Environmental Constitutionalism in the Anthropocene

Values, Principles and Actions

Domenico Amirante, Silvia Bagni, Domenico Amirante, Silvia Bagni

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781000567427
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Civil Rights in Law
• Index: Law

This book examines the relationship between man and nature through different cultural approaches to encourage new environmental legislation as a means of fostering acceptance at a local level.

In 2019, the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) recognised that we have entered a new era, the Anthropocene, specifically characterised by the impact of one species, mankind, on environmental change. The Anthropocene is penetrating the discourse of both hard sciences and humanities and social sciences, by posing new epistemological as well as practical challenges to many disciplines. Legal sciences have so far been at the margins of this intellectual renewal, with few contributions on the central role that the notion of Anthropocene could play in forging a more effective and just environmental law. By applying a multidisciplinary approach and adopting a Law as Culture paradigm to the study of law, this book explores new paths of investigation and possible solutions to be applied. New perspectives for the constitutional framing of environmental policies, rights, and alternative methods for bottom-up participatory law-making and conflict resolution are investigated, showing that environmental justice is not just an option, but an objective within reach.

The book will be essential reading for students, academics, and policymakers in the areas of law, environmental studies and anthropology.

Part IValues

1 Integral Ecology and Environmental Law in the Anthropocene The Perspective of the Catholic Church

Luigi Colella

DOI: 10.4324/9781003175308-3

1. Environment, Religion and the Law: The Three Pillars of the Ecological Transition

Over the last years, the relationship between the environment, law and religion acquired great significance, especially with relation to the ecological transition. Today, it is generally accepted that the issue of environmental protection cannot be considered only from a technical-scientific or economic perspective: it involves societies, law and religion, affecting constituent processes and legislative reforms and influencing communities.¹ Both natural sciences and humanities agree that the present ecological crisis mainly arises from a substantial neglect of the relationship between man and nature. We lost sight of the “wisdom of the Earth” (or Ecosophy), that wisdom that we must recognize and own if we want to “save ourselves”.²

1Susanna Mancini (ed), Constitutions and Religion (Elgar 2020).

2Raimon Panikkar, Ecosofia. La saggezza della terra (Jaca book 2015).

The relationship between religion and the environment represents a foundation for the law of many communities; it has influenced a great number of legal traditions and has also conditioned, in recent years, most secular Western systems.³ Monotheistic religions have instilled their values in the elaboration of extremely modern juridical rules, building an articulated ecological model centered on the primacy of the rights of human beings.⁴ Through their activity in the public sphere, religions have experienced the “ecological vocation” of cults, fueling an international debate on the protection of human rights, and contributing to the development of global environmental right in a cosmopolitan⁵ and multicultural state.⁶

3H. Patrick Glenn, Legal Traditions of the World: Sustainable Diversity in Law (OUP 2014).

4Maria Rosaria Piccinni, La tutela dell’ambiente nel diritto delle religioni (Aracne 2015).

5H. Patrick Glenn, The Cosmopolitan State (OUP 2013).

6Domenico Amirante, Lo Stato multiculturale. Contributo alla teoria dello Stato dalla prospettiva dell’Unione Indiana (BUP 2015).

Today the relationship between religion and the environment⁷ is recognized in all religions of the world, resulting in environmental protection as a collective projection of religious freedom. In the Abrahamic religions (Jewish, Christian and Muslim) that seek the essence of faith in a written document (Torah, New Testament and Koran), the concept of “nature” is superimposed on “creation”.⁸ In the biblical theological tradition,⁹ men are assigned a privileged place and, as “made in the image of God”, they are ontologically different from all other living beings. In Eastern religions – which have always been considered more intimist – the relationship between the environment and religion has a unique peculiarity: Buddhism and Hinduism, but also other minor religions such as Sikhism and Jainism,¹⁰ conceive the relationship between religion and environment as more “natural” because they consider man as a part of nature, and recognize a tendential similarity between human rights and the rights of nature itself.

7Willis Jenkins and Christopher Key Chapple, ‘Religion and Environment’ [2011] 36 Annual Review of Environment and Resources 441.

8Siguard Bergmann, ‘New Developments in the Field’ in Willis Jenkins, Mary Evelyn Tucker, Jhon Grim (eds), Routledge Handbook of Religion and Ecology (Routledge 2017) 13. See also Ernst Conradie, Christianity and Ecological Theology: Resources for Further Research (SUN Press 2006).

9David E. Cooper and Joy A. Palmer (eds), Spirit of the Environment. Religion, Value and Enviroznmental Concern (Routledge 1998).

10On the Jainism philosophy see Aidan Rankin, Jainism and Environmental Philosophy. Karma and the Web of Life (Routledge 2018).

Recently, in a comparative perspective, an outstanding contribution to the global ecological revolution came from the Catholic Church, particularly from Pope Francis’ extraordinary Encyclical Laudato Si’.¹¹ In this document, the Head of the Catholic Church, also inspired by the dialogues with the ‘green’ Patriarch Bartholomew I (Head of the Orthodox Church), started a new process aimed at building an integral ecological dimension of human conduct, implying the awareness that all living beings, believers and non-believers, must contribute to the ‘custody’ of the Common Home, following the example of the first environmentalist in Western history, St. Francis of Assisi.¹² In his Encyclical on the environment, the Pope, recalling the Canticle of St. Francis, recognizes that the excess of anthropocentrism led to the breaking of the “sacred” balance between human beings and the environment. Thanks to the thrust of the Encyclical on the “common home”, a process of “religious greening” has started, contributing to shift the focus on safeguarding creation, now also understood as an international responsibility by the United Nations. In this context, the environment must be conceived, above all, as a natural and ecological balance, a sort of “Common Home” in which all living beings must coexist in harmony and peace, each participating in the project of Creation in its own way.

11Pope Francis, Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ of the Holy Father Francis on Care for Our Common Home (2015), http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150 524_enciclica-laudato-si.html.

12Jan J. Boersema, ‘Why is Francis of Assisi the Patron Saint of Ecologists?’[2020] 14 Science & Christian Belief 51.

At the same time, religion, also understood as a spiritual balance for the human soul, recalls, in one of its many meanings, the term re-ligare, which means “restoring” broken relationships. The concept of religion as a quest for balance helps in overcoming selfish individualistic positions and conceiving the community as a prerequisite for salvation. Law, understood as justice and conciliation of conflicting interests, becomes a suitable instrument to maintain social cohesion, though the ideas of coherence, harmony and continuity between God and his creatures. Thus, law must maintain the balance (aequitas) and guarantee justice (virtus). After all, environment, religion and law are all in balance, and represent the three pillars of the new global ecological transition, from which we must start to overcome the catastrophe and rediscover the “universal equilibrium”, the beginning and end of life on Earth. In this context, the “ecological vocation” of Catholic religion, to which this work is dedicated, has contributed, and can still contribute, to the affirmation of a holistic vision of environmental law,¹³ progressively implying the international recognition of new ecological rights and duties, such as, for example, the “right to climate” as a common good, the right to water of all peoples, the duty to reduce the ecological debt and to preserve natural and cultural biodiversity, the right and duty to protect future generations, the right and duty to world peace, to solidarity between nations and cultures, and finally the dialogue between peoples and religions in the spirit of universal brotherhood and social friendship.

13Louis J. Kotzé, Global Environmental Constitutionalism in the Anthropocene (Hart Publishing 2019).

2. The Ecological Vocation of the Catholic Church

In a classical historical reading, the anthropological vision of the environment, according to which men dominate nature, has been considered as the basis of the current global ecological crisis. According to Lynn White, when communities were animist and polytheistic, they observed the surrounding nature with wonder and respect, associating gods with springs, woods and crops, to gain their favor and thank them for the gifts they provided through natural cycles.¹⁴ The advent of the Jewish and then Christian religion affirmed the existence...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• PART I Values
• PART II Principles and Rules
• PART III Actions and Enforcement
• Index