Lolke Braaksma

Winner Dissertation Prize 2024

Report by the selection committee

In this very topical dissertation, entitled The programmatic approach in Environmental law. Towards a legal design in the European Union and the Netherlands that pursues sustainability, Lolke Braaksma take the reader on a journey into what has often been called the key challenge for humanity: addressing and halting its own destruction of nature, ecosystems, climate and the Earth. Or, as dr. Braaksma says in a less dramatic and rather subdued way at the very start of the dissertation: ‘the environment is subject to increasing pressures.’

According to the jury, this dissertation is a work of great ambition aiming to assess how law, concretely environmental law within the European Union, can contribute to sustainability and can truly take the aim of sustainability seriously. Drawing on a range of other academic disciplines, it proposes a re-thinking and re-creation of this body of law. Remnants of the still pervasive ‘command-and-control’ approach, very much centered around ad hoc prohibitions, should be shed in favour of a systematic application of what dr. Braaksma calls the ‘holy grail’ of a truly programmatic approach. Drawing on current examples of such an approach in Europe and on a systematic analysis of both sustainability and ideals of good rule-making, dr. Braaksma propose a framework to concretise such an approach.

The jury finds this endeavor convincing, as the book combines a broad theoretical outlook to a sharp eye for application in practice. Dr. Braaksma’s book shows with logical consistency how ecological, societal and legal and governance systems are closely intertwined. The jury hopes that this dissertation will help to further rethink and reshape a field of practice in which too often technocratic law-making leads to systems in which both governments and private companies make use of loopholes to evade their ecological responsibilities.

The ‘case’ dr. Braaksma analyses may be the European Union and within it the Netherlands, but the proposed approach obviously presents innovative and systematic thinking that is worth a read for law- and policymakers across the globe. This book offers an attractive portal to readers, as it is lucidly and very accessibly written and structured, all the more important considering its quite specialist and technical subject-matter. The many charts and illustrations literally serve as signposts through dr. Braaksma’s thinking and argumentation. Many of the book’s recommendations are ready-to-use for the very urgent problems they address. It is for all these reasons that the jury has decided to award to Lolke Braaksma one of this year’s five Praemium Erasmianum dissertation prizes.

The book ends with the acknowledgement that perfection in how we deal with nature, is – just like aiming for absolute justice – an elusive goal and that the key is not to achieve but to strive. This eye for the imperfections of human endeavors is certainly something Erasmus would share. In fact, when it comes to our relation with nature, one quote from his most famous book, In Praise of Folly, is worth mentioning. Erasmus writes “Nature hates all false coloring and is ever best where she is least adulterated with art.” Some have understood this as: nature flourishes most when humankind leaves it alone. With the knowledge from this book, one may add: and when doing so in a programmatic way.