Governance and law are intrinsically intertwined in addressing the endeavour to achieve a sustainable development. Latest environmental agendas of the UN and the EU imply global environmental and biodiversity net gains as the ultimate goal for a sustainable development up to 2030. This chapter strives to assess the role which law can play within the implementation of these latest worldwide and regional policy directions. It does so by outlining a proposed research agenda. Hermeneutic methods are applied, such as comparative legal analyses and different types of text interpretation (e.g. historic, wording, rational). The findings identify for this research agenda three major parts:
the assessment of the interpretation of net gain in connection with law related to the new UN and EU biodiversity and environment net-gain agendas
the analysis of how existing and future law can contribute to environmental and biodiversity net gains by enabling voluntary behaviour (sufficiency), prescribing and implementing binding behaviour (effectiveness), increasing current and future biodiversity’s representation (ecological equity) and/or enabling efficiency while ending rebound effects (eco-efficiency)
the elaboration of the legal integration among these four criteria assessed in terms of interrelation, decision making, instrument and policy mixes, as well as geopolitical legal interplay towards environmental and biodiversity net gains
The proposed research agenda with these three parts is capable to provide (1) a common basic understanding for environmental and biodiversity net gains in relation to law, as well as (2) a starting point for steering the regional and global implementation of this new international policy objective enabling a sustainable development.