Charting
Environmental
Law Futures in the
Anthropocene
Michelle Lim Editor
Charting Environmental Law Futures
in the Anthropocene
Michelle Lim
Editor
Charting Environmental Law
Futures in the Anthropocene
123
Editor
Michelle Lim
Adelaide Law School
University of Adelaide
Adelaide, SA, Australia
ISBN 978-981-13-9064-7 ISBN 978-981-13-9065-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9065-4
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019
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Foreword
Earth system scientists suggest we might be entering the Anthropocene, a new
geological epoch, where humans have become a global geophysical force, domi-
nating and changing the Earth system. While the Anthropocene must still be of-
cially designated as such, it has since become a useful discursive framework that
now occupies a central position in the sustainability discourse. In fact, the
Anthropocene has become an important, if not enti rely uncontentious, issue per-
meating the many multidisciplinary conversations that grapple with the place and
future of humans as part of the Earth system. Originally emanating from the d omain
of natural sciences, the Anthropocene has now also become a focus of social
sciences and the humanities, evidenced in particular by its recent inclusion as one
of the four contextual conditions of the new Science and Implementation Plan of the
Earth System Governance Project (the others are transformations, inequality and
diversity).
Curiously, however, when compared to the geosciences and the Earth system
governance research agendas , the Anthropocene remains largely underexplored in
the juridical domain, with only a few lawyers having interrogated its implications
for law and legal scien ce generally, and for environmental law specically. Those
of us that are investigating the relationship between the Anthropocene and law
broadly agree that law is a critical element of the humanpoliticalsocial system,
and an important part of those social regulatory institutions that humans con-
sciously design to establish and maintain a speci c type of desir ed social order.
This is increasingly an order that is being destabilized by Earth system changes, as
the impacts of climate change on societies across the globe clearly suggest. The
Anthropocene is therefore critically relevant to law and legal science, while con-
versely, law has an important role to play in contemplating and ensuring Earth
system integrity and future life on Earth.
The intimate link between law and the Anthropocene will ask of us to consider
among others, how and the extent to which the Anthropocene is changing our
perceptions of law as a regulatory institution, including our trite perceptions of
laws content, purpose, objectives and design. It will also require of us to re ect on
human agency and the role of law in governing human actions in the Anthropocene,
v
including the impacts of these actions on the Earth system and the impacts of other
Earth system processes on human existence. The Anthropocene in this sense allows
for an opening up of hitherto prohibitive epistemic closures in the law, of legal
discourse more generally, and of the world order that the law operatively seeks to
maintain, to a range of other understandings of, and cognitive frameworks for,
global environmental change. It further reveals the context to contemplate possible
ways to more innovatively mediate this change through the law.
Embracing many of the foregoing considerations, this book is squarely aimed at
addressing the underexplored role of law and legal science in relation to the
Anthropocene. Edited by Michelle Lim, one of Australias leading environmental
lawyers, the book offers an impressive collection of critical reections on the
myriad of emerging challenges for environmental law in the Anthropocene, while at
once also describing the importance of, and critically urgent need for, developing
strategies to deal with the Anthropocenes mounting socio-ecological crisis. To this
end, the bo ok very specically focuses on the role of environmental law in shaping
sustainable futures. But the book also aims to do more than this: representing an
impressive collection of jurisdi ctions from around the globe, it provides rich cos-
mopolitan perspectives from an emerging generation of environmental lawyers to
voice their concerns and views in relation to environmental law futures in the
Anthropocene, while it also seeks to foster intergenerational dialogue through
contributions from established scholars. To this end, contributors to the volume
broadly reect on a range of burning questions including: critically redening the
humanenvironment relationship in the Anthropocene; the imperative of main-
taining planetary order while improving international collaboration; ways to
implement transformative law and governance for sustainable and equitable futures;
and nally, a forward-looking research agenda that must further interrogate the
place and role of environmental law in the Anthropocene.
While one can easily become despondent in the face of the seemingly insur-
mountable challenges that the Anthropocene throws up for humanity, this book is
proof that there is an alternative, more sanguine narrative out there that speaks of
hope and that encourages us to resolutely confront the socio-ecological crisis of the
Anthropocene in innovative and creative ways through the art and craft of envi-
ronmental law.
Louis J. Kotzé
Research Professor of Law
North-West University
Potchefstroom, South Africa
vi Foreword
Contents
1 Securing Equitable and Sustainable Futures
in the AnthropoceneWhat Role and Challenges
for Environmental Law?
................................. 1
Michelle Lim
Part I Re-dening Human-Environment Relationships
2 Rights of Nature in the Anthropocene: Towards
the Democratization of Environmental Law?
................. 21
María Valeria Berros
3 Moving Towards Ecological Civilization in the Anthropocene:
The Future of Environmental Law in China
.................. 33
Di Zhou
4 International Environmental Law in the Anthropocene:
Addressing the Gaps Towards Sustainable Development
Law
................................................ 45
Fabiano de Andrade Correa and Marina Demaria Ven âncio
5 Ecological Restoration as a Legal Duty in the Anthropocene
..... 59
An Cliquet
6 Governance for Protected Areas Beyond the Boundary”—A
Conceptual Framework for Biodiversity Conservation
in the Anthropocene
.................................... 71
Toshinori Tanaka
Part II Planetary Order and International Collaboration
7 The Ocean-Climate Nexus in the Unfolding Anthr opocene:
Addressing Environmental Challenges Through International
Law and Cooperation
................................... 83
Stephen Minas
vii
8 Consequences of the Recognition of Forest Protection
as a Common Concern of Humankind for the Anthropocene
..... 95
Maša Kovič Dine
9 International Water Law in Multi-scale Governance of Shared
Waters in the Anthropocene: Towards Cooperation, no t
Water Wars
........................................ 107
Remy Kinna
10 Rising China and Antarctic Futures in the Anthropocene
....... 121
Nengye Liu
11 The International Environmental CourtA Necessary
Institution for Sustainable Planetary Governance
in the Anthropocene
.................................... 129
Alexander M. SoIntsev
12 Global Assessment and Review: The Importance
of a Transparency Turn in International Environmental Law
.... 139
Naseh Jafarzadeh
Part III Implementing Transformative Law and Governance
for Sustainable and Equitable Futures
13 Indigenous Rights and Universal Periodic Review:
A Conuence of Human Rights and Environmental Issues
....... 151
Jonathan Liljeblad
14 Constitutional ly Shackled: The Story of Environmental
Jurisprudence in India
.................................. 159
Nupur Chowdhury
15 Liability for Environmental Harm as a Response
to the Anthropocene
.................................... 171
Jacob Phelps, Carol Adaire Jones and John Pendergrass
16 On the Hypot actic Imperative for a Transition
from the Anthropocene to the Sustainocene
.................. 181
Benjamen Franklen Gussen
17 Municipal Solid Waste Management in India: Why Judicial
Activism and Legislative Interventions Have Failed to Effectively
Address This Issue?
.................................... 191
Maneka Kaur
18 Can South African Planning Law and Policy Promote Urban
Sustainability in the Anthropocene?
........................ 203
Angela van der Berg
viii Contents
Part IV Research Agenda for Sustainable and Equitable
Environmental Law Futures in the Anthropocene
19 Pathways to Equitable Sustainability in the Anthropocene:
An Agenda for Legal Research
............................ 221
Michelle Lim
Contents ix
Chapter 1
Securing Equitable and Sustainable
Futures in the Anthropocene—What
Role and Challenges for Environmental
Law?
Michelle Lim
Anthropocene
Anthropo- = human (from Ancient Greek anthr¯opos;
¥νθρωπoς);
-cene = new/recent (from Ancient Greek kainos; καιν´oς).
“The Anthropocene epoch i s a new geological interval that
intimately fuses two major components—Earth itself and the
human population which thrives upon it.
This epoch marks the apex of our hegemony on Earth. It
highlights the permanent changes humanity has imposed on
planetary operating systems. And it emphasizes the point that we
are now the authors of our own destiny.
Do we shape our future by considered choice or have we been
victimized by an innate propensity to maximize everything.”.
Stephen Purdey (2018) Masters of our fate?
Abstract This introductory chapter sets out the emerging challenges for environ-
mental law in the Anthropocene. It highlights the importance of developing strategies
to deal with a range of plausible futures. The chapter identifies the role of environ-
mental law in shaping sustainable and equitable futures. It also highlights the short-
comings of and obstacles for contemporary legal and institutional frameworks which
might limit the potential of legal instruments to address the challenges of the Anthro-
pocene. The chapter concludes by introducing each of the subsequent chapters and
demonstrating how the multifaceted issues explored in the book address the role for
law in shaping sustainable and equitable futures amidst significant uncertainty.
Keywords Sustainable legal futures
· Anthropocene · Equitable sustainability
M. Lim (
B
)
Adelaide Law School, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019
M. Lim (ed.), Charting Environmental Law Futures in the Anthropocene,
https://doi.org/ 10.1007/978-981-13-9065-4_1
1