The effectiveness of the Bern Convention on wildlife legislation and judicial decisions in Turkey
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The effectiveness of the Bern Convention on wildlife legislation and judicial decisions in Turkey Osman Devrim Elvan1 · Üstüner Birben2 · Hasan Emre Ünal2 Accepted: 18 August 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract The Bern Convention aims to conserve wild flora and fauna and their natural habitats, especially those species and habitats whose conservation requires the cooperation of several states. Turkey became a party to the convention in 1984 and therefore made it binding in terms of domestic law. It was sought to answer the question of how effective the Bern Convention was in Turkish legislation and judicial decisions. For that purpose, first, comparison of the provisions of the Bern Convention with Turkish legislation is carried out by using a four-point scoring chart, and second, the effect of the convention on the judicial decisions was examined by considering whether the Bern Convention was clearly referred in the relevant judicial decisions—47 Council of State decisions were analyzed from 1984 to 2019. It is observed an improvement in Turkish wildlife legislation increased from 17 to 74% per the Bern Convention’s goals and objectives. The proportion of judicial decisions referred to the Bern Convention, which resulted in a positive ecological decision was 87.5%. Decisions that do not refer to the Bern Convention were 66% positive. A comprehensive evaluation of both judicial decisions and legislative analysis showed that there are many deficiencies, especially in terms of migratory species and interstate coordination. To improve judicial decisions, courts should be subjected to mandated capacity-building training/workshops concerning international conventions. Keywords Legislation · Bern Convention · Conservation · Turkey
* Üstüner Birben [email protected] Osman Devrim Elvan [email protected] Hasan Emre Ünal [email protected] 1
Department of Forest Engineering, Faculty of Forestry, İstanbul University-Cerrahpaşa, 34400 İstanbul, Turkey
2
Department of Forest Engineering, Faculty of Forestry, Çankırı Karatekin University, 18200 Çankırı, Turkey
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O. D. Elvan et al.
1 Introduction European flora and fauna are of global significance, but many species are facing an everincreasing range of threats, especially from the growing impacts of climate change (Sharrock and Jones 2011). Conflicts between the conservation of biodiversity and other human activities have been and continue to be of increasing concern in the European Union. This often has important political, economic, and environmental repercussions (Young et al. 2007; Barnes 1996). The EU’s nature conservation legislation illustrates how legislation can be amended to remain relevant and include parties from both government and the public sector, including the scientific community. The conservation of fauna and flora rests largely on legal instruments that have been enacted at the local, national, and international levels (Cirelli 2002; Ituarte-Lima et al. 2019; Trouwborst et al. 2020). Transboundary, i
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