Dr. Mary Dobbs:

I will start at the end. We are not suggesting, and I do not think anybody is, that the constitutional referendum would provide the necessary coherence. A constitutional referendum on either environmental rights or rights of nature would be extra tools to provide aspiration, not by themselves, as they would be essentially symbolic, and a basis for legislating better for better environmental protections. It would also allow public and private bodies to be held to account. I will leave the details of how we would develop this to the other witnesses. Generally, however, I think we could include statements such as "as shall be legislated for the State", or something along those lines.