Green Governance
Ecological Survival, Human Rights, and the Law of the Commons

Proposes a new architecture of environmental law and public policy that is as practical as it is theoretically sound.

Burns H. Weston (Author), David Bollier (Author)

9781107415447, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 20 February 2014

390 pages, 1 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 2 cm, 0.52 kg

'Burns Weston and David Bollier have written a bold, imaginative and ambitious book. The planet is in peril and its capacity to sustain life under threat. Market economics, international law and state sovereignty have all failed us. A new approach is needed and that lies in a twin approach: a rights-based governance system for the Earth's resources and development of an ecological commons template for environmental management. The book is well researched and closely argued. It deserves our rapt attention in the struggle to find a way through.' Sir Geoffrey Palmer, former Prime Minister and Minister for the Environment, New Zealand

The vast majority of the world's scientists agree: we have reached a point in history where we are in grave danger of destroying Earth's life-sustaining capacity. But our attempts to protect natural ecosystems are increasingly ineffective because our very conception of the problem is limited; we treat 'the environment' as its own separate realm, taking for granted prevailing but outmoded conceptions of economics, national sovereignty and international law. Green Governance is a direct response to the mounting calls for a paradigm shift in the way humans relate to the natural environment. It opens the door to a new set of solutions by proposing a compelling new synthesis of environmental protection based on broader notions of economics and human rights and on commons-based governance. Going beyond speculative abstractions, the book proposes a new architecture of environmental law and public policy that is as practical as it is theoretically sound.

1. Trends that point toward a new synthesis
2. The human right to a clean and healthy environment
3. The quest for a new rights-based pathway
4. Making the conceptual transition to the new paradigm
5. The commons as a model for ecological governance
6. The rise of the commons movement globally
7. Imagining a new architecture of law and policy to support the ecological commons
8. Catalytic strategies for achieving green governance.

Subject Areas: International environmental law [LBBP], Environmental economics [KCN]