CMER History and development

The CMER was established in 1982 by Professor Hubert Bocken (who has a PhD on tort law as instrument to enforce the restoration of environmental damage).  Professor Bocken  is one of the pioneers of environmental law in Belgium, with focus on research and education . He introduced  environmental law  as a course in the law curriculum of the Faculty. He was the 1991 laureate of the  Elisabeth Haub Award for Environmental Law and Diplomacy. For decades he and Professor Luc Lavrysen were the driving forces of the CMER.  In that period a lot of ground-breaking policy-oriented research was undertaken, mainly supported by the Flemish government. The CMER hosted the Interuniversity Commission for the Revision of Environmental Law in the Flemish Region (1989-1995)(with Professor Hubert Bocken as its president). That Commission drafted a complete new environmental protection act for Flanders, which was published in 1995 and further developed the following years. The CMER also hosted a major database on environmental  case law, which was for years the only way to get access to unpublished environmental case law. Fundamental research took place  in PhDs on the development of international, European, Belgian and Flemish environmental law (Luc Lavrysen, 1997), and the legal instruments for nature and landscape conservation (Geert Van Hoorick, 1999). From 1998 on the Faculty also hosted an Advanced  Master in Environmental Law, consisting of various environmental law courses and some non-legal environmental courses. It existed for approximately ten years and educated a lot of environmental experts that  are currently working as magistrates, civil servants or lawyers. Despite its success Ghent University has abolished it together with a lot of other advanced master programs. Luckily a lot of the environmental law courses are now included in the curriculum of the Master of Laws at Ghent University.

Meanwhile the CMER was joined by Professor Geert Van Hoorick, who is an expert in nature conservation and wildlife protection law (he covers also land-use law, together with Professor Tom De Waele, and agrarian law), and by Professor Frank Maes and Professor An Cliquet from the Maritime Institute, who are experts in international and European environmental law and biodiversity law. Their PhDs were on marine pollution from shipping (Frank Maes, 1996) and nature conservation in the marine and coastal environment (An Cliquet, 2001). Professor Frank Maes is known as a pioneer in the field of  marine spatial planning. From 2000 on, fundamental research has been carried out based on research projects and also due to increased foreign scientific cooperation, resulting in more than 30 PhDs. Besides PhD research, policy-oriented research supported by the Federal and the Flemish government remained an important component of the CMER research objectives. In 1999 the federal law on the protection of the marine environment was drafted (Frank Maes & An Cliquet) and adopted, in 2000-2003 the Flemish decree on integrated water policy, implementing the EU Water Framework Directive, was drafted  (Luc Lavrysen, Frank Maes, Peter De Smedt, Gwendoline Gonsaeles) and  adopted, and in 2001-2005 a model nature conservation and wildlife protection act was drafted (Geert Van Hoorick & An Cliquet). With Professor Frederik Vandendriessche and Professor Jelle Laverge (from the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning) joining the CMER, multidisciplinary research in energy law became an additional spearhead of the CMER. In 2020 Professor Lavrysen has been appointed as President of the Belgian Constitutional Court and in 2021 he retired as professor, but is still an active member of the CMER. In the same year Professor Hendrik Schoukens, whose PhD was on legal aspects of ecological restoration in the EU (2017) was appointed and joined the CMER, contributing to the expertise of the CMER in the field of nature  conservation and wildlife protection, as well as general environmental law (environmental impact assessment and climate change litigation). Since the retirement of Professor Luc Lavrysen, Professor Geert Van Hoorick is the director of the CMER. Recently also heritage law and animal welfare law have been brought within the scope of the CMER’s research. Currently the focus of fundamental research project is on topics such as ecological restoration, climate change and nature conservation, rights for nature, animal rights, local energy communities, and interconnectivity of the Belgian offshore wind farms.