ABSTRACT
A growing tide is revealing the weaknesses and inadequacies of conventional environmental law, as institutionalized in domestic and international legal regimes. In short, conventional environmental law, at local to global scales, has become a handmaiden to the futile, science-defying quest for perpetual economic growth on our precious, finite planet. Ecological law is emerging as a counter to environmental law that accounts for and responds to the challenges and opportunities that the Anthropocene poses for the human-Earth relationship. Yet, just like ecological economics in its frustrating struggle to expose the fallacies of conventional, growth-insistent economics and to propose alternatives, ecological law urgently needs to cohere around a common understanding of its core principles in order to gain influence in socio-political arenas. Research framed around an ecocentric, human-inclusive vision for the Earth’s community of life, such as the promising and growing research on planetary boundaries, would support a systems-based framework for developing this understanding and priorities and strategies to work towards it.
