Rethinking Global Environmental Law and Governance in the Anthropocene

The word Anthropocene describes a new geological epoch that follows the Holocene epoch. It is the signifier of the period in which people have a devastating and overwhelming impact on the earth and its systems. The Anthropocene also describes the new context in which we are going to have to consider how we should deal with the effects of global anthropogenic ecological change, including how we think about natural resources and energy security. This will require new perspectives on and reimagining orthodox social institutional constructs such as global environmental law and governance, among others, and their ability to successfully mediate the human-environment interface. This article reflects on how we will have to rethink global environmental law and governance as a result of the Anthropocene. It specifically attempts to identify a host of considerations that environmental lawyers, including those who focus on natural resources and energy law, will have to contemplate if global environmental law and governance were to respond better to the many challenges and complexities in the Anthropocene epoch. At a more general level, the article endeavours to introduce the Anthropocene into the environmental law and governance domain as a new discursive context that could hopefully assist in the appropriate future development of global environmental law and governance.