Reflections on Earth Trusteeship

* Book: Sobion, Justin and van Willenswaard, Hans (Eds.) Reflections on Earth Trusteeship. Mother Earth and a new 21st-century governance paradigm. Nonthaburi, INI Books, 2023

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Description

"In this 416 pages illustrated volume, a diverse outline unfolds, tracing Earth Trusteeship’s roots, the discourse on its present status, and its promising potential as “the first principle of modern environmental law”. Reflections on Earth Trusteeship explores ways new developments in environmental law as well as public awareness can be charted. The emerging commons movement may play a vital role in the realization of a new governance paradigm. Definitions of ownership, determined by preferential legal personhood of corporations, and territorial sovereignty as an exclusive privilege of nation-states, are based on historic paradigms. Legal frameworks no longer match the Earth System Governance urgently needed to effectively address climate emergency, our existential biodiversity crisis, and the almost irreversible pollution and exhaustion, desensitization, of Nature. This is not a trial for academics, lawyers and specialized policymakers only but as much for artists, social entrepreneurs, young people, poets and activists, as this book demonstrates. The Action section of Reflections on Earth Trusteeship presents initiatives of Right Livelihood Laureates, the World Future Council and students from the Pacific Islands who initiated the ICJAO campaign (International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion) on climate justice which was surprisingly endorsed by consensus in the UN General Assembly on 29 March 2023.

Important steps in this direction have been made in modern history e.g. the launches of the Earth Charter in The Hague, 2000, and the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia, in 2010. Coupled with emerging recognition of Rights of Nature and laws identifying ecocide as a crime against humanity, a paradigm shift becomes discernable. Including a shift from punitive to restorative justice. Public resonance with the symbolic wheelbarrow walk to the World Heritage Centre in Paris presented in Reflections on Earth Trusteeship, and manifold initiatives to “liberate the Earth” like community trusts, cast convincing signals."