The scope of the ecological transitions research group is situated at the confluence of ecological law and sustainability law. The key areas of research are climate law (activism, access to Justice, nature-based solutions), energy law (renewable, prosumers, poverty), forest law (risks, biodiversity, planning), territory (land and marine strategy and spatial planning, geospatial information, spatial justice and coherence mechanisms), circular economy (agri-food sector, role of public entities, fourth sector).
The approach is comprehensive, holistic and innovation based, in line with the visions of "one Health" (exposome law), one Ocean (and geoethics for the future), one Planet (earth system law), one Rights (rights of nature).
The group will develop two research strategies: Fundamental legal research (essentially analytical, conceptual and comparative) having 4 distinctive features: ambitious (high-risk high gain), long-term, based on strong interdisciplinarity, aiming at disruptive innovation; Applied legal research (primarily descriptive, empirical, contextual) being characterised by pragmatism (problem solving), short-term, purely legal, achieving moderate innovation.
The legal science advancements brought by the ecological transitions group will come mainly from the method of collective research (funded interdisciplinary research projects, purely legal international research), but individual research will also be supported contributing to lever the progress of the group (fellowships, individual research grants, micro-papers and PhD thesis). The outputs are scientific events and initiatives (workshops, seminars, panels, roundtables, hackathons, legal games, publications such as peer review articles in scientific periodicals, encyclopaedia entries, collective books, legal digest, annotated case law, recommendations, policy papers, legal guidelines for policy areas, etc.).