The Case Presenter

Zoe Lujic

Lifelong deep environmentalist, founder of Earth Thrive, small but highly dedicated Rights of Nature organization, currently concerned with the Rights of Nature for rivers of her native Balkans but also working on pesticides, mining and animal welfare issues. Holds MSc in Environmental Decision Making and also has a background in permaculture and the Law of Ecocide campaign on which she worked for several years with the initiator, late Polly Higgins. 

The Injured Party

Jelena Drmanac

Dr Jelena Drmanac is the local river activist from Josanica in Kopaonik, One of the founders and leaders of Rights for the Kopaonik and Serbian Rivers. Very active and vocal activist in protection of the rivers in Serbia especially on the Kopaonik mountain Josanica region where she comes from.

The Scientific Witness Expert

Predrag Simonović

Predrag Simonović is a Fish Biologist from the University of Belgrade, where he is a Professor – a Reader in Ichthyology and Fishery Science at the Faculty of Biology and Senior Researcher at the Institute for Biological Research “Siniša Stanković”, a National Institute for the Republic of Serbia.

He was also engaged as a teacher at the universities in the region (Kragujevac, Podgorica, Banjaluka) and called to hold lectures at the University of Zagreb and Komenius University in Bratislava. In 2008, he set up the Centre for Genotyping of Fishery Resources at the faculty, where the team he leads mapped native brown trout populations in Serbia and detected the non-native ones that threaten the very remarkable original brown trout biodiversity.

Faculty of Biology and Institute for Biological Research “Siniša Stanković” are units of the University of Belgrade, whose tradition seizes back to 1803. Their teaching and research activities contributed to the recent high status of their university, with the alumni occurring throughout the world. The academic autonomy established in 1905 was always under hard testing, to outlive until these days and testify about the role and importance of the university.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Predrag-Simonovic/research

https://www.bio.bg.ac.rs/05_nastavnik.php?id_nastavnika=163′

The Expert Witness

Ulrich Eichelmann

Ulrich Eichelmann, ecologist and CEO of Riverwatch, an NGO based in Vienna to protect and restore rivers. He specializes in campaigning. Worked 17 years at WWF as a freshwater officer and worked also as a filmmaker. He produced the film Climate Crimes – a documentary about how lobbies and politicians misuse the global warming movement to increase the destruction of nature.

Currently, he coordinates Save the Blue Heart of Europe – a campaign to save the rivers in the Balkans against hydropower development.

https://riverwatch.eu

www.balkanrivers.net

The Legal Expert

Grant Wilson

Grant Wison is Executive Director & Directing Attorney of Earth Law Center, which promotes ecocentric laws and the Rights of Nature worldwide. He has helped write laws recognizing nature as a subject of rights, won lawsuits on behalf or rivers, and led policy campaigns to protect the health of ecosystems for 15 years. He earned his law degree and certificate in environmental and natural resources law from Lewis & Clark Law School.

Political and RoN expert

Marie  Toussaint

Marie is a French environmental activist, a jurist in international environmental law, co-founder of the association Notre  affaire à tous and at the origin of the l’Affaire du siècle campaign.
She has been elected MEP on the Greens/EFA group in May 2019 and sits on the ITRE (energy, industry), ENVI (environment) and JURI (legal affairs) committees. She is also one of the foremost champions of Rights of Nature and the Law of Ecocide in the EU Parliament.

Earth Thrive is a small but highly dedicated org with a mission to establish Nature  rights & prevent ecocide through law – especially the emerging Earth Law, permaculture and other holistic environmental education & Nature restoration.

http://earth-thrive.org/

Earth Law Center works to transform legal systems across the globe to recognize the rights of nature. ELC is driving awareness of both the need for laws to protect the rights of nature, and the interdependence of all facets of life.

http://www.earthlawcenter.org

Rights for the rivers of Kopaonik and Serbia is a group of dedicated river defenders in Serbia working on rights of the rivers on the mountain Kopaonik and Serbia-wide, especially in relation to the so called ‘small’ dams and the ecocide they are causing.

For more information see our Twitter account: Click here

Pass a national law and/or constitutional amendment recognizing the rights of rivers & creating a independent body of legal guardians to represent those rights;

Implement the optimum fundamental right of rivers to flow vis-à-vis minimum downstream flows;

A freeze on all new hydroelectric dam projects until the cumulative impacts of these dams can be assessed, including through a Rights of Nature analysis;

Adopt the ‘Birds’ and the ‘Habitats’ EU Directives to close the current legal gap;

Close the loophole excluding EIAs for hydropower projects below a 2 MW threshold and require all EIAs for hydroelectric projects to be cumulative, basin-wide assessments of dam impacts looking at integrative holistic ecosystem.

Call for Rights of Nature recognition at the EU level with a focus on the rights of rivers and watersheds;

New hydropower must not count as renewable energy towards renewable energy targets under the Renewable Energy Directive;

The EU must formally recognize, such as through the Renewable Energy Directive, that hydroelectric power is only “renewable” in the sense that the water is not permanently used, but from a whole ecosystem perspective, hydropower is not renewable because it permanently degrades and destroys ecosystems, species, etc.;

Subsidies for small hydropower must be completely eliminated;