Earth System Law: Standing on the Precipice of the Anthropocene

Rezensionen / Stimmen

"The unprecedented challenges we are facing in the Anthropocene require radically new governance approaches that recognize the entanglement between human activities and Earth system processes. This volume provides a cutting-edge contribution to the emerging field of Earth system law by exploring and proposing novel legal developments for governing planetary transformations created by humans."

Agni Kalfagianni, Co-chair of the Earth System Governance Project

"Earth System Law: Standing on the Precipice of the Anthropocene is a ground-breaking work in the climate governance literature. The book reassesses the status quo for legal process. To do so, it uses years of expert insight into how to meet the challenges environmental change presents to governance as its measure of assessment. Its conclusion is that the status quo for legal process has become dangerously antiquated at this critical moment in Earth's history. Much of the book explores what types of legal reform are needed from various disciplinary positions. The result is an outline of a new theory of law, which draws its direction from pragmatic solutions to the governance problems created by climate change.

Undoubtably, this theory will appear strange and unfamiliar to many, straining their legal imagination. But this strain is a testament to the book's importance. Many of us cling - with good reason - to our confidence in how society ought to be ordered. Our legal status quo, which supports the modern order, was hard-won in the trenches of Verdun and on the beaches of Normandy. Since then, it has served as the midwife for the birth of the modern nation-state, establishing a common ground for the negotiation of conflict in multiple contexts. Undermining this status quo may invite many risks to social stability. On the other hand, law inevitably must adapt to change and, as this book suggests, pragmatism must trump convention at this time when we stand on the precipice of environmental catastrophe.

For these reasons, Earth System Law: Standing on the Precipice of the Anthropocene is a provocative book, which ought to be read widely."

Fenner Stewart, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Calgary, Canada; Dentons Canada LLP Research Fellow in Energy Law & Policy; Research Fellow in Energy and Environment at The School of Public Policy; Climate Governance Expert at the Canada Climate Law Initiative