CEENRG Thursday seminars: 'Can we trust the public to protect the planet?'

Speaker: Professor Yuval Feldman, The Mori Lazarof Professor of Legal Research, Bar-Ilan University

The Cambridge Centre for Environment, Energy, and Natural Resource Governance (C-EENRG) is hosting a seminar series throughout the 2023- 24 academic year.

While most research on trust in the context of regulation and compliance focuses on the decline of public trust in institutions, the forthcoming Cambridge University Press book "Can the Public Be Trusted: The Promise and Perils of Voluntary Compliance" by Yuval Feldman challenges this prevailing narrative by highlighting a neglected issue: the inability of governments to gauge the extent and quality of public cooperation with their policies. This book examines why voluntary compliance, despite being viewed as more sustainable, beneficial to society, and of higher quality than coerced compliance, remains largely an unrealized ideal rather than a realistic normative and practical paradigm. In this presentation, these ideas will be illustrated through the insights from chapter 10, which focuses on voluntary environmental compliance. It will examine what is unique in environmental behavioral barriers to change and voluntary compliance in environmental contexts.

Seminars take place as hybrid meetings (in person seminars in the DAB - David Attenborough Building + online in Zoom) every Thursday (please check precise time as may vary) during the term. Please register online to receive the Zoom link on the day of the seminar. Everyone is welcome!