NGOs environmental legal mobilization and their access to the Spanish Supreme Court

Authors

  • Luz Muñoz University of Barcelona
  • David Moya University of Barcelona

Keywords:

NGOs, environmental policy, Spanish Supreme Court, legal mobilization, ONG, política de medio ambiente, Tribunal Supremo de España, movilización legal

Abstract

Environmental NGOs in Spain are well known policy actors. Since the nineties some of them have been invited to participate in governmental committees and/or to provide expertise to Parliamentary committees. They have also an important role in mobilizing public opinion to defend and protect the environment. We know less though about how do they intervene in the judicial arena. In the framework of a growing role of the Courts in the field of environmental governance, the goal of this paper is to analyze to what extent Spanish NGOs resorted to the judicial arena, specifically the Supreme Court, to enforce international and European higher standards of environmental protection and advocated against wrong or inadequate praxis in the implementation of environmental regulations. Several non-judicial factors seem to have strengthened that trend in Spain: increasing environmental national and European regulation as well as the NGOs organizational capacity to make judicial claims in line with their policy preferences.

Desde la década de los noventa, las ONG medioambientales de España participan en comités gubernamentales y/o como expertas en los comités parlamentarios; además de tener un papel importante en la movilización de la opinión pública. En cambio, sabemos menos sobre hasta qué punto recurren a la arena judicial. En el contexto de un creciente de papel de los tribunales en el campo de la gobernanza ambiental, el objetivo de este documento es analizar en qué medida las ONG españolas inician litigios, específicamente en el Tribunal Supremo, para exigir el cumplimiento de los estándares internacionales y europeos de protección del medio ambiente o en contra de malas praxis. Varios factores no judiciales parecen haber reforzado esa tendencia en España: el aumento de la regulación ambiental nacional y europea, así como la capacidad organizativa de las ONG para iniciar litigios en línea con su posición sobre una política determinada.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.35295/osls.iisl/0000-0000-0000-1061

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Author Biographies

Luz Muñoz, University of Barcelona

Assistant Professor University of Barcelona

David Moya, University of Barcelona

Associate Professor University of Barcelona

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Published

19-10-2017

How to Cite

Muñoz, L. and Moya, D. (2017) “NGOs environmental legal mobilization and their access to the Spanish Supreme Court”, Oñati Socio-Legal Series, 9(3), pp. 308–332. Available at: https://opo.iisj.net/index.php/osls/article/view/942 (Accessed: 29 March 2024).