Urban Tree Conservation - A review of the Green Deal and the legal tools available to protect the public interest in urban trees under Swedish law
(2025) HARN63 20251Department of Business Law
- Abstract
- Urban trees are uniquely valuable in towns and cities for the ecosystem services they provide their citizens and can as such be considered a potent source of public goods and positive externalities - even when these trees are found on private properties. The importance of urban trees will only grow as events of severe heat and extreme rainfall become more and more frequent and the urgency to reduce carbon emissions increases. Meanwhile, the European Union’s Nature Restoration Law EU/2024/1991 (NRL) has given its Member States the pressing task of achieving a zero net loss of urban tree canopy cover by 2030, and an increase in the years thereafter. Additionally, it mandates the submission of so-called “national restoration plans” by... (More)
- Urban trees are uniquely valuable in towns and cities for the ecosystem services they provide their citizens and can as such be considered a potent source of public goods and positive externalities - even when these trees are found on private properties. The importance of urban trees will only grow as events of severe heat and extreme rainfall become more and more frequent and the urgency to reduce carbon emissions increases. Meanwhile, the European Union’s Nature Restoration Law EU/2024/1991 (NRL) has given its Member States the pressing task of achieving a zero net loss of urban tree canopy cover by 2030, and an increase in the years thereafter. Additionally, it mandates the submission of so-called “national restoration plans” by September 2026, which must detail how these targets will be met. To that end, this paper investigates what legal tools Sweden, as a Member State, can use to conserve individual or clusters of urban trees on private land, using a legal method complemented by empirical research. The paper concludes that there are several tools, mainly found in the Swedish Environmental Code (1998:808) and Planning and Building Act (2010:900), that local or regional authorities could use in urban settings to a greater extent depending on their respective applicability and usefulness in a given situation. To achieve the best outcome in advancing NRL and urban tree conservation, these tools in public law should be further complemented by public-private contracts, like land development agreements, that can appropriately accommodate the particular on-site conditions and deter violations of protections in ways the other tools cannot. Effective use of these instruments will likely require greater levels of inter-authority cooperation, resources and compliance supervision than the current status quo. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9195000
- author
- André, Simon LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- HARN63 20251
- year
- 2025
- type
- H1 - Master's Degree (One Year)
- subject
- keywords
- Urban tree canopy cover, the Green Deal, the Nature Restoration Law, conservation, ecosystem services, public goods, contracts, urban planning
- language
- English
- id
- 9195000
- date added to LUP
- 2025-06-09 10:43:35
- date last changed
- 2025-06-12 11:22:03
@misc{9195000,
abstract = {{Urban trees are uniquely valuable in towns and cities for the ecosystem services they provide their citizens and can as such be considered a potent source of public goods and positive externalities - even when these trees are found on private properties. The importance of urban trees will only grow as events of severe heat and extreme rainfall become more and more frequent and the urgency to reduce carbon emissions increases. Meanwhile, the European Union’s Nature Restoration Law EU/2024/1991 (NRL) has given its Member States the pressing task of achieving a zero net loss of urban tree canopy cover by 2030, and an increase in the years thereafter. Additionally, it mandates the submission of so-called “national restoration plans” by September 2026, which must detail how these targets will be met. To that end, this paper investigates what legal tools Sweden, as a Member State, can use to conserve individual or clusters of urban trees on private land, using a legal method complemented by empirical research. The paper concludes that there are several tools, mainly found in the Swedish Environmental Code (1998:808) and Planning and Building Act (2010:900), that local or regional authorities could use in urban settings to a greater extent depending on their respective applicability and usefulness in a given situation. To achieve the best outcome in advancing NRL and urban tree conservation, these tools in public law should be further complemented by public-private contracts, like land development agreements, that can appropriately accommodate the particular on-site conditions and deter violations of protections in ways the other tools cannot. Effective use of these instruments will likely require greater levels of inter-authority cooperation, resources and compliance supervision than the current status quo.}},
author = {{André, Simon}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Urban Tree Conservation - A review of the Green Deal and the legal tools available to protect the public interest in urban trees under Swedish law}},
year = {{2025}},
}