Dr Stephen Turner

Biography

Dr Stephen Turner began working at Essex Law School in 2019. He has research interests in international environmental law, global environmental governance, climate change and corporate responsibility. In particular his work has taken a 'rights-based' perspective to clarify now the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment can be framed, developed and put into practice. He has written two books that focus on 'rights-based' approaches approaches to environmental governance: 'A Substantive Environmental Right' (Kluwer Law International, 2009) and 'A Global Environmental Right' (Earthscan /Routledge, 2014). In 2023 he was the recipient as the Principal Investigator of a £2.3 million Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarship Award to lead a programme of interdisciplinary PhD scholarships entitled 'Sustainable Transitions - Governance, Ecological Management and Society'. As Director of the Programme he coordinates and leads a University-wide team that supervises and manages the projects which span across six different academic disciplines. The programme began in 2024 and will run until 2032. Dr Turner's work on global environmental governance spans back over 20 years and has resulted in the development of 'macro legal analysis' as a methodological approach . This form of legal analysis addresses the different frameworks of law that can affect decision-making relating to the environment to consider their individual impacts but crucially also to analyse how they interact and relate to each other. This can mean analysing international environmental law in conjunction with international corporate law, international trade law, international investment law, international insurance law and the law relating to financial and banking institutions. This type of 'macro' legal analysis demonstrates how discrete frameworks of law can reinforce or compete with each in terms of the objectives that they are designed to achieve. This approach has assisted in the development of reform options for the international community which look beyond individual legal disciplines with a view to streamlining legal and economic frameworks to ensure that they guarantee specific outcomes that are consistent with the goals that the international community seeks to achieve within the 21st century. Between 2015 and 2018, Stephen was the lead editor in the 'Standards in Environmental Rights Project' which included the involvement of 22 lawyers from around the globe and which resulted in the publication of 'Environmental Rights - The Development of Standards' by Cambridge University Press in 2019. He has spoken widely on the subject of environmental governance at numerous venues including the United Nations Environment Programme (Nairobi), the World Bank (Washington D.C.) and leading universities internationally. He has also been consulted by the World Health Organisation and has played an active role in the consultation processes associated with the mandates of successive UN Special Rapporteurs on Human Rights and the Environment. Stephen wrote his PhD thesis on the relationship between human rights and the environment. His thesis approached the subject from the perspective of business and industry by considering the responsibilities of corporations, multilateral development banks and the WTO, as well as States. The thesis included a case study of the Camisea Natural Gas Extraction Project in the Peruvian Amazon, and an analysis of the consultation processes carried out by the companies involved, with a focus on the effects of the project on the indigenous communities in the area. More recently Stephen has carried out empirical research relating to the duties that directors have under company law with regard to the environment, human rights and other stakeholders. In particular this research has focused on the decision-making processes of boards of directors and the relationship this has with policy choices for reform in the field of corporate responsibility. Stephen has also been successful in being awarded funding for a number of the projects that he has worked on including GCRF funding for a project to research participatory rights in Bhutan, Eastern Arc funding to conduct interdisciplinary research relating to human rights and the environment, and also commercial funding for specific conferences and workshops. In 2007 Stephen represented opponents to the installation of a mobile telephone mast at a Consistory Court (2006) and the Court of Arches (2007). (Party Opponent v Chingford St. Peter and St. Paul [2007] 1 Fam 67, Court of Arches). He became a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 1995 and that year coordinated a research project related to the indigenous rights of the Sami people in northern Scandinavia. During the 1990s, Stephen worked in the field of criminal defence litigation and subsequently co-founded IPSA, a business partnership which provided legal advice on behalf of firms of solicitors. Between 1989-91 Stephen worked as a contracts executive at British Aerospace (Commercial Aircraft) Ltd. He was involved in the administration of the return of leased aircraft and the administrative preparation of aircraft prior to the completion of lease and sales contracts. Stephen is a Fellow of the Higher Education Authority and is interested in approaches for PhD supervision from those with proposals relating to international environmental law, global environmental governance, human rights and the environment, and corporate responsibility.

Qualifications

• PhD London University (Queen Mary), (2007)

• LLM London University (SOAS), (2002)

• LLB (Hons) The Polytechnic of Wales, (1987)

Appointments

University of Essex

• Programme Director - Sustainable Transitions - Leverhulme Doctoral Training Programme, University of Essex (28/11/2023 - present)

• Co-Director of Post-Graduate Education, Law School, Essex University (1/9/2019 - 31/8/2024)

Other academic

• Senior Lecturer, Law School, Lincoln University (1/9/2014 - 30/8/2019)

• Senior Lecturer, Law School, Kingston University (1/9/2011 - 30/8/2014)

• Senior Lecturer, Law School, Winchester University (1/9/2010 - 30/6/2011)