Confronting Remote Ownership Problems with Ecological Law
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CONFRONTING REMOTE OWNERSHIP PROBLEMS WITH ECOLOGICAL LAW Geoffrey Garver* ABSTRACT ThomasBerry’s powerfulappeal foramutually enhancing human- Earthrelationshipfaces many challengesdue to theecological crisis that is co-identifiedwith dominant growth-insistenteconomic,political, andlegal systemsacrossthe world. Thedomains of environmental history, ecological restoration, and eco-culturalrestoration, as well as studies by Elinor Ostrom and othersofsustainableuse of commonpool resources,provide insightsonthe necessary conditions foramutually enhancing human-Earth relationship. Atheme commontothesedomains is theneed forintimate knowledgeofand connectiontoplace that requiresalong-standing commitment of people to theecosystems that sustainthem.Remoteprivate ownership—oftenbylarge and politically powerful multinational corporations financed by investorsseeking thehighest possiblereturns and lacking knowledgeorinterestinthe places and people they harm—is deeplyengrained in theglobal economic system.The historical rootsof remote ownership and controlgoback to territorial extensification associated with thesharpriseofcolonialismand long-distancetradeinthe earlymodernera.Yet remote owners’and investors’ detachment from place poses an enormous challenge in thequest foramutually enhancing human-Earthrelationship. ThisEssaypresents an analysis of how contemporary environmental lawundergirds theremoteownershipproblem and of how limits-insistentecological lawcouldprovide solutions. ABSTRACT..................................................................................................425 INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................426 I. AMUTUALLY ENHANCING HUMAN-EARTH RELATIONSHIP:AMORAL GROUNDING FOR ECOLOGICAL LAW .........................................................428 II. THE REMOTE OWNERSHIP PROBLEM ....................................................436 A. EcologicalDisruptionfromAgriculture...........................................437 B. Metabolic Rift andthe Rise of GlobalTrade....................................440 *Dr. GeoffreyGarver,Ph.D.,J.D., L.L.M.,coordinates research on lawand governance for theEconomicsfor theAnthropocene Partnership (e4a-net.org)and teaches environmental coursesat McGill University and ConcordiaUniversity.Heisonthe steeringcommitteeofthe Ecological Law and Governance Association, ELGA(elga.world). 426 Vermont Law Review [Vol.43:425 C. ModernGlobal Trade and Investment..............................................443 D. Trade, Investment,and Remote Ownership Problems .....................449 III. CONFRONTING REMOTE OWNERSHIP UNDER ECOLOGICAL LAW .......450 CONCLUSION ..............................................................................................453 INTRODUCTION Thegrowing tensionbetween theglobally dominant socio-political narrative, based on insistence on economic growth,and thealternative limits-based narrative in whichthe emerging field of ecologicallaw is grounded, createsanurgently needed openingfor transformationoflaw.1 Contemporarylegal systems co-evolved with other socially constructed normativesystems that characterizethe growth-insistent narrative.2 Therefore, theradical transformationthatecological lawcalls for necessarily involves concomitant transformationofthe social,political, economic,and cultural systems with whichlaw interactsacross temporal andspatialscales.3 1. KathrynGwiazdon, We Cannot Fail: The Promise and Principles of Ecological Lawand Governance,11MINDING NATURE 36, 36 (2018) (highlightingthe creationofthe Ecological Law and Governance Association (ELGA)asone response to theneedtostructureprinciples of lawand governance around thefoundations of life). 2. PANARCHY:UNDERSTANDING TRANSFORMATIONS IN HUMAN AND NATURAL SYSTEMS 5 (Lance H. Gunderson &C.S.Hollingeds.,2002) (explaining that co-evolutioninvolves aconstant “interplay between change and persistence, between thepredictableand unpredictable”). 3. See id. (“The cross-scale,interdisciplinary,and dynamic natureofthe theoryhas [led] us to coin theterm panarchy for it.”); RICHARD O. BROOKS ET AL., LAW AND ECOLOGY 36 (2002) (suggesting that “bothecologyand environmental laware undergoing transformations to betteradapt to eachother and to theenvironmental problems they areseeking to resolve”);DonaldT.Hornstein, Complexity Theory, Adaptation, and AdministrativeLaw,54DUKE L. REV.913, 932, 944 (2005) (demonstratinghow transformations that transcendour routinepolitical and social systemsmay come from a“republican moment[]”);J.B.Ruhl, Law’s Complexity: APrimer,24GA.ST.U.L.REV.885, 896–97, 901 (2008) (“[I]n social systems, change veryoften is the specificintent of human intervention, in whichcaseknowinghow thesystemresponds to changeshouldbeanimportant factor in thedesign of theinstrumentofchange.”); J.B. Ruhl, Panarchy and theLaw,17ECOLOGY &SOC’Y,no. 3, 2012, art. no. 31, https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss3/art31/ (demonstratingthatadaptivesystems theoryhas alreadyspread to economics,ecology, and sociology); RobinKundisCraig, Learning to Think About Complex EnvironmentalSystems inEnvironmental and Natural Resource Lawand Legal Scholarship: ATwenty-Year Retrospective,24FORDHAM ENVTL.L.REV.87, 92 (2013) (“Howdowe transform environmentaland natural resources lawintogovernance systems that can cope with continual change, ever-present uncertainty,and thepotential forcatastrophic...thresholdcrossings in socio-ecological systems?”); AhjondS.Garmestani&Melinda Harm Benson, AFramework for Resilience-BasedGovernance of Social-Ecological Systems,18ECOLOGY &SOC’Y,no. 1, 2013, art. no. 9, http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol18/iss1/art9/(“The primaryproblems with our current framework for environmentallaw are that it does not often account forscale andtends to lock-in‘fixes’ 2019] ConfrontingRemoteOwnershipProblemswithEcological Law 427 Propertyregimes andstate sovereigntyare twoofthe main normative constructsthat will needprofound rethinking and regroundinginany transitionfromcontemporarylaw to ecological law.4 Deeply entrenched protections of privateproperty rightsand strong resistance to stringent supranationallegal regimesfor environmental protectionand othermatters act—often in concert—to impede meaningful,widespread achievement of an ecologically sustainable balance between societal developmentand ecological integrity.5 In particular,remoteprivateownership and absentee landlords associated with land andresource grabbing oftenlodge prevailing power overland usedecisions in decisionmakers whoare geographically farremoved fromthe effected ecological systems andlackinginthe knowledge neededfor managingthem in an ecologically sustainable manner.6 Thomas Berry’s conceptionofamutually enhancing human-Earth relationshipprovidesacompellingcoreobjectivefor ecological lawand the becauseofthe needfor certainty in the legalprocess.”); RakhyunE.Kim &KlausBosselmann, International Environmental Law in the Anthropocene:Towards aPurposive System of Multilateral Environmental Agreements,2TRANSNAT’L ENVTL.L.285, 307 (2013) (“[T]heultimatepurpose of internationalenvironmentallaw should be aboutsafeguardingthe integrityofEarth’s life-support system, or all identified andpotentialplanetary boundaries, as thenon-negotiable biophysical preconditions forhuman existence and development.”); Olivia Odom Greenetal., Barriers and Bridges to the Integration of Social–Ecological Resilience and Law,13FRONTIERS ECOLOGY &ENV’T 332, 332, 335 (2015) (demonstratingthatadaptivegovernancemay be apart of thetransformationto ecologicallaw). 4. See Geoffrey Garver, ASystems-Based Tool forTransitioning to Law foraMutually Enhancing Human-EarthRelationship,157 ECOLOGICAL ECON.165, 166 [hereinafter Garver, A Systems-BasedTool forTransitioningtoLaw](explaining that “the dominant anthropocentric narrative...[is]reinforced by legal systems built around strong notions of statesovereignty and private property rights”); GeoffreyGarver, The Rule of EcologicalLaw:The Legal ComplementtoDegrowth Economics,5SUSTAINABILITY 316, 319, 321 (2013) [hereinafter Garver, The RuleofEcological Law] (contending that aflawofenvironmental lawand economicsisthe favoring of monetization, leading to primaryeconomic rather than ecological constraints on land). 5.See Garver, ASystems-Based Tool for Transitioning to Law, supra note4(“Prevailing legal systems ...assume[] non-human nature is subjecttohuman dominance ....”). 6. See FRED PEARCE,THE LAND GRABBERS:THE NEW FIGHT OVER WHO OWNS THE EARTH viii,5–6 (2012) (explaining thefirst exampleofthe global “landgrabs” he explored, including Al Amoudi, whorecruitedaformer Zenawiminister—Hail Assegdie—who plans to digacanal through villagers’landwithouttheir knowledge);Jampel Dell’Angeloetal., The Tragedy of theGrabbed Commons:Coercion and Dispossession in the Global Land Rush,92WORLD DEV.1,9(2017) (demonstratingthatthe “broaderdynamicsoflandgrabbing cannot be prevented by acting onlyon property regimeswithoutaddressingpower dynamicsand systemsofproduction”); Marc Edelman, CarlosOya &Saturnino M. Borras Jr., Global LandGrabs: Historical Processes, Theoretical and Methodological Implicationand Current Trajectories,34THIRD WORLD Q.,1517,1528 (2013) (connectingchanges in agrarian economy, capitalism,and other driversofdevelopment with solutions in environmental law). 428 Vermont Law Review [Vol.43:425 relatedfield of ecological economics.7 This Essay is asystems-based examinationofhow ecologicallaw that supports an ongoing questfor a mutually enhancing human-Earthrelationshipprovidesecologically