Reforming Law and Economy for a Sustainable Earth

This is a brilliant and seminal analysis of our current systemic dynamic of unsustainable development in relation to the overall issue of global ecological governance. Although we know that in the long run we must achieve a sustainable human society, we prefer to postpone rather than address this fundamental issue and to continue with business as usual as long as possible. The four parts address a reform of international law, a critique and re-diagnosis of the allocation problem, and a proposed way forward in terms of ecological democracy. As the author highlights at the outset, we need to reform human economic and legal practices in the light of their role in global environmental degradation, which has in fact intensified during the period of international environmental law. This leads the author to the conclusion that environmental degradation cannot be resolved within the existing structures of capitalism where it is diagnosed as a price-based market failure, and where accumulation of capital is the main end rather than resource replenishment. In addition, those with power and property will not be willing to give up their existing interests.

Hence the need for a different basis in corrective and distributive justice in relation to the allocation problem, exacerbated as this is by the demographics of growing world population. It is clear that we need an alternative distribution of power or model of governance to reform or replace the core institutions of capitalism, although there is a real challenge in achieving this short of systemic breakdown. Here the author is joined by none other than Amartya Sen in calling for institutions beyond the capitalist market economy. He puts forward deliberative democratic decision-making procedures along with decentralised key resource control in the form of ecological democracy. He sets out the necessary substantive steps that would need to be taken consensually at a UN level or equivalent along with agreement on aims and objectives, principles, rules and instruments required. All this would require unprecedented global coordination and sufficient consensus on how to move beyond market capitalism, which represents an enormous challenge to current operating assumptions. The rigorous logic and considerable significance of the book is undeniable, but policymakers are unlikely to make time to read it, so the author will need in the first instance to generate opportunities where his excellent ideas can be substantively debated.