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Ex ante evaluation of legislation : an introduction / Jonathan Verschuuren and Rob van Gestel -- The context of the rise of ex ante evaluation / Patricia Popelier and Victoria Verlinden -- Ex ante evaluation of legislation torn among its rationales / Pierre Larouche -- The politics of the ex ante evaluation of legislation / Eberhard Bohne -- Ex ante evaluation of legislation : between puzzling and powering / Robert Hoppe -- Pushing evaluation forward : institutionalization as a means to foster methodological growth of legislative ex ante evaluation / Koen van Aeken -- European impact assessment and the choice of alternative regulatory instruments / Anne Meuwese and Linda Senden -- National experiences with general forms of ex ante evaluation of legislation : the cases of Germany and Sweden / Sylvia Veit -- Assessing the accuracy of ex ante evaluation through feedback research : a case study / Rob van Gestel and Jan Vranken -- Assessing corporate tax reform : incomplete information and conflicting interests / Henk Vording and Hans Gribnau.

Research into 'transboundary environmental law' is rapidly changing, as is environmental law itself. Insights from Earth system science have taught us that we need a planetary approach. Such an approach does not make international law, EU law and domestic law redundant. It does, however, require lawyers working within these legal spheres to look beyond the usual boundaries of legal systems and policy areas. This contribution attempted to show that both at an international and at a domestic level, key players already seem to take a planetary focus when discussing climate change. Climate change, however, is only one of nine planetary boundaries. Our mission for the coming years is to also develop a planetary approach to remain within the other boundaries as well: nitrogen and phosphate flows, ocean acidification, freshwater consumption and the global hydrological cycle, land system change, chemical pollution and the release of novel entities, loss of biosphere integrity, stratospheric ozone depletion and atmospheric aerosol loading. Another major hurdle to take is to look for regime interlinkages across policy fields. The assessment of current instruments under climate law and biodiversity law shows that at the international and the EU level, both regimes are increasingly working together. Progress, however, is terribly slow and there are still areas where both regimes do not speak to each other or are in conflict. Faster and more intense forms of inter-regime collaborations and interactions are needed to fully achieve climate change adaptation, mitigation and biodiversity conservation goals. Inter-regime interactions need to be both broad and deep, ranging from agency collaborations to adopting coordinated or even integrated legal texts. This needs to happen not just at the international level, but also at the EU level and at domestic level. The same can be argued for interlinkages between the other planetary boundaries as well. These challenges are too complex and too interrelated to be addressed without paying attention to transnational regime interlinkages. How exactly such transnational interlinkages should be designed to have the greatest impact still is unclear. Further research and scholarship is needed fill this gap.

In the Netherlands, the 2010 Crisis and Recovery Act aims at speeding up decision-making on a wide variety of activities, hoping that after the financial and economic crisis has passed, development projects can immediately be carried out without any delay caused by legal procedures in court or elsewhere. The Act meets great criticism for many reasons: it allegedly curtails citizen's procedural rights because it focuses almost exclusively on environmental standards as "obstructing" standards that need to be removed, and it infringes international and European Union law. In this note, the legal critique on the Act is analysed. The conclusion is that the sense of urgency surrounding the design of legal measures to address the economic crisis enables the legislature to implement innovations and long-time pending amendments to existing legislation. Most issues have however not been fully or properly considered. Many legal questions will arise when implementing the Act, which will retard rather than expedite projects. It is difficult to predict whether the positive effects of the Crisis and Recovery Act would outweigh the negative aspects. Much depends on the manner in which the authorities will actually apply the Act. Should they implement the Act to its full potential, the effect of the Act in sum will be negative. In that case, the Act may help the economy to recover, but it will bring about a crisis in the legal system. It will, in all probability, also not contribute to sustainable development.

In the coming few decades, the world is facing three related problems.First, agriculture contributes to climate change to a considerable extent. In its Fifth Assessment Report, the IPCC's Working Group III concludes that the AFOLU sector (agriculture, forestry and other land use) is responsible for just under a quarter (∼10 – 12 GtCO2eq/yr) of anthropogenic GHG emissions. Usually, a distinction is made between non-CO2 emissions, in particular methane (NH4) emitted by livestock and rice cultivation, and nitrous oxide (N2O) caused by the use of synthetic fertilizers and the application of manure on soils and pasture. Methane and Nitrous oxide have 25 times and 300 times stronger impact on the climate than CO2 respectively. CO2 emissions from agriculture are mainly caused by deforestation and peatland drainage. Emissions from agriculture have been rising on a yearly basis since 1990, although with important regional differences (they went down in Europe and up in Asia).

Climate change has a profound impact on agriculture and on food security. At the same time agriculture contributes to climate change to a considerable extent. Fortunately there is also much to gain since the agricultural sector holds significant climate change mitigation potential through reductions of greenhouse gas emissions and enhancement of sequestration. A policy aimed at achieving greenhouse gas emission reductions, adaptation to climate change and an increase in productivity is, therefore, very much needed. "Climate smart agriculture" policies are being proposed, but so far remain underdeveloped. This article reviews whether the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement pushes towards the development of such policies. It finds that, unfortunately, the Paris Climate Agreement does not provide a powerful stimulus to adopt and implement climate smart agriculture policies. The Paris Climate Agreement does not change the troublesome relationship between agriculture policies and climate policies that we have already witnessed under the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol. There is some attention for adaptation to climate change in rural areas in developing countries, but progress is painfully slow. For the developed countries, the UNFCCC does not make much of a contribution to addressing climate change and food security issues. This is a pity, as the developed country agriculture sector will play an important role in addressing the increasing global demand for food. Developed countries, including important players such as the EU, should, therefore, not wait for the UNFCCC process. The EU recently announced its intention to implement an ambitious policy aimed at climate friendly and resilient food production, while optimising the agricultural sector's contribution to greenhouse gas mitigation and sequestration. It is of vital importance that this example is followed and implemented across the globe. Hopefully such initiatives will then be picked up by the international community under the UNFCCC process.

In 1992, the famous European Natura 2000 network, designed in the late 1980s and early 1990s found its way into the EU's key biodiversity instrument, the Habitats Directive. The word 'network' indicates that protected areas are linked to each other and, thus, establish connectivity. It was only in the decade after the adoption of the Habitats Directive, that the term 'connectivity' was coined, mainly in connection to climate change. It is generally thought that connecting natural areas allows species and habitats to adapt to the changing climate. One would, therefore, think that a) the EU was well ahead of time when instituting the Natura 2000 network, and b) already has the legal tools available to facilitate or even require connectivity measures to be taken. This contribution will show that this is true only to a certain extent. The main question addressed in this paper is: does the current legislative framework establishing the EU's Natura 2000 network require Member States to implement connectivity measures? Following steps will be taken to address this question. First, I will very briefly explain what connectivity is and show that there is a growing need for connectivity measures to be taken. Then, I will deal with the Natura 2000 network, both the way it has been put into legal provisions (law in the books) and the way it works in practice (law in action). From this section, it will become apparent that current Natura 2000 law does not provide the robust legal framework that is needed to meet the growing need for connectivity. It shows that the current legislative framework depends much upon voluntary actions by the EU Member States and that more stringent formulations of connectivity requirements in the Habitats Directive are needed to ascertain connectivity conservation throughout Europe. I present several ways forward, drawing on recent case law by the EU Court of Justice.