The Imperative of Ecological Integrity: Conceptualising a Fundamental Legal Norm for a New ‘World System’ in the Anthropocene

Abstract

The Anthropocene entails great challenges and uncertainties, but will possibly prompt a reconfiguration of values in relation to the current status quo. Fundamentally, protection of ecological integrity will guide governance systems of successful communities; failure to do so will be a counter survival tactic. This chapter examines possibilities to jurisprudentially conceptualise ecological integrity as a fundamental norm, or grundnorm, to function as a "universal acid" affecting all areas of law and governance, beyond traditional environmental tools and policies. In the Anthropocene, the Earth appears as a single system with socioeconomic systems and ecological systems jointly determining its dynamics. To stay within planetary boundaries, humanity's socioeconomic systems need to be governed in a way that preserves the integrity of ecological systems. 1 This dichotomy is explicitly expressed in works such as, Costanza, Graumlich and Steffen (eds) Sustainability or Collapse? An Integrated History and Future of People on Earth (MIT Press, Cambridge, 2007). 2 The term "ecological integrity" is used in conjunction with "sustainability," due to the over use and watering down of the latter term. On the definition of "strong sustainability", see Klaus Bosselmann, The Principle of Sustainability (Ashgate, Aldershot, 2008).