Locating Nature: Making and Unmaking International Law

This book explores how international law structures ecological degradation and environmental injustice, making inaccurate and unsustainable assumptions about the natural world. It proposes a radical reworking of our understandings of nature and its relationship with law to avert socioecological crises, drawing on diverse disciplines and sociocultural traditions.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 406 pages
Publication date: 09 November 2023
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

For those grappling with the pervasive environmental harm on a global scale and its starkly unequal consequences, this book offers a comprehensive exploration of how international law perpetuates ecological degradation and environmental injustice while purporting to safeguard the environment. It uncovers the underlying assumptions embedded within central legal concepts such as sovereignty, jurisdiction, territory, development, environment, labor, and human rights, which perpetuate inaccurate and unsustainable views of the natural world and systematically reproduce environmental degradation and injustice. In order to avert socioecological crises, it is imperative that we embark on a transformative journey to unpack and radically rework our understandings of nature and its relationship with law. By drawing upon diverse disciplines and sociocultural traditions that have been marginalized within international law, we propose more sustainable and equitable ways to reimagine the interplay between law and nature. This book is influenced by Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), postcolonialism, and decoloniality, and is further inspired by Indigenous knowledges, cosmology, mythology, and storytelling. It serves as a foundational text for an epistemological shift in the way humans conceptualize the relationship between law and nature, paving the way for a more harmonious and sustainable future.

ISBN-13: 9781108739696