Time and place for the trial lecture
21st of September 10:15am-11:00am in Gamle festsal.
The title for the trial lecture will be: Beyond legal recognition: Making the right to sustainable development real
The trial lecture and the disputation can also be followed by zoom.
Adjudication committee
- Professor Beate Sjåfjell, University of Oslo (chair)
- Professor Patricia Kameri-Mbote, University of Nairobi (1. opponent)
- Professor Surya Deva, Macquarie University, Australia (2. opponent)
Chair of defence
- Vice dean Ivar Alvik
Supervisors
- Professor Gentian Zyberi
- Professor Peris Jones
Summary
Development is usually regarded as something positive: more schools and hospitals, electricity, housing and jobs.
Sustainable development, as expressed in the UN Sustainable Development Goals, adds a crucial condition: these improvements must take place without destroying the natural foundations people depend on, and without undermining the rights and wellbeing of future generations.
In many African countries, however, development on the ground often conflicts with this ideal. Roads and electricity bring important benefits to local communities. The downside is that the projects delivering these benefits, frequently rely on mining that pollutes water and displaces communities, industrial farming that degrades land and undermines local food systems, and ports or highways that erode livelihoods based on land, fisheries and tourism.
Rethinking Sustainable Development in Africa
The thesis examines a specific human right in the African human rights system, known as the “right to sustainable development” (RtSD). The question is what this right can actually mean in practice for people affected by the negative consequences of development projects in African countries.
The study addresses what the RtSD means in the African human rights system, whether a corresponding right exists in international law at the global level, and how it has been given effect in specific national contexts.
It also looks at how the RtSD relates to other rights: Is it simply another way of talking about the “right to development”? Or does it add something new compared with rights such as the right to a healthy and sustainable environment?
From theory to change: What the RtSD can actually achieve
By studying the RtSD in the United Nations system and the African human rights framework, and drawing on case studies from Ethiopia, Kenya and South Africa, the thesis reaches several key conclusions:
· The RtSD is taking shape as a distinct, self standing right. In African regional law, it is explicitly recognised. In the UN legal framework, it is expressed more indirectly, for example through “greening” understandings of the right to development.
· Depending on how “sustainable development” is understood, the RtSD can operate along a spectrum: from more modest procedural safeguards, such as better consultation and impact assessments, to more transformative changes that require the restructuring of development models within socio-ecological limits.
· The strength of this right lies in fusing developmental objectives and ecological limits into a single guiding norm. It links environmental protection with social justice, places meaningful participation by affected local communities at the centre, and recognises the interests of future generations.
The RtSD gives local communities a language
For many local communities, access to land and natural resources is directly linked to survival. In this context, it is deeply problematic when governments and private actors present “development” and “environmental protection” as opposites, forcing people to choose one over the other, if they are given any real choice at all.
In practice, the RtSD means that states and investors must put environmental limits and social justice at the core of development planning, rather than at the margins. It gives local communities a legal language through which to argue that development that destroys health, ecosystems and future prospects is not necessarily the kind of development to which they have a right. The RtSD can also provide courts with a basis for reassessing what can be accepted as development, and for rejecting or requiring the redesign of projects that do not meet RtSD standards.