The Jurisprudence of Overshoot: Ecological Carrying Capacity, Planetary Boundaries, and the Structural Failure of International Environmental Law
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: The Jurisprudence of Overshoot: Ecological Carrying Capacity, Planetary Boundaries, and the Structural Failure of International Environmental Law By Northon Salomão de Oliveira What happens when the law is built for a planet that no longer exists? In The Jurisprudence of Overshoot, Northon Salomão de Oliveira confronts one of the most unsettling realities of the twenty-first century: humanity is operating beyond the ecological limits that sustain civilization itself. Drawing upon cutting-edge Earth system science, international jurisprudence, environmental governance, political economy, philosophy, behavioral science, and constitutional theory, the book argues that ecological overshoot is not merely an environmental problem. It is a profound legal crisis. At the center of this groundbreaking work lies a provocative thesis: international environmental law was designed for a world assumed to possess endless resilience, abundant resources, and recoverable ecological damage. That world has vanished. As planetary boundaries are crossed and ecological carrying capacity is increasingly exhausted, the legal architecture governing climate change, biodiversity, natural resources, and sustainability reveals a structural inability to respond at the scale demanded by reality. Through a rigorous examination of landmark developments including the International Court of Justice's 2025 Climate Advisory Opinion, emerging ecocide legislation, the rights-of-nature movement, environmental constitutionalism, and evolving doctrines of intergenerational justice, Oliveira exposes the widening gap between scientific knowledge and legal action. The result is a powerful diagnosis of a normative order struggling to govern a civilization living in ecological deficit. Yet this is not a work of pessimism. It is a blueprint for transformation. The book proposes a new paradigm of biophysically anchored governance, founded upon four revolutionary pillars: constitutionalized intergenerational rights, quantified ecological budgets, the criminalization of ecocide, and the legal recognition of planetary boundaries as enforceable normative limits. In doing so, it challenges centuries of anthropocentric legal thinking and advances a bold vision of law capable of operating within the realities of the Anthropocene. Combining the analytical depth of environmental jurisprudence with the urgency of planetary science, The Jurisprudence of Overshoot is essential reading for scholars, judges, policymakers, environmental lawyers, governance professionals, economists, sustainability experts, and anyone seeking to understand how law must evolve in an age defined by ecological constraints. This is not simply a book about environmental law. It is a book about the future of civilization, the limits of growth, the rights of generations yet unborn, and the fundamental question that will define the coming century: Can legal institutions adapt before the Earth system reaches its point of no return? ORCID ID: 0009-0007-4038-0609
Author: Salomao de Oliveira, Northon
Language: English
Topic: Environmental law and policy
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7162948228