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Louis Kotzé: ‘I want the Law Group to become a leading centre of expertise for relevant, cutting-edge legal science for society’
On December 1, Louis Kotzé will start as Professor of Environmental Law and Chair of Law. Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, Kotzé has spent a significant part of his academic career exploring the intersection between law and environmental protection, with a focus on human rights, sustainability, and the Anthropocene. ‘The Anthropocene is the new context within which to situate law and to evaluate what law has done - and not done well - to address the planetary crisis.’
During his time as Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg, Germany, and as Professor of Law at North-West University in South Africa, he honed in on environmental issues, including human rights approaches to environmental protection. “As a South African, I have a global South perspective looking at the impacts of environmental degradation, both historical and present, on vulnerable people, people with no access to water, people with no homes living in degraded environments. Linking this with my experiences in Europe, it offers me a rich context to try and understand the nature, depth and scale of socio-ecological change and the impacts of such change on the living environment.”
Humans as powerful as meteorites
His second PhD at Tilburg University sparked his interest in the Anthropocene, the human dominated geological epoch we live in. He is one of the first law scholars to link law with Anthropocene studies. Kotzé: “We now know that volcanoes and earthquakes can change the course of the Earth system like meteorites do. The Anthropocene tells us that humans have now gained this geological power as well. We are as powerful as meteorites, we can change the Earth system, and we are actually doing it. I am using the Anthropocene as a new context within which to situate law, and see how law could be reformed to be more effective.”
According to Kotzé, environmental law is a discipline that spans across all other fields of law and is relevant for food security, agriculture and artificial intelligence. Law is understandably a critically important and central focus of research and education at Wageningen University. “Environmental law links up well with the overall focus of Wageningen University, and the Law Group has proven and leading expertise in food, agriculture, biodiversity, business and human rights, public health, law and Anthropocene studies. These are niche areas that are not necessarily covered by more traditional law faculties, certainly not in depth and detail, and that is what makes Wageningen so attractive. The university opens up possibilities to get your hands dirty to try and understand and delve into the full spectrum of the sustainability conundrum that plays out in the domains of life and social sciences.”
Cutting-edge legal expertise in Wageningen
Wageningen University is a uniquely enriching environment, Kotzé states. “It is decisively interdisciplinary and provides rich opportunities for cross-fertilization and co-learning. The Law Group consists of a range of leading specialists in many areas. I am grateful to my predecessor Josephine van Zeben for the pioneering work she has done in building this nucleus of excellence. We are a talented, cosmopolitan group of people working in various disciplines, many of whom are recognised leading experts in their fields. Part of my job would be to take this expertise to the next level and build on our strengths. It is my vision for the Law Group to become a leading centre of expertise, producing relevant, cutting-edge legal science for society that has impact and that is informed by different disciplines, world views and perspectives.”
Kotzé continues: “Fortunately, we are not a traditional law faculty and that makes us highly agile and able to focus on specific legal issues, such as the circular economy, public health, food security and agriculture. It also allows us to really delve deeply into the details on how law could be used to govern these issues. We are a desirable destination of choice for students and scholars interested in sustainability issues, offering an opportunity to interrogate how these issues link up with law and the life sciences.”
Kotzé believes that the chair group constellation of Wageningen University holds several advantages and could meaningfully enable scientific collaboration among the different groups. He is particularly eager to explore and foster closer relationships and cooperation with other groups, and to extend this to partnerships elsewhere in The Netherlands, Europe and abroad. “A key objective and part of my work at Wageningen will be to show, with all members of the Law Group, the importance and utility of law for the life sciences, and other social science domains. We will endeavour to design impactful strategies and programmes for research, education and outreach in close collaboration with internal and external partners.”
Critical on environmental law and legal studies
In his work, Kotzé follows a critical approach to environmental law and legal studies. “Never stop questioning existing paradigms, especially those that are predatory and oppressive, such as limitless economic growth and consumerism on a finite planet. In order to be critical, we need to expand how we do legal science and start to work empirically and across disciplines. We must try to break away from traditional book-bound legal analysis and get our hands dirty to see how law operates on the ground and with the life sciences.”
Together with researchers from Utrecht University and other institutions Kotzé developed ‘earth system law’, a new framework for law in the Anthropocene. Earth system law offers unique opportunities for scholars, students and practitioners to collaborate in interdisciplinary and critical ways. “Acknowledging that law has a critical role to play in sustainability generally, and in the life sciences more specifically, I believe that Wageningen University offers the perfect setting to advance knowledge about the role of law in sustainability.”
About Louis
Louis Kotzé has been working and living in South Africa most of his life. He obtained two bachelor’s degrees, and then a master’s degree in law at North-West University in Potchefstroom. He did his first doctorate at that institution, and spent time researching at the University of Amsterdam, and University of Helsinki for this degree. He has been Professor of Law between 2009 and 2014 at North-West University, and was then appointed as the faculty’s Research Professor since 2015. He had several global fellowships, including a Marie Curie grant, and a Klaus Töpfer Sustainability Fellowship at the Research Institute for Sustainability, Potsdam, Germany. He is a member of the Earth System Governance Network, the largest global network of its kind focusing on the social dimensions of earth system transformations, and recently served as the co-chair of its Scientific Steering Committee with another Wageningen colleague, Professor Aarti Gupta. While working at the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg Germany, he met his life partner.
“My academic career started out in The Netherlands, and it is really nice, for professional and personal reasons, that I’m now finding my way back to this wonderful country. It is an environment that I love to be in. The outgoing nature and no-nonsense approach of Dutch people and the jovial culture are very appealing and something that I strongly identify with. Also, I am very comfortable with the Dutch working culture and university environments, which really are uniquely progressive, cosmopolitan, supportive and engaging.”