Foreword: Deconstructing the Legal Architecture of the Anthropocene

Scientists believe that we have entered a new geological epoch known as the Anthropocene in which the unbridled economic activity of the planet’s most affluent populations threatens irreversible ecological harm.

 

The environmental crises of the Anthropocene are deeply connected to the laws, policies, and institutions that enable a small fraction of humanity to pillage nature with impunity while imposing devastating economic and ecological consequences on the planet’s most marginalized populations.

 

This path-breaking volume offers a breath-takingly fresh and insightful diagnosis of the problem. The environment is the foundation of human life, and assumptions about the natural environment are embedded, implicitly or explicitly, in every area of international law. In order to understand international law’s complicity with global environmental degradation, it is necessary to deconstruct the discipline, identify fallacious and destructive assumptions, and remake the discipline by drawing upon the diverse legal traditions and values that have been subjugated by Eurocentric and anthropocentric practices, institutions, and ideologies.