Changing Role of Law-Making in Responding to Planetary Boundaries?

Legal discourse focuses on the potential to improve law to prevent breaches of the planetary boundaries and on the adoption of new measures to give the Earth system time to recover from human actions. That analysis, however, tends to rest on the assumption that we can modify our existing laws in ways that will prompt individuals and States to modify their behaviour so as to reduce the risk of breaching the planetary boundaries. In this chapter we examine the roots of this approach and present alternative approaches which may prove more fruitful. In particular, we propose a move within law to focus on responsibilities more than on rights, and to embracing approaches within indigenous and other cultures which also focus on responsibilities.