Foreword: New Thinking on Sustainability
(2015) 13 NZJPIL
Victoria University of Wellington Legal Research Paper No. 4/2016
17 Pages Posted: 31 Jan 2016 Last revised: 11 Feb 2016
Date Written: 2015
Abstract
It is clear that the natural environment is essential to human survival. However, today’s societies exhibit a clear disconnect with this fact, the creation of modern technologies helping us take for granted the services provided by the natural world. This has caused our way of living to become ecologically unsustainable, generating the need for new legal thinking on how to define, require and enforce ecological sustainability. In February 2014, Catherine Iorns and Petra Butler held a conference at the Victoria University of Wellington Law School addressing such new legal thinking on sustainability. This Journal issue addresses the background to the issues discussed, articles from several of the key presentations, and the conference itself.
This Foreword summarises the environmental crises the world faces (7pp), provides an introduction to Earth Jurisprudence and the rights of nature (4pp), and summarises the papers appearing in the journal. These papers focus primarily on sustainability, rights for nature, and climate change.
Keywords: Environmental law, sustainability, New Zealand, modern technologies
JEL Classification: K00, K30, K32
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation