Tech-Augmented Legal Environment

The international environmental legislation is a rapidly evolving branch of public international law. Taking into account the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations in 2015 for a 15-years period, SDGs as well as the targets of the SDGs can be closely related to the technological innovations and digital solutions designed for tackling the global environmental challenges. The lecture analyses these solutions by identifying the challenges and the subsequent answers.

In many sectors like energy, transportation, social protection, health or education, public authorities are principal buyers spending an OECD average 14% of GDP through public contracts. Public procurement regulation has already developed electronic procurement proceedings like e-envoicing and e-payment methods, and the European Union is dedicated to go further on e-procurement. As an answer to the recent technology developments in supply chains, a logical step is to move the public procurement contracts from paper-basis to blockchain. Is it a vision or possible reality to introduce smart contracts to the world of public procurement? What advantages and obstacles can we see rising from this transformation? The paper is searching for answers but also raises even more questions.

The relevant changes in law and legal institutions due to the contemporary technological and digital innovations are underway in the contemporary society. It has been previously established in academic literature that digital technologies became part of the everyday reality, interacting with and constantly forming the environment of humans. The fundamental modification of the usage and intervention of tech-based tools in humans daily practice must be transformed to a modified view on the regulatory role, as well as academic research.