Readjustment of the principle of sustainability in administrative law, in particular in environmental and planning law - Reassessing the dogmatics of sustainability following the New Zealand model

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Martin Kment
• Subject Area: Public Law
• Term: from 2017 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 390307904

Sustainability is nowadays widely accepted as an international normative principle. Although its precise legal meaning is not yet finally defined, the idea to ensure that biological systems remain diverse and productive over time has been introduced to European Law and partly to the German constitution. Sustainability also affects German administrative law, which should be in a position to integrate sustainability into everyday reality but which in fact shows shortcomings. For example, sustainability is only mentioned as an abstract guiding principle without legal specifications. Furthermore, sustainability can be overridden in planning law in the event of an appreciation of values (Abwägungsentscheidung), or it is often reduced merely to its ecological domain in environmental law. Therefore, this research project seeks to reinterpret sustainability for German law in order to compensate its deficits. It looks for support in New Zealand law, as New Zealand has incorporated sustainability into domestic law by applying sustainability not just through statutory measures but across the full spectrum of administration and regulation. New Zealand is unique in the way it has created sustainability as an enforceable and active principle, which provides the basis for an integrated environmental management model and the New Zealand environmental court. The research project intends to benefit from the theoretical and practical experiences New Zealand law has gained with the principle of sustainability. It aims to analyse the technical literature and the relevant law cases. All effort shall lead into a model of applied sustainability that allows me to reflect on the German approach to sustainability and to offer proposals for an optimized application within the administrative procedure.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants