Literature Review

By nature, human beings are compelled to question the acts they perform. The question of how we ought to interact with our natural environment has proved to be as unavoidable as any other. Once we begin to reflect on the issue, the option of merely acting the way we do act ceases to exist, and the need arises to find reasons to relate to our environment in one way rather than another. An attempt to identify these reasons will require theoretical support and natural law theory, embedded in nature, seems ideally positioned to offer such support. However, perhaps surprisingly, natural law has not significantly addressed the issue of the relationship between human beings and their natural environment. Its failure to do so has led some to challenge the school to make its philosophy ‘relevant to the reality of ecological problems …’ 1 In an attempt to go some way to meeting the challenge, the subsequent discussion in this article focuses on whether and how natural law can support ecocentric approaches to environmental protection.

Environmental law has always been hampered by its reductionist approach to the natural environment or more precisely, to the human-nature relationship. In contrast, ecological law would encourage us to think about the law from an Earth-centered perspective. But even more than thinking about the legal issues, ecological law reflects and advocates a changed mindset. We need to develop a mindset that is conscious of what has worked in the past and what promises to work in the future. This could be addressed through development of eco-centric law, inclusion of eco-centric grundnorm, transforming law and governance, and institutionalizing trusteeship governance. At the end, it is proposed that ecological law would frame our thinking in a way that reflects not only the traditional values of connectedness with nature, but equally leading cutting-edge sciences of today such as ecology, earth system science and health sciences.

This scientific article discusses the reasons for inefficiency (impotence) of modern environmntal law as a normative reaction to the destruction of Nature. The scope of the destruction of Nature has been broadening. The environmental protection of destroyed Nature.

Increasing attention is given to the trade in wildlife, since it is believed that we are on the brink of the Sixth Mass Extinction, an event characterized by the loss of between 17,000 and 100,000 species on a yearly basis. Although habitat loss is the main threat, illegal trade is the second most important hazard to species, with several unmanageable side-effects and harm to people, animals and ecosystems. In this article the anthropocentric, ecocentric and biocentric impact of defaunation has been explored from a green criminological perspective.

This chapter engages in a tentative critical-theoretical exploration of ecocide as an ‘ecocentric’ core crime. For this purpose, I first provide a brief outline of the conceptual binary between anthropocentrism and ecocentrism. The anthropocentric ontology of international criminal law (ICL) is then explored by retracing its permeation by interrogating two dominant conditions: the international community and the ideal victim. I argue that the contours of a green progress narrative become visible in ICL to remedy the accountability gap concerning large-scale environmental damage. A central thesis of this narrative is that ICL is failing in engagement with environmental damage due to its anthropocentric focus and should therefore move towards a more ecocentric approach by criminalising ecocide. The notion that an ecocentric core crime can redeem ICL’s anthropocentric conditions is problematised in this chapter. Rather than a pointing towards a profound oscillation between environmental ethics and ICL, I contend that this green progress narrative firstly obscures ICL’s anthropocentric ontology and secondly that it does not account for the complexities of translating environmental concerns into the discipline. Latour’s de-centred approach is introduced to disrupt this linear logic and to give impetus for a critical approach of a re-imagination of ICL which embeds the more-than-human in its framework.

This Reflection starts from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as unprecedented occasio to reflect on the approach to international law, which—it is contended—is anthropocentric, and its inadequacy to respond to current challenges. In the first part, the Reflection argues that there is, more than ever, an undeferrable need for a change of approach to international law toward ecocentrism, which puts the environment at the center and conceives the environment as us, including humans, non-human beings, and natural objects. To encourage the incorporation of ecocentrism in the entire discipline, the Reflection will rely on some insight of ecofeminism, whose potential has not been fully investigated in international legal scholarship. In the second part, the Reflection illustrates what an eco-centric international law would mean, imagining three possible applications: first, what the author has called environmental global health, which is connected to the current pandemic and puts into question the proposals dealing with global health that completely miss the theorization of the environment as a whole; second, how actors of international law would change according to an eco-centric perspective; and, third, how the rules prohibiting the use of force might be reconceptualized. The analysis contained in these pages cannot itself exhaust all the possible nuances of the legal reasoning, but it is aimed at being a provocative starting point for a change in the mindset and approach of international legal scholarship.

This paper argues that Earth Jurisprudence aims to bring about a change in episteme, using the law, from our current anthropocentric episteme to a new ecocentric one: a process that requires a critique of current epistemic objects and methods, and a gradual articulation of alternative objects and methods for new legal and governance systems to draw upon.

Legal philosophers and environmental activists concerned with transforming the human–Earth relationship typically focus on expanding the community of legal subjects to include the non-human. The limited success of this strategy prompts consideration of an alternative: expanding the concept of the human legal subject to facilitate mutually beneficial human–Earth relations. The abstract character of the rational autonomous individual normalises the pursuit of the individual life project with devastating consequences for the earth. The Cosmic Person introduced here is a Universe-centred, Earth-embedded multi-dimensional self that normalises an interest in the project of life itself.

Book Abstract: Wild law is a groundbreaking approach to law that stresses human interconnectedness and dependence on nature. It critiques existing law for promoting environmental harm and seeks to establish a mutually enhancing human-Earth relationship. For the first time, this volume brings together voices fromt he leading proponents of wild law around the world. It introduces readers to the idea of wild law and considers its relationship to environmental law, the rights of nature, science, religion, property law and international governance.

Law has failed to address the ever-deepening socio-ecological crisis of the Anthropocene. In the light of, and as a response to, law’s failures in this respect, this paper argues in support of developing a new legal paradigm for the Anthropocene epoch called Earth system law. It does so first by briefly describing the Anthropocene trope and the extent and dimensions of its socio-ecological crisis. The paper then specifically focuses on international environmental law as an example of how and why law has become incapable of, and inappropriate for, addressing this crisis, and for being unable to respond to the Anthropocene’s regulatory demands. By drawing on three Earth system-related regulatory implications of the Anthropocene trope (i.e., inclusivity, interdependencies and complexity), the final part of the paper makes out a case in support of reforming law and creating a new Earth system oriented legal paradigm that is fit for purpose in the Anthropocene epoch.

First developed in Earth system science, the idea of planetary boundaries has gradually spilled over into social science research in the past decade. An interdisciplinary body of literature has emerged as a result at the intersection of Earth system science, law and governance. In this article, we provide a bird’s eye view of the state of the art, and examine how social scientists frame the planetary boundaries framework and what they identify as key regulatory challenges and implications. To that end, we conducted a systematic review of 80 peer-reviewed articles identified through a keyword search. Our survey finds that social scientists have approached the planetary boundaries framework using four key problem framings, which revolve around the notion of planetary boundaries as embodying a set of interdependent and politically constructed environmental limits that are global in scale. We also identify four key clusters of governance solutions offered in the literature, which broadly relate to the ideas of institutionalizing, coordinating, downscaling and democratizing planetary boundaries. We then apply the foregoing insights to the legal domain and explore their implications for law. More specifically, we discuss how the recently proposed notion of Earth system law is related to these emerging problem framings and how it might contribute to these responses.