Protecting wild land from wind farms in a post-EU Scotland

Simon Marsden ()
Additional contact information
Simon Marsden: University of Stirling

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, 2018, vol. 18, issue 2, No 8, 295-314

Abstract: Abstract Scotland is one of the places in Europe to have experienced significant wind farm development over recent years. Concern about impacts on wild land has resulted in legal challenges based on European Union (EU) law. This article analyses whether wild land can be protected from wind farms and the differences that the United Kingdom departure from the EU will make. It considers the concept of ‘wild land’ compared with ‘wilderness’, analyses the legal basis (if any) for wild land protection and examines potential impacts from wind farms. It highlights the significance of EU environmental law, particularly nature conservation and environmental assessment law, and analyses recent Scottish jurisprudence that has applied this. The role of the European Commission and Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) is emphasised as a key part of EU environmental law. The article asks whether relevant global and regional environmental agreements can effectively replace the content of the substantive law and context of the Commission and CJEU. Four environmental agreements and two related compliance procedures are briefly evaluated. The conclusion is that while EU law does not directly provide protection for wild land, it is considerably stronger than the international environmental agreements that may replace it.

Keywords: Wild land; Scotland; Wind farms; EU law; Environmental agreements (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10784-017-9380-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:ieaple:v:18:y:2018:i:2:d:10.1007_s10784-017-9380-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10784

DOI: 10.1007/s10784-017-9380-y

Access Statistics for this article

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics is currently edited by Joyeeta Gupta

More articles in International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().