CONCRETE COMMITMENTS
LEGALISING ENVIRONMENTAL RIGHTS TO DECARBONISE THE UK BUILT ENVIRONMENT
Lenka Petrakova

Dissertation submitted in part fulfilment of an MSc degree in Construction Law & Dispute Resolution 
King’s College London, 09/2025
A statutory environmental right could be the missing legal mechanism for built-environment decarbonisation in the UK. My research sets out a reform pathway, drawing on jurisprudence and international human rights law, to embed accountability, resilience, and justice across construction governance. I demonstrate how fragmented legal and regulatory regimes weaken enforceability and undermine sector-wide decarbonisation. I argue that a statutory right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment could unify planning, building regulation, procurement, and corporate governance under coherent climate duties, closing governance gaps and supporting net-zero delivery.

Recognition
Society of Construction Law Prize for Best Dissertation. 
Additional awards: SCL Prize for Best Overall Graduate (2024/25); David Caron Prize for Advanced Construction Law (2024/25); King’s College Construction Law Association Prize.

The problem: governance fragmentation produces accountability gaps
At present, the legal and regulatory system governing construction is fragmented. The result is not merely complexity; it is diffused responsibility. In practice, this creates four recurring failures:
Misaligned decision points: planning can approve high-carbon development even where downstream controls cannot correct the carbon outcome.
Weak enforceability around carbon: climate objectives often appear as policy aspirations or reporting rather than a duty that can be tested, audited, or enforced.
Lifecycle blind spots: embodied carbon and whole-life carbon can fall between regimes, leaving major emissions outside legal control.
Corporate and supply-chain distance: responsibility for carbon is often pushed downward, while governance and capital decision-making remain insulated from enforceable climate duties.

These gaps matter because construction delivers long-lived assets. A single consented design choice can lock in emissions for decades, and the legal system currently struggles to provide a consistent standard against which those choices are judged.
The proposal: a statutory environmental right as a unifying legal standard
I argue that a statutory right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment could function as a unifying legal standard for the built environment. The value of the right is not symbolic. Properly framed, it supplies what current governance lacks: a coherent baseline that can anchor duties across multiple regimes and make climate delivery justiciable. The right operates as a standard-setting mechanism with three effects:
Coherence: it aligns planning, building regulation, procurement, and corporate governance under a shared duty logic rather than isolated compliance silos.
Enforceability: it strengthens oversight and remedies by providing a clear benchmark for lawful decision-making and institutional responsibility.
Translation: it converts net-zero commitments into obligations capable of being applied at project level.
What changes in practice
A rights-based framework would reshape the rules at the points where carbon outcomes are decided:
Planning: embeds a consistent climate-duty baseline in decisions, reducing the scope for high-carbon approvals.
Building regulation and control: supports a clearer pathway for enforceable requirements that address whole-life outcomes, not only operational energy.
Public procurement: strengthens the legal basis for specifying and enforcing carbon performance as a contractual and governance requirement, not an optional add-on.
Corporate governance: reframes decarbonisation as a governance duty, connecting board-level decision-making, risk, and accountability to real-world delivery.
To bring this research closer to a wider audience, I’m creating short videos that unpack the key themes and questions explored in the paper, one topic at a time. You can watch the videos here, or follow me on Instagram for more.
Episode 1 - Why Decarbonising Buildings Matters
Did you know the UK’s buildings and construction sector is linked to roughly 40% of national greenhouse-gas emissions when you count both operational energy and construction impacts? In this episode, we look at why the built environment is not just part of the climate problem, but one of the most decisive routes to solving it.
Episode 2 - What Are Environmental Rights?
Should you have a legal right to breathe clean air, drink safe water, and live in buildings that do not intensify the climate crisis? In this episode, we look at a deceptively simple question: if every building decision is already a climate decision, what are people actually entitled to expect from the environment around them?
Episode 3 - UK Climate Promises vs Building Reality
Net zero by 2050 is now a legal obligation in the UK, but does construction law genuinely support that goal? In this episode, we look at the gap between the UK’s binding climate framework and the rules that actually shape buildings, infrastructure, and procurement on the ground.
Episode 4 - From Promises to Legal Duties
Climate targets are easy to announce. In this episode, we look at a harder question: what changes if a healthy environment becomes a legal duty rather than a political promise?
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