 That's a lecture at King's College previous to this. She was a postdoc researcher at Cambridge. She has a book coming out this year. I believe I'm the principal and more recently is researching on energy governance, which she won't be able to join us today to talk about. So, Lesley Ann, I'll leave it to you. Great, thank you. Well, I'm delighted to be here. Thanks so much to you for coming. We were not sure if it was better to postpone, but I thought we should just go ahead. So, thanks so much. I'm really delighted to be here. And today I'd like to talk a bit about some of my new research. So, this is really a new research agenda that I've started on energy governance and the role of international law in energy governance. I'm a public international lawyer, so my interest is really to look at what international law has to say about energy issues. So, this is really much working progress. I'm really welcome your feedback, your comments afterwards. I'm really excited about that. So, what I'd like to talk about today is the role of public participation in international energy governance. My research is really looking at international energy law as a field of law, as a field of inquiry, as a field of research. We all know about energy law as a field of national domestic law, but what does international law have to say about energy? It can be a paradox because usually energy issues are very much national issues, domestic issues. It's very much considered to be a national interest, in particular because of energy security. It's considered to be a security issue, the fact that we are able to get energy access. It's considered to be a matter for the state to take care of. So, we have a little bit of this paradox now that international law is becoming more and more interested in energy activities, energy policies. You will know that when it comes to climate change, and this is why energy is becoming so important at the international level, when it comes to climate change, we obviously have international regulation, but this has very much been left on a separate level compared to energy governance. So, we have decarbonisation objectives, but no one is telling the states what to do under international law about how they will have to design to frame their energy policies. So, what I'm looking at in terms of international energy law is to look at what different fields of international law have to say about energy. There's no comprehensive framework. You don't have a convention, a treaty on energy law. You could say, well, the energy charter treaty a little bit, but it's more considered to be an investment treaty rather than really a treaty focusing on energy. So, I'm looking at different fields of international law and looking at whether they have something to say about energy policies and energy activities. So, does international law say something about the fact that this woman here is there on the wind farm? How does human rights, how are they affected by the fact that a wind farm has been implanted here? And when we talk about energy, what I'm really interested in is really the energy transition. So, I'm not looking at energy law from the perspective of oil and gas. The traditional perspective of energy is oil and gas. I'm really looking at the energy transition. What is international law saying in terms of us moving to a low-carbon economy? In terms of this low-carbon economy, one aspect of it that is really important is this question of inclusiveness, the question of how do we make sure that the population, the public, participate in the energy transition? And this is really important because now we see more public involvement in energy activities. We had monopolies in terms of the corporations that were dealing with, that were providing us with energy. Now what we see is that energy production is being done at a more local individual level. So, it's what we call the prosuma. He's a consumer, but he's producing his own energy. So, he's a prosuma. And so, when it comes to renewable energy, we really have this local aspect that is becoming more and more important. And the state is taking, it's not so important in designing those activities and this kind of consumption. At the same time, states are also changing the energy policies, obviously, in light of new decarbonisation objectives. And they're focusing on renewable energies, but they're also focusing on a number of energies that might create environmental and social risks. This can be renewable energies, of course. Having a wind farm can have certain environmental and social risks. But also, other types of energy like nuclear power, for instance. So, there's a lot of reliance on nuclear power to decarbonise the economy, because it is considered to be an easy way to limit emissions. Same thing with hydro power, not a new type of energy, but for something that is being relied more in relation to the energy transition. So, you have this first aspect of public participation in the energy transition, new types of energy, other types of energy, how are they accepted at the local level, and the other one that is related is the fact that we are seeing at the moment public backlash against certain energy policies. So, when you have new wind farms, you will see that a number of people that might be affected by this new wind farm will actually, will not agree with it. So, it's what you see here. It's the NIMBY process, not in my backyard. You're happy to decarbonise the economy as long as it's someone else who has the wind farm in their backyard. So, this is something that is rather important because we will not be able to transition to a low-carbon economy if we don't have a public onboard. We really need to have this public acceptance of those new types of energy. So, what I'm looking at is really what is the role of public participation in the design and operation of those new energy activities, in particular because public participation is becoming increasingly important in international law. And you could say, well, it's actually rather interesting because international law is not supposed to regulate at the local level. It's not really regulating the action of the individual. It's no concern about relations between states. But what we see is really that public participation is at the border between environmental law, human rights law, development law, and it's becoming more and more important. You will probably know that one of the most important sources of public participation of the norm of public participation in international law is principle 10 of a Rio Declaration from 1992. In principle 10, you have three pillars that describe what public participation is. And I'm going to actually refer a lot to those three pillars in my presentation. The first one is access to information, so the fact that you should be able to get access to information that concerns environmental matters. The second pillar is more broadly participation in decision-making processes. So the fact that you are allowed to give your opinion when you have some kind of procedure that will affect the environment. And the third one is access to justice. If those first two pillars have not been complied with, you are allowed to go in front of a tribunal and make your voice heard. You have other very important sources, in particular the Oris Convention on public participation. I'm going to talk about it. There is a regional convention that applies to members of the EU Economic Commission for Europe. So European, although it's called Europe, it also includes the US and Canada, but they are not actually parties to the Oris Convention. But a European Convention on public participation and currently negotiations in Latin America to have an equivalent to the Oris Convention in that region. So we see that it's becoming more and more important. And so the status of public participation in international law at the moment can be said to be, you could say that the principle is becoming an emerging principle of customary international law. A number of international treaties, in particular human rights treaties, have considered that public participation relates when it comes to environmental matters is a customary principle of international law. So what I'm looking at is basically how can international law contribute to the democratization of energy policies? As I've said, there's a tension between trying to solve this big issue of climate change that is considered to be a global issue and then how do you implement it at the national level where energy policies are considered to be a matter of national security and are not open to this global oversight, international oversight. We have local practices now in relation to renewable energies. How do we link these local practices to the global rules that already exist? Can we say that international law provides minimum standards to those energy policies? Is there some kind of international oversight with regards to what states are doing in relation to energy? So today I will give you three case studies, three very different case studies First of all, the international energy governance is fragmented. I will talk about clean development mechanisms and how they integrate the principle of public participation. So a mechanism focusing on climate change, how does this affect actually energy activities? I will talk about the World Bank and the policies of the World Bank, so the financial institution and how this financial institution takes into consideration public participation in relation to energy. And finally, I will talk about an environmental treaty, the Oris Convention and how the principles from the Oris Convention can be applied. So I will look at how those institutions engage with the energy transition. How do they define public participation? Which of those three pillars are they really focusing on? And then eventually at the end, I will try and ask a few questions. I'm afraid I don't really have answers to them yet about what does it tell us for a possible concept of energy democracy in international law? Can we say that there is such a concept? So my first case study is about CDMs, clean development mechanisms. I guess you've heard about it. It's an innovative market mechanism under the Kyoto Protocol. It's quite an important mechanism in relation to energy. 71% of the projects today relate to renewable energies. So a majority of CDM projects relate to renewable energies. And so the question is really, is the public involved in those activities that are sponsored, that are created under the CDM mechanism? On the one hand, the CDM mechanisms have created a policy of what they call stakeholder engagement. And this word is quite interesting because you're not talking about the public in general, you're talking about stakeholders. And it's a word that you see has spread from the negotiations of the Kyoto Protocol, so it was not there before under the UNFCCC, under the Framework Convention on Climate Change. It emerged after when the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated. On the other hand, if you look at the CDM, you will see that it's quite an opaque system. If you go on the website where they tell you all about CDMs, it's quite expert driven, it's very difficult to actually find the information that you want to find. In theory, when it comes to CDMs, what the UNFCCC is doing is really putting the emphasis on access to information. So if you want to know more about a project that is being sponsored under the CDM, you can know everything that you want to know about it, you will be able to find it on the internet. The main challenge is that you actually need to find it on the internet and there's just so many pages that it's difficult to find, but you have a database where they actually have all the different CDMs and then you can know more about the projects. There's no transparency obligation for the national entities that are implementing the project, so it's basically access to information about the project as it has been designed at the international level under the Q2 protocol, but at the national level, there's no obligation for the authority that carries out this project to actually put the information that it has on the internet. So this would depend on the national legislation of the country where the CDM is being undertaken. Then when it comes to actually talking to the public about what could be the impact of the project, we have quite detailed rules, but those rules were actually adopted last year, so that's quite interesting because you have new developments. You had all the rules that integrated this obligation to consult with the public, with the local public, so when you want to carry out the CDM project, you have to go talk to the public, the local populations, ask them what they think about the project, what the impacts could be. But it was rather broad, so that's always a problem with public participation, is that usually those obligations are rather broad and you don't really know what you have to do in order to really fulfill your obligation and carry out what is meaningful public consultation. So you could say, well, you have to consult with the public, but most of the time, for instance, the documents will only be in English, and then, yes, you've consulted with the public, maybe the public doesn't speak the language that you're giving the documents in, and then that's not meaningful participation, so that usually the problem. In 2017, new rules were adopted for the CDMs, including new, more detailed rules about what local stakeholder participation means. So now we have a list, you have a list here, of everything that has to be taken into account when you're carrying out those consultations. So how many stakeholders do you need? Is it enough to have 10 stakeholders? What kind of information do you have to give them? How do you invite those people to participate? Is it enough to publish something on the internet? Do you have to publish it on the local newspapers that people might be reading? When do you engage with those people? At what time? It's too late if you've already almost made your decision and you're just asking them a few details, their comments about a few details. And then what do you do once you have those comments? How do you contact them all into account? You have to explain why you made the final decision as you made it, eventually, in light of the comments that you received from the public. So we see, although the question of access to information, it's quite important, but it's actually difficult to get that information in terms more of making sure that the public is participating in decision-making processes. We see that now we have new rules that might implement this process better. And then the last pillar, as I've said, is access to justice. So what do you do if you are a local population that is affected by a CDM project? And who do you complain to? There's actually no accountability mechanism at the moment. So if you're a local community affected by a CDM project, there's no way for you to actually go back to the UNFCC policy and say I've been affected by the project that you've validated. Initially, there was no access to the executive board of the CDM or the secretariat if you wanted to raise a complaint. Then what stakeholders started to do is to use a process that is called letters to the board to actually complain about the impacts of CDMs. Those letters to the board, they actually don't, in theory, they don't allow you to complain on a specific activity. They only allow you to ask for more specific information about certain rules, clarification, interpretation of certain rules. But the stakeholders, they had no means to actually talk to the executive board of the CDM. And so they started using these letters to complain. So that's quite interesting because you see really the innovation here. There's no mechanism, but at the same time, they're using a mechanism, the only mechanism that they have, in order to complain. And the board usually was reading the letters and sending them to the national authorities to raise awareness, but it did not have, obviously, a very direct impact. Since 2017, there's now a communication form, so there's been a reform, and now stakeholders can actually raise complaints or actually raise, or more raise the awareness of the board to the fact that they are being impacted by certain activities. There's a lot now, there's quite a lot of discussion about establishing an appeals body. So negotiations are ongoing at the moment about having an appeals body that would look at the impacts of CDM projects. Obviously, the negotiations are quite difficult because states do not want to have this international oversight. The big question is who would be able to trigger this mechanism? We see at the moment in the negotiation papers that states are more happier to have other states trigger that type of mechanism than stakeholders as such. So the fact that stakeholders might be able to trigger this mechanism is really not a given. At the moment, it's in brackets, in the negotiation papers, when actually it's been stakeholders who should be given this right. The next negotiations will be in 2019. The big question, obviously, is that now we have a Paris Agreement and therefore a new system of market mechanisms. So everything will depend on what will be the relationship between the CDM and the new mechanisms that have been set that are now being discussed under the Paris Agreement. The most likely situation will be that the CDM system will be extended to the Paris Agreement and there will be some kind. The walls will be extended to the Paris Agreement and therefore everything that I've been talking about should be extended under the Paris Agreement, but that's not certain because the negotiations are ongoing. Now, I'd like to talk about the World Bank. And the World Bank, it's a different situation. You have rules that will govern the projects that the World Bank is financing. So this is, let's say, rather similar to the CDM case study. This is an international institution that is regulating the activities that it's sponsoring. But you also have the World Bank publishing some policy advice and some indicators that I'm going to talk about about how states should design their own energy policy. So you have two types of regulations here. What is interesting with the World Bank is that it has decided, it has set up certain rules on how to regulate the impacts of the projects that they are financing in terms of their environmental and social impacts. And if you're a local community, consider that a World Bank project has had an impact on your life. You can go in front of the inspection panel and raise a complaint. The system, so here you see that it's rather different from the CDM where you don't really have this complaint system. Here, already in 1993, you already had this inspection panel that was created. It's not really a tribunal. The inspection panel is not considered to be a tribunal. It's considered to be a fact-finding body. So it's a body that will look at the fact and then come up with a conclusion about what really happened. It's not there to say this state did something wrong. It's just saying we actually did not apply in those circumstances the rules that the World Bank has. So what is interesting is that it's individuals that are allowed to trigger directly this mechanism. And the objective is obviously to try and increase the legitimacy and accountability of the World Bank that is often criticized for the impacts of the projects that it is financing. So in practice, if you look at the practice of the inspection panel, we had 120 requests for inspections since 1993. So not huge, but quite a big number. Out of those, almost all of those involved questions of public participation. So this is quite interesting is that you have out of 120, you have 106 but involved questions of consultation and participation. So this is the main complaint that you get in front of the inspection panel. The population is saying we were not consulted about this project. You had, so the panel decides whether it wants actually to investigate those cases. 30 cases were eventually investigated and out of those 30 cases, 10 are related to energy. So it's quite a big number. Most of them relate to questions of fossil fuels of pipelines, cleaner gas, hydro power. But we have a few cases on renewable energy and I think there's real potential for growth because the World Bank has said that it will not sponsor, it will not finance project relating to fossil fuel anymore and that it will finance renewable energy projects. So there's a potential for growth there. As an example, I just wanted to give you this example in Kenya, case that was brought in front of the inspection panel. This case was related to a geothermal project and the population there, the Marseille population had been consulted. But they said that the consultation actually did not meet the requirements under international law and in particular what the panel found was that the documents had not been translated into the local language, which obviously is quite problematic and also that the consultation process was not really culturally sensitive. So for instance, the Marseille community is focusing a lot on the role of elderly people. They are the ones who make the decisions there and the World Bank for this project just when they ask everybody about their opinion and this created actually tensions within the community because it's not how decisions are being made within that local community. So here, there was a lot of good intentions but actually when it comes to knowing the community that you're gonna talk to, this is where public participation becomes a lot more difficult. And then the World Bank is also looking more specifically at the energy policies of its member states and that's quite interesting because it's not only interested about its own legitimacy and accountability, it also considers that energy policies are questions of development because the World Bank is its main mandate is to reduce poverty and therefore that if you are looking at the energy policies of member states, you might be able to reduce poverty. So in 2017 last year, they adopted those indicators, regulatory indicators for sustainable energy rise indicators. Those indicators are quite interesting. You have a list here. It's divided into three sections. First one is about policies on energy access. Second one on energy efficiency and third one on renewable energy. The objective and what the World Bank does is that it looks at every indicator there. So for instance, whether you have an electrification plan, whether you have a legal framework for renewable energy. So it looks at that. And then each time that it's a yes, you get some points. If it's a no to that question, you don't get points and then they rank countries on that basis. So they've ranked all countries on the basis of those indicators. What do those indicators say about public participation? I mean, if we're talking about energy access, for instance, you're really focusing on the individual. You should be thinking, oh, well, there's a lot about public participation, the right of individual to be heard, et cetera. There's not much in those rise indicators. There's not much actually on public participation. And that's quite surprising. So if you really look at all the indicators, it's difficult to find really things that are about public participation and it's mostly about access to information. So the fact that you will get information about your electricity usage, for instance. The fact that the financial statements of energy companies will be made public. So you see those as indicators in the rise indicators, but it's quite limited. There's very few things on the public and how the public can be included in decision-making processes. So that's a bit of a paradox because the World Bank is saying, well, we're focusing on sustainable development. If you're focusing on sustainable development in sustainable development, there's a social pillar. It's not only economic and environmental pillars, it's also a social pillar. And this social pillar really here is not, you can't really see it. So energy policies are considered to be either good or bad. So for instance, Indicator and Renewable Energy does a legal framework for renewable energy development exist, it's either yes or no. You might have some kind of renewable energy legislation, but it does not mean that actually the content of it is gonna be any good. So this is rather problematic. And it's also really not looking at local particularities. So it's just saying every country needs to have all those things in order to have some kind of good energy policy. And if it does not fulfill all those indicators, it can't have good energy policy. So it's really encouraging uniformity. And I think it's something that, it's a criticism that has already made against the World Bank. The World Bank has been imposing certain standards on countries about how they should develop economically. And I think it's something that we see here now again in relation to energy, that the World Bank just thinks that and energy policies are either good or bad. The only positive thing about those indicators is that civil society has been using it as a means to pressure certain states that were given relatively bad grades in relation from the World Bank and they managed to put a bit of pressure on those states saying, look you're on the international scrutiny, you got a really bad grade for your energy policy, you should do something about it. Now, first, case study, an international environmental agreement, the Aura's Convention. Quite an interesting convention. It implements principle 10 of a real declaration. As I've said, it's a regional convention and it covers a variety of issues, a variety of activities, not only energy activities, but more broadly any kind of activity that might have an impact on the environment. So, what is interesting is that when you look at the list of activities that are covered by the Aura's Convention, the first activity that comes out in annex one, it's the energy sector. So it's really saying, our first priority are energy activities. Then what is slightly strange is that if you go through that annex at the end, you have a number of activities that are not categorised, so not energy, not transport, et cetera. And there you have other activities that I would consider to be energy activities, but have not been put under the energy sector categories, such as pipelines, for instance, for construction of dams. They are also in this annex. And then, if the National Environmental Impact Assessment legislation is talking about public participation in relation to specific activities, this also means that the Aura's Convention would apply in this case. And so the Aura's Convention applies to activities, but it also applies more broadly to policies relating to the environment. So that's why when I'm going to talk about the compliance committee, it has been looking not only at specific energy activities, but more broadly also at the energy policies of its member states. So the Aura's Convention is interesting because it has a compliance committee. So it has a committee that looks at whether member states in relation to specific questions have been complying with the provisions of the treaty. It's not tribunal, so again, it's slightly different from the inspection panel. The aim of the inspection panel of the World Bank was to find facts and to say what really happened. Here, it's more to bring the state back into compliance. So to say, now you've done this wrong, we are encouraging you to change your policy. What is interesting here is that in terms of the trigger, is that you can have states that bring a case against another state in relation to the other states and its compliance with these obligations, but you also have individuals and NGOs. So you have a lot of communications, what are called communications from the public, bringing to the attention of the compliance committee the fact that the state might not be fulfilling its obligation on the convention. Up until now, we've had 150 communications, so that's quite a good number and 25% relate to energy activities and policies. And this is increasing if you look at the number of communications that have been submitted in relation to energy activities. You see that in the last four years, you've had, we've had quite an increase. So when we look at what type of energy activities are brought in front of our risk committee, we see that 41% are actually nuclear, related to nuclear energy. This is not really a surprise, nuclear energy is a rather controversial type of energy and therefore you have a lot of individuals that will try to bring their case in front of a number of treaty bodies as well as tribunals in order to complain against decisions relating to nuclear activities. But then you also see that wind power is quite important. More generally renewable energy policies are also the focus of a number of complaints as well as a little bit oil and gas. So the construction of pipelines is also quite regularly complained about, yes? So that would suggest that this is actually quite bad for renewable energy because, I mean, airy winds and hydro powers are making up over a culture of the complaints. But presumably they're a lot less than a culture of the projects. In other words, it's disproportionate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's why it's quite interesting. That's why I was talking also about public backlash. It's really in my backyard phenomenon. People are using the judicial means that they have in order to complain about those new types of energy. And that's why it's quite interesting to see that just pipelines are not really compared to renewable energies. They are not, you could think that it would be a higher number. So I'd just like to give you two examples in relation to the UK. A number of individuals have brought complaints against the UK saying that the UK had not been in compliance with its obligation under the Oris Convention. An interesting case. So you will have a case relating to an activity and a case relating to a specific energy policy. The first one relates to nuclear power and the decision of the UK to go ahead with building Hinckley Point C. This is quite a major project. It's the first nuclear plant that will be built in the UK since in the last 20 years. It's considered, it is hoped that it will contribute to 7% of the electricity produced in the UK. In this case, it's not someone from the UK that brought the case to the attention of a committee. It's a German member of parliament. And what the member of parliament said was that Germany had not been consulted in relation to the construction of a nuclear power plant. And they said, under the Oris Convention, we are part of the concerned public. So if you are a concerned public, you need to be involved in the decision-making process. So this is rather interesting. It was, the big question was, well, will Germany really be affected by the construction of a nuclear power plant? And it really depends on how do you define risk? What the UK said was, well, this is not really a risky activity. If everything goes well, this is not creating significant environmental risks. What's the German individual member of parliament said was, well, if something goes wrong, then the risk is really high. And what the committee, the committee sided with the German individual. The committee said, well, we're not only looking at the routine operation of a nuclear power plant, we're also looking at its ultra hazardous activity. We're also looking at what will happen if something goes wrong. And also, we're looking at how people perceive the risk. So we're not only looking at our risks in terms of statistics. Yes, maybe there's only a 1% chance that something goes wrong, but we're also considering the fact that the German public might be worried about the fact that the neighboring country is building a nuclear power plant. And therefore the committee said that the UK had not been in compliance with its obligations under the Oris Convention. Only problem, if you can call it a problem, is that it's not a tribunal. So it's not there to say, well, now you stop the construction of a nuclear power plant, what the committee is concerned about, it's compliance and therefore it's making recommendations for the future. So it said, when the next time that you will build a nuclear power plant, you will have to involve neighboring countries. In relation to nuclear policy, an energy policy case was brought against the UK by an individual in Scotland saying that the public had not been, so the UK public had not been involved in the design of a national renewable energy plan. And this renewable energy plan has a big component on wind farms and the importance of increasing wind power. And this individual basically used this argument because it was going to be affected by the construction of wind farms. And again, the committee considered that indeed the UK had designed its renewable energy policy on its own, that it did not involve the UK public and that therefore the UK was in breach, again, of its obligations on the Vioris Convention. Again, it said in the future, when you have a new policy, you will have to involve the public, but the policy as it has been designed now, there's no need for it to be designed in a different way. So what does the case law, if we can call it as such of the Vioris Convention, say? And tell us. The first thing is that there's a big focus on procedure. So the committee is not focusing on really the substance of the decision. It's not really looking at nuclear power, the decision to build a nuclear power plant. It's just looking at the fact that the principle of public participation has not been complied with in this specific case. You could say on the one hand it's good because it means that you're depoliticizing this whole question of energy decisions, but at the same time, can you just say that information sharing, public participation is an ended itself? That's quite a big question. For instance, the committee is actually just looking at whether you've supplied some documents, you've helped with this access to information, but it actually does not really look at the content of information that you're providing, which can be rather problematic because again, you can have this type of empty obligation. Okay, I've provided a few documents that sits, but the committee is not really looking at the content of this information. It's also not engaging at all with a policy context. So although number of people, of individuals have said, I've talked about decarbonization objectives, climate change, et cetera, the committee is really not engaging with all those issues. And then another problem question is really this preventive perspective, so avoiding that the country is going to breach its obligation again, that it will repeat its breach of an obligation. It's really not looking at providing remedies in case of a breach of an obligation. What is interesting in relation again to the Hinckley Point C decision is that the same case was brought in front of the ESPO committee. So the ESPO convention is a convention that is quite similar to the Aura's convention, but that relates to the obligation to undertake an environmental impact assessment. And so the same case was brought in front of again the compliance committee under the ESPO convention, saying, well, the environmental impact assessment did not actually take into consideration the fact that Germany might be affected. The committee came up with the same type of conclusions that the UK should have actually involved Germany in its decision-making process. In its conclusions, it said that the UK should try to engage with neighboring countries now. So although the decision has been made, it said, well, neighboring countries, if they were not given this opportunity to participate, neighboring countries should be able to actually say what they think about this project now. And then what the committee said eventually is that the UK should stop the construction of the Hinckley Power Plant at this moment while we wait for neighboring countries to give their opinion about the project. So you see here that the ESPO committee is taking a bit of a harder stance because it actually could block the UK from constructing the nuclear power plant. So the three case studies that I've shown you are rather different. We've seen market mechanism and international organization and the treaty body. They all relate to different fields, climate change, finance and development, environment and human rights. When it comes to the three pillars of public participation, they're all, in a sense, implements principle 10 of the Rio Declaration, but we're in different aspects. So when it comes to the CDM, availability of documents is something that is considered to be very important and this is what is considered to give you access to information. The rise indicators are really, are basically only focusing on this question of access to information, not public participation in decision making. In terms of participation, now with the CDM, with the new rules under the CDM, we have more guidance about what public participation really means and same thing now under the new rules that were adopted last year by the World Bank on environmental and social safeguards. Those have been updated from the previous rules and now we get more guidance about what public participation really means. The biggest problem is probably access to justice. Under the CDMs now, this is something that is under discussion. The inspection panel has quite an important role but obviously it's still, it's not focusing on providing justice but just on finding facts about what happened and with the compliance committee, it's the same thing. It's more acting as a mediator between the individual and the state but not really providing any remedies. So to conclude, what we see is two types of relationship between those institutions and energy policies. On the one hand, they're trying to be more accountable, to be more legitimate and that's why they are focusing on transparency, on making sure that the information about what they are doing is available, on trying to limit the externalities of the environmental and social impacts of their own project. They're also looking a bit at the regulation of national policies. This is a bit more difficult. They are trying to promote best practices. So sometimes you have binding rules but you see that it is a lot more difficult to actually regulate energy activities. So what does it tell us for energy democracy? Is energy democracy a concept of international law? This is rather difficult. Democracy in itself on the international law is a difficult topic. It's defined in different way. It's considered to be a political right with a lot of focus on procedure. So that was already said, really a distinction between the fact that you are allowed to have fair elections and really is it enough just to have fair elections to have a democracy? Another thing that international, another aspect that international law is interested in is self-determination, the fact that you are allowed to create your own political system and this is through this spectrum of self-determination by international law is looking at democracy and also the question of legitimate state. So if a state has a democratic system, it is considered to be legitimate under international law. Then we have some scholarship on environmental democracy, in particular in relation to Rio principal 10. And now what we see, but not really in law, but in the social sciences is really an attempt to define what energy democracy really is because we have this new trend of involving people more in energy decision. What does energy democracy mean? So my question really is, is it really a legal concept? I don't really have an answer yet, but the first thing is, what type of democracy are we talking about? I've talked about public participation. It's one aspect of democracy, but it does not mean that it's completely encompasses the whole concept of democracy. If we're talking about public participation, most of the time what we're actually talking about is social acceptance. When you have processes for public participation, eventually what the state wants is social acceptance. It's not really listening to what the public has to say. It's just trying to make sure that the public will agree with the decision. So that's something that is rather problematic. Is it procedural democracy? Do we only need to focus on procedure? Is there no content to this type of democracy? That's another question that is quite important. And is democracy only introduced via the human rights perspective? Are we only looking at the effect of democracy on human rights? And is there not any other kind of democracy? Who's democracy? Who uses the accountability mechanisms that I've talked about, for instance? Usually if you look at the compliance mechanisms, you have big NGOs, but you also have individuals. So it's quite mixed and you could say that it's rather a fair system. Most of the time, the motivations for bringing a claim in front of a compliance committee are quite selfish. It's just because people are against a specific activity and they are using different legal means in order to complain against that specific activity. But you can criticize it, but even selfish motivations can actually act for the public interest. It might be that the state actually has not involved the public. And if you're saying, well, under the Oris Convention, they have this obligation. In any case, the state has breached its obligation under international law. So we see that law can be used strategically to resist change, but I don't think it's something that we have to criticize necessarily. And then my last question is really, how does energy democracy relate to environmental democracy? There's been a lot of that that has been done on environmental democracy. Is energy democracy basically the same thing? Is it only about preventing environmental damage? This is the main objective of environmental democracy. Is it the same thing for energy democracy? Or is international law interested in other aspects of energy democracy? So those are quite a lot of questions that I'm thinking about at the moment in order to try and figure out what energy democracy means in international law is very such a concept. Thank you, and I look forward to your comments and questions. Quite a similar question is, for example, like the conference about your commission, like the guy going to the state for any environment. Yeah. So a lot of these, as the commission is asking me for what comes on the ground, it's completely unclear if they're actually reading it, what light comes carries and how they're actually going with their draft. Yeah, exactly. So I mean, basically it's pro-format consultation. You're doing it because you have to show that you are democratic, but you can say, well, consulted. Sometimes, for instance, when you look at the CDMs or the World Bank project, sometimes a person in charge of the project will say, well, we didn't receive any comments, which means that it's good, everybody's happy. So they equate this thing, or there's no comment, so that's a validation. And it does not mean that it's validated, it probably means that people were not aware that there was some kind of consultation. And for instance, with the EU, usually the processes are difficult, it's long, you need to be aware that there's a consultation. I think what is interesting with the compliance committees, for instance, is that even if you don't have in-depth legal knowledge, for instance, you can bring a claim. So usually you write one or two pages about the facts of the dispute and you don't really need to hire a lawyer, it's not expect an expensive process, you don't need to hire a lawyer, you're just bringing your claim from the compliance committee and then they deal with it. Which is an advantage, I think, because it makes it a lot easier. So that's something that is important also when it comes to access to justice, is that yes, in theory you are allowed to go in front of the tribunal, but it can be impressive to go in front of the tribunal, you need to have this expertise. And so I think it's something that is a bit different with those mechanisms within the section panel of compliance committees that are not really considered, that are not for more judicial process. What's in the role of NGOs? Do you think that that's really what we have to know before in relation to something? You said the committee doesn't come up to say anything about the policy. In a way, you could say, well, you shouldn't, anyway, because it's a national thing. People should say something about each other, people in that country. So maybe, well, at least the availability of the information enables civil society to come in and fill that gap to some extent. Yeah. I mean, I know we rely on them to do a lot of these things. Yes, I think I'm only hope. Yeah, and it's difficult for them. But yes, I think the role of NGOs in those types of issues is really important in terms of being able to access information, knowing about the fact that the information is available because that's one of the main issues. Yes, the information is available somewhere, but how do you know that it is available and where do you actually find it? That's one of the biggest issues with access to information. So at least those NGOs, they have some expertise and they will follow the issues because if you're an individual, I mean, you need time to actually look at those websites and figure out what things are going on and then it's updated, et cetera. It takes a lot of commitment. So just as a mere citizen, you need to be committed to a cause. So you might think, yeah, I haven't really been involved in this decision, but you have other things to do. So I think that's where NGOs are really important. They have this expertise and they also know about all those types of accounts being needed mechanism because if you're an individual, you might think, first of all, about international courts, but you don't think about international law. You don't know about those conventions. So those conventions are really trying to do some outreach to raise awareness about the fact that they exist, that you have a compliance mechanism, but you only need to send an email with your one page summary of what is happening. But when you're an individual, it's difficult to do it just on your own. So for instance, in the case of Hinckley Point, it was a member of Parliament, so it was someone who knew about it and he was representing also his constituency. Can I ask you another question? Yeah, of course. It's sort of related. Because a lot of concentrations are actually just sort of with more than you decided, but maybe you could tell us what you think about some small details. Perhaps we could plant some trees around here to hide it or something. So if people are involved in something like that, which they put a lot of effort into it, they don't really realise until the end that their influence really limited him. Now I'm worried that this gives people a jaundice view of all concentrations, because I've got lots of friends to say, oh, it's not worth taking the time to eat. Yeah, because you know that you won't be listened to. Because it's already pointless. Yeah, yeah. I don't know how we... I don't know how we overcome that really, but maybe by the mechanism like the... when you mentioned where... I'm sorry, I can't remember which quality it was now, with the procedures including you got to say, what comments you received during the course. Yeah, inspection and inspection. Yes, so in theory, but now they're getting... So international law is becoming more and more specific about what public participation really means. At the beginning it was rather broad, it was just in all the citizen, and there was something that was already rather innovative. Now we've realised that it's just not enough to include the citizen in remittance how you do it. And so now in international law, you have minimum standards about what really meaningful participation means. And one of those is what is the timing in which you're... at which you can solve those people. If you've already made a decision, or almost, then it's just too late. So people really need to fill in theory. As soon as you have this project, you need to start talking to people. Obviously it's very rarely done because it's not in the interest of the company or the state-based that it has this project. But in theory, from the very beginning, you should involve the people. At least let them know that you have this project, that they have time to think about it. Also it's like, how much time do you give people to respond to an invitation to give comment as well. If you are just publicising, it's once in the newspaper, it's just not enough. So really the minimum standards of public participation are there being more and more refinement. That's what you see in the rules of the World Bank, for instance, and the CDNs as well. Thank you. I thought it was really interesting. Thanks. I think that got an answer point. Oh, that's great. Let me write things down. Well, you see, here's an argument. So there's two things that you could look at. Energy democracy. One thing is, do I as a citizen have the right to take part in climate decisions? Which are ultimately made by the government, right? Or the local authority or whoever it is. And then there could be a second question, which is, do I have the right to take part in the governance of energy companies or providers of electricity? Now that could be in public hands or it could be in private hands. And I suppose each issue gets a little bit more complicated. But Article 21 of the Universal Declaration, so here could be the argument. I'm sure it is national law as opposed to whatever you say. But it says that everyone has the right to take part in the governance of his country directly or through the freedom of choice of representatives. So then the question is just, what does government mean? Now, surely government would include a government department making an decision like the Secretary of State. I don't see why it wouldn't include the local council. If we're a bit worried about the Universal Declaration as international law, if you look at the international government on civil rights, Article 25, again, to take part in the conduct of public affairs. Now that's even more broad than the government. So that gets you home on licensing, put the timing, type decisions. It might get you home on government structures of energy companies at the point of burn I mean, it just depends on how you construct it. I don't know if there's any case law rejecting that argument until there is. Yeah, you could make it, but then how do you convince the energy companies that you're just following the international law? So perhaps, I mean, it's something that I've been thinking about a little bit recently. I don't have a fully formed view, but I think because of Brexit and all the rubbish surrounding that, there's a renewed push I think in UK costs to look at very seriously the role of international law in interpreting the UK law. So, I mean, the Universal Declaration, as I understand it, is the use of co-gains, sort of, more of a customary international law, but if not everything in the international government's incorporated, and that should be taken into account when we interpret UK statutes or common law or anything else. You know, the UK has signed up to these treaties and so we've got good examples of case law when that comes in as, it's an indirect effect. And you could say that you can use that to interpret all the licenses that the energy companies have, and therefore you've got individual rights that this is to predict or to issue a new claim. If they don't follow the artist's convention then there's no real reason. Yeah, definitely, no, I think it's a good argument we should try it out. Try it out. Thank you, I think it's an interesting perspective. You mentioned at the start, this concept of prosumer. Yeah, prosumer, yes. And obviously with renewable energy, this is something that's relevant and I guess I was just thinking about how, I mean, renewable energy, especially solar with its ability to be decentralised potentially can open up participation in different ways so that it's not so pro-forma as you were saying. Yeah. And so that it's not, for example, a big hyper project and all the money goes away to the foreign investor and they've just sort of done a very, are you okay with the tick box? Yes, okay. Whereas with solar you have this potential of community ownership in the UK, et cetera, so that you can not just have participation, maybe in are you okay with it? But actually if you're building a solar farm that's in 10 megawatts, five megawatts has to be owned by the community and I don't know if there was a scheme like this for the government, I think they've taken it away now. So I was wondering, you know, is there basically just your thoughts on that in terms of renewable energy and kind of changing around the way we look at participation? Yeah, exactly. So it's not just asking the population of our specific project, it's actually making sure that they are really the actors of the energy transition. So they are not just the one saying yes or no to a particular project, they are the one making their own decisions and that's why we really have a kind of revolution in energy activities because we have those people reducing their own energy and consuming it. And so they're forming their own communities with their neighbors. It's creating new links, different links instead of just thinking about energy as something that comes from a nuclear power plant pretty far away or not even thinking about where their energy comes from because you're just so used to having electricity that you don't even think where does it come from unless there's a problem and then you complain about it. But now, yes, now I think citizens are thinking really about their energy sources and they realize, I think, well, now we can already choose our energy companies which was something that was not only possible before. So we already think, oh, well, you know you have different possibilities. Some of them invest in renewable energies, other not, and then you have this possibility of creating your own energy and maybe selling some of it to the biggest energy companies and then you're really active in that decision. And I think it's what we need in order to really meet the requirements of decarbonization is that we need everybody on board. If we're just looking at whether the state is able to do it, we'll probably not be enough in that it's actually more, it's going to come up from the bottom up and people will actually produce their own energy. And this is how the world we need to do it. Any last questions? Right, well, thank you very much. Thank you for coming on this call, thank you. Yes.