This book explores a range of plausible futures for environmental law in the new era of the Earth’s history: the Anthropocene. The book discusses multiple contemporary and future challenges facing the planet and humanity. It examines the relationship between environmental law and the Anthropocene at governance scales from the global to the local. The breadth of issues and jurisdictions covered by the book, its forward-looking nature, and the unique generational perspective of the contributing authors means that this publication appeals to a wide audience from specialist academics and policy-makers to a broader lay readership.

Anthropocene is the proposed name for the new geological epoch in which humans have overwhelming impact on planetary processes. This edited volume invites reflection on the meaning and role of law in light of changing planetary realties. Taking the concept of the Anthropocene as a starting point, the contributions to this book address emerging legal issues from a transnational environmental law perspective. How law interacts with, and how law governs, global environmental problems is a challenge that legal scholars have approached with vigour over the last decade. More recently, the concept of the Anthropocene has become a topic that researchers have also begun to grapple with by engaging with disciplines beyond legal scholarship. One avenue of research that has emerged to address global environmental problems is transnational environmental law. Adopting ‘transnational law’ as a lens or framework through which to analyse environmental law takes a broader approach to the ways in which law may be assessed and deployed to meet planetary challenges. The chapters within this book provide a timely intervention into the theoretical and practical approaches of transnational environmental law in a time of significant uncertainty and environmental and human crises. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Transnational Legal Theory.

This book introduces the concept of the Anthropocene and examines its importance for environmental legal thinking, research and practice. Two main arguments are explored. The first is that much of the scholarship in environmental law that addresses the Anthropocene does not respond to Earth systems science or the difference in scale as we move from local to global systems. Key examples include a focus on anthropocentrism, attempts to constitutionalise environmental protections, the prevalence of legal rights and the idea of ecological integrity. The second argument is that these points of focus derive from the prevalence of idealism in environmental legal scholarship. Idealism in this context does not refer to naivety or the presentation of unrealistic goals. Rather, this book is concerned with idealism as a philosophical commitment to the power of ideas to determine reality and drive future change. As expressed in legal scholarship, this book also argues that idealism involves an abstraction from material reality and a refusal to directly engage those forces that have given rise to the Anthropocene. In response, this book uses a method of critique to uncover the presumptions and presuppositions that underlie environmental scholarship. As a counter to idealism, it also sketches out a framework for materialism in the Anthropocene. This book’s engagement with these questions will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students in law, politics, philosophy or the ecological humanities. It will also be of interest to academics in these disciplines and libraries around the world.

Published in two volumes, this new book, Advances in Sustainable Development and Management of Environmental and Natural Resources: Economic Outlook and Opinions, addresses the varied aspect of natural resources and their management in conjunction with socioeconomic aspects. With chapters from authors from around the world, this volume features 24 chapters that cover many aspects of the sustainable utilization of management of natural resources and provides new insight into the nexus of ecology and economy and their application in various fields of science. The chapters include case studies and research from India, Africa, South America, and elsewhere. After first laying the foundation, the volume goes on to discuss sustainable development and natural resource management from an economics point of view. Chapters address myriad issues involved in natural resources and environmental management, including soil and water resources management in arid lands, resource management for agricultural purposes, contemporary global legal norms of environment and sustainable development, how emissions factor into regional economies, mitigation of the impact of climate change through sustainable practices, rainwater harvesting technology, and much more. The chapters include case studies that discuss soil, agroforestry, agriculture, wetlands, and floral diversity. The book provides a solid foundation for a realistic perspective of the role of sustainable development and management of natural resources while taking the socioeconomic impact into consideration as well. It will be a valuable resource and reference for the study of ecology, economics, sustainable development, natural resource management, and other allied fields.

The Routledge Handbook of Law and the Anthropocene provides a critical survey into the function of law and governance during a time when humans have the power to impact the Earth system. The Anthropocene is a “crisis of the earth system.” This book addresses its implications for law and legal thinking in the twenty-first century. Unpacking the challenges of the Anthropocene for advocates of ecological law and politics, this handbook pursues a range of approaches to the scientific fact of anthropocentrism, with contributions from lawyers, philosophers, geographers, and environmental and political scientists. Rather than adopting a hubristic normativity, the contributors engage methods, concepts, and legal instruments in a way that underscores the importance of humility and an expansive ethical worldview. Contributors to this volume are leading scholars and future leaders in the field. Rather than upholding orthodoxy, the handbook also problematizes received wisdom and is grounded in the conviction that the ideas we have inherited from the Holocene must all be open to question. Engaging such issues as the Capitalocene, Gaia theory, the rights of nature, posthumanism, the commons, geoengineering, and civil disobedience, this handbook will be of enormous interest to academics, students, and others with interests in ecological law and the current environmental crisis.

This book systematically explores the emerging legal discipline of Earth System Law (ESL), challenging the closed system of law and marking a new era in law and society scholarship. Law has historically provided stability, certainty, and predictability in the ordering of social relations (predominantly between humans). However, in recent decades the Earth’s relationship in law has changed with increasing recognition of the standing of Mother Earth, inherent rights of the environment (such as flora and fauna, rivers), and now recognition of the multiple relations of the Anthropocene. This book questions the fundamental assumption that ‘the law’ only applies to humans, and that the earth, as a system, has intrinsic rights and responsibilities. In the last ten years the planet has experienced its hottest period since human evolution, and by the year 2100, unless substantive action is taken, many species will be lost, and planetary conditions will be intolerable for human civilisation as it currently exists. Relationships between humans, the biosphere, and all planetary systems must change. The authors address these challenging topics, setting the groundwork of ESL to ensure sustainable development of the coupled socio-ecological system that the Earth has become. Earth System Law is an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research project, and, as such, this book will be of great interest to researchers and stakeholders from a wide range of disciplines, including political science, anthropology, economics, law, ethics, sociology, and psychology.

In light of the UN General AssemblyÕs recognition of the human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, this erudite book presents in-depth analyses of the concrete operationalization of this right at the regional, national, and international level.

On 21 May 2019, it was officially recognized that we are now living in the Anthropocene, our earth’s latest geological epoch, named for the 'unmistakable imprint of human activities'. This announcement came almost 60 years after the publication of Rachel Carson’s landmark work of environmental writing, Silent Spring, and next year (2022) it will be 50 years since the first UN Conference on the Human Environment, held in Stockholm in June 1972. This book, Our Earth Matters: Pathways to a Better Common Environmental Future, is a special issue of the journal Environmental Policy and Law, which was first published in 1975. It presents 21 invited contributions by outstanding scholars from around the world, which examine existing global regulatory approaches, processes, instruments and institutions for the protection of the global environment. The articles are grouped under four headings: Prognoses, Processes, Problematique and Prospects, and in them the authors have sought to explore answers to the existential environmental crisis. They urge us to ponder our reckless destruction of natural spaces, endangering of plant and animal species, poisoning of the environment, and general disturbance of our essential ecological processes. The primary objective of the book is to raise the awareness of the global audience by inspiring scholars and decision-makers to re-examine current global approaches to environmental issues and explore the future trajectory with new ideas and frameworks for international environmental governance in the 21st century and beyond. The book will be of interest to all those working to secure the sustainable future of the human race on our only abode, planet Earth. Bharat H. Desai is Professor of International Law and Jawaharlal Nehru Chair in International Environmental Law, Centre for International Legal Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; Editor-in-Chief of the journal Environmental Policy & Law (Amsterdam: IOS Press) and of the Yearbook of International Environmental Law (Oxford: OUP).

This book examines the greening of civil codes from a comparative perspective. It takes into account the increasing requirements of supranational rules, which favour measures to reduce global warming and its negative environmental impacts; it discusses the necessity to expand distributive justice given the current ecological emergency; and it reflects on which private law legal tools potentially may be employed to defend nature’s interests. The work fills a gap in the growing literature on developing rights of nature and ecosystem in transnational law. While the focus is on the environmental issues pertaining to the new civil codes and new projects of civil codes, the book promotes interdisciplinary research applicable to a range of environmental and natural resources–focused courses across the social sciences, especially those related to comparative law systems, legal anthropology, legal traditions in the world, political science and international relations.