Researcher outlines ‘cluster of topics’ for legal approach to address global climate crises

LAWRENCE — As climate crises worsen and political will to take concrete steps to address them are lacking in many areas of the world, a University of Kansas law professor has published an article outlining the ecological, cultural, global, ethical and legal reforms that would be necessary to create a new reality to address the issues.

John Head, Robert W. Wagstaff Distinguished Professor at KU Law, has studied international and comparative law and written extensively on agricultural and environmental reform for decades. His new scholarship brings together a “cluster of topics” focusing on the climate, soil and biodiversity crises specifically and how humans can step away from an anthropocentric approach to the natural world.

“I thought this was a nice opportunity to bring together a lot of threads in a more brief format that I’ve been working on for years,” Head said of the invitation to the University of Missouri Kansas City Law Review’s symposium on international environmental law. “Whenever you rethink these types of things, you come up with a different overlay of understanding. What I’m calling for in this article is a reorientation of how humans see their own place in nature and the responsibility we have for not making our own existence dominant over the natural world.”

To pivot away from what Head calls an “anthropocentric” approach would require legal, cultural, global and other tactics, which he outlines in the paper through five proposition paragraphs. In the first, Head outlines how such a major shift would involve an ecological perspective. That would require efforts from legal and governmental angles such as changing food production and energy consumption patterns in various parts of the world.

Stepping away from an anthropocentric attitude to the Earth is addressed in proposition paragraph two, in which the author demonstrates how a cultural change would be necessary.

“Achieving such a reoriented mind-set will require cultural reform that might seem impossible — and that Americans in particular (and privileged societies in general) will chafe at, especially until the benefits of the change are recognized,” Head wrote. “But perhaps a common species-wide narrative can in fact be adopted today, in the age of information, better than ever before.”

As climate crises are global and threaten all parts of the world, a sufficient response would necessarily be global in nature. In his third proposition paragraph, Head outlines how this would take international cooperation, not necessarily through a centralization of power, but more effectively through an environmentally targeted global institution with pluralistic sovereignty.

Proposition paragraph number four outlines how achieving a new climate reality could be done ethically. Namely, such an approach would have to include stakeholders from all walks of life, especially those who have been historically marginalized and with a focus that understands future generations would benefit from such actions and recognize the interests and even legal rights of nonhuman species and natural systems.

Finally, the last proposition paragraph explores how such efforts would be necessarily achieved through legal reform. Head outlines how international law would need to form binding and enforceable structures to address the climate, soils and biodiversity crises.

Throughout the article, forthcoming in the University of Missouri-Kansas City Law Review, Head cites his own scholarship — that is, books and journal articles he published over the decades — and also the writings of other experts around the world. As he nears the end of his legal academic career, Head said he recognizes there is less political will to address climate issues now than there was 50 years ago. However, examining the work being done globally to address the crises is necessary if progress is to be made in the next half-century. He alluded to the quote often attributed to Benjamin Franklin — “we must all hang together, or we shall all hang separately” — to emphasize the importance of unified global action in the face of a global threat.

“Certainly, it is vital now to address these three crises, especially since their effects are colliding,” Head said. “There are more severe weather crises, particularly in areas of the world where food production will soon no longer be possible. That is how I see the next 50 years as a period of intense environmental danger. I recognize that it is almost impossible to imagine the types of reforms I lay out being made in today’s political setting, and not just in the United States. These crises are hurtling toward us though, and we must at least conceptualize an approach of how it could be done.”