The European Green Deal, similarly to many national net-zero strategies, is a growth strategy that seeks to combine climate action with job security and economic prosperity. Climate action, however, inevitably creates winners and losers, at least in the short term, and may result in both environmental and social costs. The danger of these conflicts is that they help fuel populism that further erodes the rule of law both in the EU and elsewhere. We explore these dangers through cases studies on the race for lithium to feed electrical transportation demands, and the dephasing of coal economies.
Sanja Bogojević is Fellow and Professor of Law at Lady Margaret Hall and the Faculty of Law at the University of Oxford. Her research interests lie in Environmental Law and EU Law more broadly, and much of her work explores interlinks and dichotomies between private and public spheres in these two legal spheres, covering the role of markets in environmental law, the greening of procurement law, environmental rights adjudication, and climate change litigation.