Year: 2026
Type: editorial
Abstract: Nature is currently facing its most severe crisis: Ecosystems and biodiversity are dwindling, more and more animal and plant species are extinct or on the brink of extinction. 1 Chemicals and microplastics are polluting soil, atmosphere and oceans, equally impacting all life on Earth. 2 Human-induced climate change accelerates these problems and threatens to make large parts of the Earth uninhabitable.We are currently experiencing a triple planetary crisis (climate change, loss of biodiversity, pollution).3 All three crises evince a disregard for nature.4 Human, notably Western, lifestyles and consumption patterns 5 have led to this development over the centuries.These phenomena are concomitant with social crises, both within countries and on a global scale, with the populations of the Global South being particularly affected.6 To change this, a business-as-usual mentality will not be enough.7 More than half a century ago, Christopher D Stone called for a great transformation 8 with respect to nature.9 Over the years, several approaches have echoed the need for fundamental shifts across environmental law.Earth System Law and Wild Law, 10 Anthropocene Law 11 and Law and Ecology 12 are only some of the approaches that can be mentioned here.They all share the common scepticism that current environmental law-across scales-and jurisprudence have failed to live up to the demands of the current Earth System.13 Critics argue that the law is inadequate and poorly enforced, 14 it is anthropocentric instead of ecocentric and it is neo-colonial, capitalist 15 and in blatant disregard of indigenous perspectives.Much of this critique is valid.Much of this criticism, however, also requires the inception of new legal concepts and approaches that steer away from known and established principles, conceptualisations and regulations.This editorial proposes an ecological view on the law, termed 'Law and Nature', which may serve as an overarching framework within which the various existing approaches can be situated.In the current day and age, nature, climate and the environment are not high on Western political agendas.While we do not doubt that change is needed and imminent, our editorial argues we need to explore ways in which the law itself can become a more powerful tool in influencing and modifying human-nature interactions.This 'Law and Nature' perspective seeks not merely to call for reform, but to make full use of the latitude already afforded to legal scholarship and practice under the law as it stands.1 Sandra Díaz and others (eds), Summary for Policymakers of the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES Secretariat 2019) 11, para A4; Reuters, 'One Million Species Are on the Brink of Extinction' (2022) <https://www.reuters.com/graphics/ GLOBAL-ENVIRONMENT/EXTINCT/lbvgggdgevq/>.cf Carla Sbert, The Lens of Ecological Law (Edward Elgar 2020) 13. 2 Nathaniel L Bindoff and others, 'Changing Ocean, Marine Ecosystems, and Dependent Communities' in Hans Otto Pörtner and others (eds), IPCC Special Report on the Ocean
DOI: 10.1111/reel.70104
Authors: Birgit Peters, Nils Schaks
Institutions: Universität Trier, University of Basel
Language: English
Topic: Environmental law and policy
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Life on land
Open Access status: bronze
Funder: Volkswagen Foundation
OpenAlex ID: W7225314967