Losing the Forest for the Trees: Environmental Reductionism in the Law

Klaus Bosselmann
Additional contact information
Klaus Bosselmann: New Zealand Centre for Environmental Law, Faculty of Law, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland 1142, Aotearoa, New Zealand

Sustainability, 2010, vol. 2, issue 8, 1-25

Abstract: Environmental laws and policies have saved some “trees”, but the “forest” is being lost as critical global issues including climate change, biodiversity loss, and our ecological footprint continue to worsen. Existing laws and policies mitigate the ecological damage inflicted by industrial economies and western lifestyles. The article essentially makes the case for a sustainability approach to law that aims for transformation rather than environmental mitigation. Relevant trends in international law and domestic law reflective of a sustainability approach are discussed, and the article describes some contours of “law for sustainability” or “sustainability law”.

Keywords: environmental reductionism; compartmentalization; fragmentation; subject of environmental law; anthropocentrism vs. ecocentrism; sustainability; ecological integrity; sustainability law (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/2/8/2424/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/2/8/2424/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:2:y:2010:i:8:p:2424-2448:d:9122

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().