Literature Review

The ‘rise of ecosystem regimes’ is increasingly seen as the key for the resolution of the unfolding ecological crises that are the mark of the Anthropocene. These ecosystem regimes are seen as a crucial passage in resolving environmental law's internal contradictions and evident shortcomings. Indeed, ecosystem regimes are understood to signal a crucial step in a long progression from anthropocentric to ecocentric articulations of environmental law. This narrative, whether in normative or descriptive terms, informs much, and perhaps most, environmental legal scholarship. In this article I intend to problematize this linear narrative through an ‘analytics of biopolitics’. Situated within the critical space tentatively called ‘critical environmental law’, this approach aims at opening the field of inquiry rather than producing closures. Rather than a simplified, linear narrative of increasing interpenetration between law and ecology – a narrative where law becomes, or ought to become, increasingly ecocentric – an analytics of biopolitics transposed to the specific critical environmental legal terrain aims at outlining the slippages that intervene at the margins of intersection between law and ecology, and at articulating a biopolitical critique of both ‘anthropocentric’ and ‘ecocentric’ articulations of environmental law.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Australian law currently treats the planet's resources, natural environment and non-human animals as property that can be bought, sold and used by humans. There is now vast scientific knowledge as to how ecosystems operate and that the least sophisticated forms of life support the more complex forms. Yet, in practice, the law favours humans above all else. If human beings wish to survive and prosper in the long term, Earth's dynamic systems and all other life must be protected. Legally recognising nature's rights is a practical response to insight provided by Earth system science and ecology. This article examines why Australia should start to incorporate the principles of Wild Law and Earth Jurisprudence into its domestic legal system, and how this process might be achieved. Local examples are used as practical illustrations to show how different aspects of the environment could enjoy rights under a new system of law. The article also investigates whether there are some possibilities for the development of wild law and Earth Jurisprudence already present in Australian law.