I'm delighted to be joined this morning by Dr Marcus Garing, who is University Lecturer in Sustainable Development Law and International and European Law.

And you teach European environmental law and sustainable development.

So Marcus, could you define for me your field of expertise? What is it and why exactly does it matter?

So thank you very much for having me. I'm researching and teaching European environmental and

sustainable development law and have been for the last 15 years. My main interest is

in looking at the regulation on the environment at the European and at the international level

and to explore their interactions.

So I'm also the cost convener for the EU external relations course for that matter.

The field has been evolving.

So it's a very new field of law.

We have been discussing environmental protection issues really seriously at the international

level since 1972 and sustainable development issues since 1992 the Rio

Summit. And European law has really developed in tandem with the international level.

It used to be the case that a lot of innovations in environmental law came from the United States,

which was the first country to adopt a Clean Air Act and to adopt various other statutes

on the protection of the environment.

But in the last 15 to 20 years, that global

leadership has actually changed. Nowadays, the most innovative instruments actually come from

the European Union level, which is not very surprising because in a way you're not developing these rules completely

in a vacuum.

There are countries within the European Union that have a long history of environmental

protection.

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