projects or the expansion of livestock farms. Technical innovations can play an important role in reducing environmental impact, provided that their effectiveness and economic profitability are sufficiently established and their application is sufficiently legally assured.

If the limits of the 'environmental utilization space' are exceeded, existing activities will have to be intervened in.

The question is also whether these innovations provide a sufficient reduction in environmental impact to meet the set objectives. If this is not the case, the activities themselves will have to be restricted, remediated or relocated. From a legal point of view, this raises interesting questions, such as: which government can restrict existing rights under which conditions, how can the government be obliged to do so, and what are the rights of the person whose activity is restricted. Somewhat comparable to the nitrogen crisis, there is also the pending threat of a water quality crisis developing in the Netherlands. Dutch waters must meet European water quality requirements by 2027 at the latest, but the expectation is that the vast majority of waters will not meet them.

In addition to regulating the activities of third parties, the government itself will also have to work actively to realise the objectives and tasks that are set for the physical living environment. Space will have to be created for projects of public interest, such as housing, water storage, dyke improvements, the construction of wind turbine parks, infrastructure, nature, etcetera.

Several of these objectives and tasks often come together in a specific area, while they are not always easy to reconcile with each other or with other interests in the area. Solving this complicated puzzle requires an integrated and area-specific approach, which is further complicated because the responsibilities for realizing these tasks and objectives and the legal instruments are divided among different authorities. Good coordination and cooperation between the authorities involved is therefore of crucial importance for solving these area puzzles, as is close involvement of the stakeholders. How (environmental) law can facilitate this integral area-oriented approach, and whether the forthcoming Environment and Planning Act will improve it, are interesting research questions in this respect.

The expectations of the upcoming Environment and Planning Act in the Netherlands are high. How do you see this?

I am curious to see whether the Environment and Planning Act will realize all the great ambitions in practice. The fact that the entry into force of the law was initially foreseen in 2013, and has been postponed several times since then, could be seen as an indication that the ministry has underestimated the size and complexity of the implementation of this fundamental system overhaul. The plan is now that the Act will enter into force on 1 January 2023, but that is not yet certain.

The Environment and Planning Act aims to contribute to the acceleration of decision-making, by shifting powers from legislative bodies of government to executive bodies of government. An interesting question is whether this acceleration will actually be achieved and what consequences this will have for the democratic legitimacy of decision-making. Another objective of the Environment and Planning Act is to offer local authorities more administrative discretion (flexibility). The question is whether governments will actually make frequent use of this, and to the extent that they will, what consequences this will have for the legal certainty that citizens and businesses can derive from environmental law.

Incidentally, it is somewhat unfortunate that the sustainability tasks and other major spatial tasks have to be achieved by means of a fundamentally revised system. A new system entails legal uncertainty, certainly in the first years after it comes into effect. New concepts, definitions and legal figures have yet to become evident in legal practice and jurisprudence. I expect busy times for our judiciary.

I expect busy times for our judiciary

You find a strong relationship with practice and collaboration with other disciplines important. How do you do that?

For my research it is important to understand – to a certain extent – the physical processes and their causes, such as land subsidence, loss of biodiversity, water and air pollution, in order to be able to ask the right legal research questions. How big is the problem and how will it develop in the future? What influence does human action have on these processes? How can that action be regulated, by whom and on what legal basis? It is also important for the implementation of technically innovative solutions to understand their influence on the physical living environment, because these solutions can clash with existing legal frameworks and interests of third parties. The question then is how the legal obstacles to the implementation of these solutions can be removed.

Through the research theme Pathways to Sustainability of Utrecht ľ�ϸ���Ӱ��, I and my colleagues at UCWOSL collaborate in several research projects with physical and human geographers, with hydrologists, and colleagues from other disciplines. By collaborating on a specific theme or project, such as tackling subsidence, it becomes clear what the input is from the various disciplines, and that cooperation between them is necessary to arrive at realistic solutions that are workable in practice. Doing multidisciplinary research together helps you to see your own research in a broader context, so that you can make that research more relevant for achieving solutions for the physical living environment. The Law can never be the sole solution, but it can make an important contribution and is often a precondition for it. You have to be able to transmit this idea to the other disciplines as well. Multidisciplinary collaboration requires the collaborating researchers to have an open mind, be interested in each other's discipline and willing to invest in it.

In my view, collaboration with other disciplines is a must to bring a more sustainable living environment closer. In that context, I would like to further strengthen the collaboration within the faculty with our governance experts and economists on the theme of sustainability, because I believe that these disciplines as well have an important contribution to make.

Furthermore, collaboration with legal scientists in other European countries is important. It makes sense to compare the impact of EU environmental directives in different countries by means of comparative law, to assess what countries can learn from each other, or to assess whether a different interpretation or application of EU law could lead to unfair competition between countries.

We must train critical lawyers, who not only have a thorough knowledge of the law and its application, but who are also aware of the social context of the law, and who are able to question the law itself and dare to do so.

What do you think is important in education?

I consider a strong bond between students and lecturers of great importance for the training of critical lawyers, who have knowledge of law and who can apply it, who are aware of the social context of law, and who are able to question the law itself and dare to do so. To a significant extent, the current students will have to shape the necessary transitions. To this end, it is necessary to continue investing in the development of innovative forms of education, that challenge and enthuse students for the field. For this purpose, I think the involvement of legal practice is of important added value.