Taming Gaia 2.0: Earth system law in the ruptured Anthropocene

Abstract

If the Anthropocene is a rupture in planetary history, what does it mean for international environmental law? When the Earth System crosses irreversible tipping points and begins a forceful, nonlinear transformation into a hostile state which I call the ruptured Anthropocene, the concept of protecting the global environment from humans would lose its meaning. Not only the dichotomy between humans and nature becomes irrelevant, but the environment itself will no longer exist as an object for protection. I argue that, for international environmental law to stay relevant in the ruptured Anthropocene, it needs to shift away from its traditional focus on restoring the planetary past, and instead play an active role in the making of planetary futures. Its new purpose will need to be active planetary stewardship, whereby humans add self-awareness for deliberate self-regulation of the Earth System. Such an attempt at ‘taming’ the so-called Gaia 2.0 will, however, create winners and losers, and the new form of law will have to address fundamental questions of justice on a planetary scale. Building on the concept of earth system law emerging in the earth system governance literature, I draw the contours of international environmental law 2.0 for the ruptured Anthropocene and discuss the challenges of instituting active planetary stewardship.

An architecture for a net zero world: Global climate governance beyond the epoch of failure

“…While collectively focused on the physical situation of planet Earth such perspectives are also diverse, internally contested, and can sometimes risk an overconfidence that a destabilised world can be confidently governed. Yet one cannot dispute Kim's (2021, pp. 6–7) conclusion that ‘international environmental law 2.0 in the ruptured Anthropocene should help imagine a safe and just future for all, put the “derailed” spaceship back on a desirable trajectory, and monitor its course’.…”

“…He is especially concerned with the near‐term prospect of abrupt and non‐linear system change, warning that relying on ‘management tools built on the assumption that change will be linear and gradual … is a liability that is already costly and that has the potential to generate profoundly disruptive consequences for humans and their communities in the future’ (Young, 2017, p. 94–95). This urgent concern about tipping points is shared by environmental lawyers (Kim, 2021).…”

“…This he matched with an ethical commitment, drawn from Thomas Berry, which recognises that ‘reforming our governance systems will require us to entirely reconceptualise our idea of law from a biocentric or Earth‐centred perspective’ (Cullinan, 2011, p. 26). Kim (2021) argues that ‘for international environmental law to stay relevant in the ruptured Anthropocene, it would need to shift away from its traditional focus on restoring the planetary past, and instead play an active role in the making of planetary futures’ that are shadowed by looming tipping points (Steffen & Morgan, 2021). Kotzé (2017, p. ix) argues for Anthropocene law ‘to be as imaginative as possible … to prise open the existing closures of a hegemonic world and regulatory order that produces limits and … clos[es] down the space for other modes of being and thinking’.…”

Is our planet doubly alive? Gaia, globalization, and the Anthropocene’s planetary superorganisms

“…This process of learning from Gaia could contribute to a Gaia 2.0 that incorporates into planetary feedback loops a technology- and symbol-using humanity. Kim (2021) recently built on this idea, outlining how international environmental law could be reframed around the concept of a “ruptured Anthropocene” to facilitate the integration of self-aware human activity into Gaia 2.0. These theories could be interpreted as descriptions of how relationships could form between comparable entities (in this case, between hypercomplex and hyperdiverse planetary entities): Lenton and Latour’s humankind “learning” from Gaia as part of a newly realized “relation between free agents”; Kim’s humankind “negotiating with” and “taming” Gaia.…”

Towards planetary nexus governance in the Anthropocene: An earth system law perspective

“…Earth system law is intended to serve as a framework that can guide interrogations regarding the difficulties posed to international environmental law in thinking with the earth system , as it were and, ultimately, as a roadmap for international environmental law to become more sensitive to and reflective of the functioning of the earth system and the multiple complex governance implications of the earth system. The epistemic project of earth system law is therefore essentially concerned with crafting ‘international environmental law 2.0 for a profoundly changed, complex world of the Anthropocene’ (Kim, 2021, p. 3) or, in short, Lex Anthropocenae (Kotzé & French, 2018).…”