I am elated to welcome you in the new, post-pandemic digital edition of MEPIELAN E-Bulletin. Τhe refurbished digital edition of the 13 years-old Bulletin and the upgraded continuation of its academic and practitioner platform, providing a knowledge- and information-sharing forum that is hosting innovative ideas and a wide spectrum of  scholarly views, reflects a first level response of the Bulletin to the challenges posed by the pandemic.

While the pandemic has been a devastating global event, bringing about significant negative consequences for all of us and at various levels, one can also trace a positive motivational aspect of its impact, directly related to the way we approach, comprehend, and manage the neglected or downgraded richness of the working interdependence of nature, human health and sustainability. Serving as a wake-up call, the pandemic reminded us of the crucial role that nature plays in supporting our well-being and the need for a more participatory, sustainable approach to our actions. In fact, and in a dramatic way, the pandemic has demonstrated the critical link between human health and the health of our environment, and compelled us, by recognizing the interlinkage between ecological integrity and human health, to promote more sustainable normative processes and practices that safeguard both.

We have become increasingly conscious of the catalytic effect of ingraining rights-based approaches, participatory processes, inclusive and equitable considerations in shaping governance and pursuing the implementation of the interdependence of nature, human health and sustainability. More importantly, we are challenged to transform societal, government and expert thinking into a more consistent relational, holistic, process and contextual understanding in comprehending, discussing and collectively managing current and emerging aspects of this interdependence.

As the work of MEPIELAN Centre continues apace in 2019, it is steadily involved in bringing forward innovative legal thinking and approaches into the international discussion of a recurring but painfully open question: how to improve implementation and compliance issues of environmental treaty regimes with a view to advancing their sustainability governance.

Approaching 2017, MEPIELAN E-Bulletin continues to operate as a promising academic arm of MEPIELAN Centre, providing a sourceful forum for law, governance and environmental sustainability while serving the promotion of strategic policies for sustainable development in the Mediterranean and of a deeper understanding of the complexity, inter-relationship, and, indeed, complementarity of the issues involved. The Bulletin, as a platform of scientific knowledge communication, has had, all these years, the most rewarding experience of bringing together academics, officers of international organizations, eminent experts, and promising young researchers, all those who, from various angles, contribute to the advancement of the normative language of environmental sustainability governance and the progressive knowledge-based construction of international common interest.

The reader of the Bulletin, making a tour through the archives of the Bulletin, is able to recall and reconstruct the – very often missing – vivid e-memory of the process of informed scientific and policy dialogue and, more perspectively, of the constant and discernible transformations of the generative context, both affecting the development of the understanding and governance of the issues related to aspects of environmental sustainability. The end-result of such detour is the realization that participatory and equitable governance, knowledge “engineering” international common interest, and unfailing regional and global solidarity may lie at the heart of understanding and implementing the globally heralded Sustainable Development Coals and the Agenda 2030.

Theme I

I have a lot of sympathy with the view that expert knowledge is particularly difficult to transfer. As Rolf Dobelli perceptively remarks “insights do not pass well from one field to another” and he calls this effect “domain dependence”[1]. This seems to be particularly true with regard to legal approaches and insights in the multidisciplinary world of international environmental governance. In this context, technical and economic knowledge have, predictably and inescapably, the upper hand in the pursuance of a holistic, interdisciplinary management of the highly complex and continually evolving issues related to the protection of the environment and its sustainability. Here, legal approaches and insights, although fundamental and potentially crucial for better and more participatory governance, are rarely considered. And when tackled, they are handled with the utmost care and from a very narrow angle. This has something to do with the fact that, during the negotiations taking place at the various institutional levels of international agreements establishing environmental regimes, the accredited delegations rarely include scholarly legal experts or specialized international lawyers. But there is another aspect to it, much more subtle and much more difficult to comprehend. It is, in fact, the way we generally conceive and interpret the relationship between international law and governance. Beyond the “domain-dependence” effect of Dobelli, it seems that there is a more covered, a more resistant “domain-hardening” effect featuring international legal thinking.

Approaching the end of an eventful year, I would like to welcome you to the new edition of MEPIELAN E-Bulletin and to express my deepest thanks and appreciation for your interest in reading and sharing with us the informative and thought-provoking material of this Bulletin. Retaining its high level of visibility and attendance, the Bulletin receives visitors from 163 countries. Its articles and elaborated news are quoted in academic articles, research papers and international reports, while authorizations are granted for their appearance in other international websites. It is our hope that the Bulletin, being already in operation for five years, continues to serve its fundamental purpose: to shed light on the importance of orienting our understanding of international environmental law and governance and their sustainability perspective towards the multifarious process of constructing and unfailingly developing international common interest. A global conception of justice can be adequately and substantially performed as common interest justice and it would be more than useful, in this respect, to recall a passage from Aristotle’s Nickomachean Ethics: “The political association”, he writes, “was originally formed and continues to be maintained for the interest of its members; and the lawgivers contemplate about it and postulate that justice is the common  interest” (translation mine).

In a Guest Article of this edition, Dr. Maguelonne D?jeant-Pons, Executive Secretary of the Steering Committee for Culture, Heritage and Landscape, and European Landscape Convention, Council of Europe, provides an authoritative insight into the application of the comprehensive and contextual “landscape approach”, encapsulated in the innovative European Landscape Convention, to generating integrated spatial planning and management for coastal zones and marine areas. Underlining the important public interest role and function of landscape viewed in all its constituent parts (ecological, environmental, social, cultural and economic) and their inter-relationships, as contemplated by the Convention, the author clearly and most usefully pinpoints the elements of a common interest governance associated with the “landscape approach”: the appropriate balancing of landscape protection, management and planning activities; the pursuance of a dynamic preservation and enhancement of  diversity and quality of the landscapes recognizing the fundamental role of knowledge; and the utmost importance of public awareness and active public participation. And as the author concludes, the European Landscape Convention serves as “benchmark by some countries” either “to initiate a process of profound changes in their landscape policies” or to “define their policy”. Relatedly, it would be of great interest, in our view, to envisage the European Landscape Convention as the subject of a more deliberation-based cooperative strategy between its Secretariat and the Barcelona Convention Secretariat. This would be a very promising institutional step to the right direction, in view of the complementary function of the Convention with the equally innovative Mediterranean Protocol of Integrated Coastal Zone Management, developed in the framework of the Barcelona Convention system, and the pertinent need to build a clustering in the governance of these two interrelated international instruments. Hence, both instruments could become more “visible” and their implementation could be performed more effectively and more efficiently in advancing international common interest.