Abstract
The notion of sustainability has been widely discussed in the last two decades. This chapter briefly sums up these debates and tries to present a new concept that combines the prevailing normative perspective and new contents from other fields, particularly from education and culture. Today’s sustainability discussions should suggest theoretical frameworks that provide new (or old) epistemologies that empower people and help policy action to face challenges which are mostly global, interconnected and systemic (see Sect. 2.1). The world needs more than ever deep cultural transformations, awareness and civil society engagement to preserve planet Earth for future generations in the Anthropocene but there has been little engagement of legal scholarship in alternative interdisciplinary dialogues dealing with education and culture as part of sustainability. Under these premises, the role of law cannot be any longer disconnected from other knowledge systems and should redesign legal and institutional intervention allowing future generations ‘access’ to justice nurturing bottom-up approaches best operationalised from cultural and educational realms (see Sect. 2.2). New methodological and integrated approaches are prevailing today, while sustainability science has also emerged as a scientific field departing from traditional academic approaches and breaking silos into the existing scientific domains. This does not imply dismissing the role of specific knowledge fields: it means that fields such as legal science should reflect the new systemic thinking of contemporary science (see Sect. 2.3).
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Notes
- 1.
Viñuales (2018) refers to the term Anthropocene, as an advent in which “[h]umans have become an Earth-shaping force of geological proportions or, more specifically, that they have caused a lasting change in the Earth system”, for further bibliographical reference on this geological era, see Viñuales (2018).
- 2.
See further on this topic, Kabblers and Palombella (2019).
- 3.
See for instance, Pope Francis I (2015).
- 4.
Bosselmann (2008), pp. 26–27 argues that “growth critics such as Edward Goldsmith, Mesarovic, Eduard Pestel, Dennnis Meadows, Rudolf Bahro (1994) or Herman Daly, have always been opposed to sustainable development; while authors like Wilfred Beckermann, K. Arrow, Peter Bartelmus, David Pearce or William Nordhaus saw growth as an inherent part of the new concept of sustainable development.
- 5.
Bosselmann (2008).
- 6.
From now onwards (TEU).
- 7.
On this, see further, Humphreys (2017), Chapter 3.
- 8.
On this argument, Sen (1999) in Chapter 6 of his book Development as Freedom, he makes a striking introduction of how honey collectors in the Bay of Bengal (at the southern edge of Bangladesh in India, where there is the Sundarban and lives the famous Royal Bengal tiger and famous also for its honey) risk their lives running the risk to be attacked by the (protected, in risk of extinction) Bengal tiger for the sake of their economic needs (fifty cents for selling a bottle of honey). Sen argues here how “it is not hard to feel that this force must outweigh other claims, including those of political liberties and civil rights”.
- 9.
See resolution Adopted by the General Assembly on 25 September 2015-Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development UN Doc GA/RES/70/1 (2015) (hereafter 2030 Agenda SD).
- 10.
The difference between the notions is addressed in the Third Chapter.
- 11.
- 12.
Bosselmann (2010), p. 26, discusses that “if a worldwide awareness of environmental issues emerged in the 1970s, there was also the emergence of two directions of environmentalism that never reconciled their positions. On the one hand, the critique of the growth paradigm has inspired those who envisaged sustainability as the counter-model to economic dominance. On the other hand, connecting the ‘environment’ (sustainability) with ‘development’ (growth) found friends in all political camps”.
- 13.
See further, Farrell (2011).
- 14.
On this line of thinking, I suggest the reading of Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed, Jared Diamond (2005).
- 15.
Inspired by the idea developed by Göpel (2016).
- 16.
However, we will come to this later when we address the international scenario fostering the re-endorsement of the value of education and culture as instrumental yardsticks for a sustainable future (see Chap. 4).
- 17.
On this, see, “Culture: Fourth Pillar of Sustainable Development”, Agenda 21, Local Governments safeguarding culture for future generations, retrieved from UNESCO, http://www.agenda21culture.net; and Hawkes (2001).
- 18.
The draft Global Pact for the Environment embeds the ecological integrity in its Articles 2 and 18. Article 2 provides states, institutions, and individuals to take care of the environment in a way that everyone would contribute “to the conservation, protection and restoration of the integrity of the Earth’s ecosystems”.
- 19.
For a different conceptual approach within the context of overlapping legalities, see further, Palombella (2017).
- 20.
See further, Murphy (2010).
- 21.
In my opinion, Habermas (1996) provides a quite moderate theoretical view valid within the European normative context to validate a normative grounding under the paradigm of SD that embraces a social critique in which the maintenance of state political agendas, alongside the ability of capitalism to exploit new avenues for wealth creation are not valid any longer, because they have resulted in more and more decisions affecting the lives of citizens being based on the bottom line of power and capitalist instruments, and of course detrimental to nature. On a more recent discussion, see, Habermas (2015).
- 22.
Dewey (1980).
- 23.
These authors refer to the field as ‘sustainability sciences’ although they argue that field emerged as sustainability science and “it was proposed by Kates et al. (2001), with a focus on the interactions between nature and society and with the aim of having integrated contributions from different disciplines to sustainability. However, the design results in a fundamental contradiction: Is it possible to outline a science of sustainability? What topics (subjects) would compose it?” There are two options: (1) designing a sustainability science to define which topics to include for its composition; or conversely (2) starting from the range of topics necessary for its analysis, considering the various science needed. The first option (1) assumes the configuration of a sustainability science. The second (2) involves a research field composes of various sciences and technologies, as well as humanities, altogether making the sustainability sciences.
- 24.
See resolution Adopted by the General Assembly on 25 September 2015-Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development UN Doc GA/RES/70/1 (2015) (hereafter 2030 Agenda SD).
- 25.
See further on this, Patterson et al. (2017).
- 26.
Göpel (2016), p. 16. Maja argues the positive side of accepting such transdisciplinary approaches when analysing ‘sustainable development’ considering that they promise “the most telling insights into how the infamous integration of ecological, social and economic dimensions of development can be achieved in practice”.
- 27.
See for instance the conceptual milestone work on ‘International Sustainability Transitions’ leaded by Grin, Rotmans, and Schot (2010). See further on this, Göpel (2016), she addresses the conceptual differences between transition and transformation approaches in a brilliant manner. Instead, for a more recent work on the notion of transformation more akin to the present work see further, Patterson et al. (2017).
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Sánchez Galera, M.D. (2020). Conceptual and Methodological Premise: Breaking Silos Into the Legal Domain. In: Educational and Cultural Challenges of the European Sustainability Model. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38716-7_2
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