The knowledge-power nexus in EU marine governance: from orthodoxy to pluralism by way of the human right to science

This article takes as its point of departure a view of Europe’s marine environment as a complex of ‘Anthropocene seas’ situated within an ‘Anthropocene ocean’. This framing suggests an epistemologically pluralistic approach to marine governance. For its part, environmental law can both facilitate and undermine efforts to bring such an approach to life. The article explores this duality in two steps. First, it interrogates the role of European Union (EU) marine environmental law in shaping processes of marine knowledge production and use. It finds that the instruments in question promote an epistemologically singular – and, arguably, an epistemically unjust – approach to marine governance. The instruments do, however, contain provisions enshrining the right to access environmental information and the right to participate in environmental decision-making. The article argues that, although these provisions were not designed in order to promote epistemological pluralism per se, it is well within their capacity to do so. In taking this idea forward, the article reads EU marine environmental law in the light of recent developments relating to the right to science and procedural environmental rights. It concludes by identifying citizen science as a promising point of connection between different sub-fields of human rights law and between environmental and human rights law.