ABSTRACT
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.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|48 pages
First Laws
chapter 1|15 pages
The Problem with Sustainable Development in the Anthropocene Epoch
part II|48 pages
Subjects of the Anthropocene
part III|64 pages
Landscapes of Hope and Despair
chapter 7|16 pages
Biodiversity
part IV|48 pages
Ecological and Earth Systems Law
part V|36 pages
Dignity and Human Rights
chapter 14|16 pages
The Anthropocene and Human Rights
part VI|42 pages
Regulating Nature and Nature Regulates
chapter 18|19 pages
The Transformative Power of Receptivity
part VII|56 pages
Imagination and Utopia
part VIII|20 pages
Post-Script