Re-imagining the Law for achieving sustainability: Why doing it? How can we do it? What are some of the key institutional challenges?

Abstract

Increasing pressure on natural resources and environmental services due to the world's growing population, unsustainable consumption and production patterns and technological changes are the main factors that have triggered the adoption of the concept of sustainable development on the international scene. To achieve a balance between human development and environment protection, the law can be a powerful social tool to reshape unsustainable individual and organisational behaviours. This paper argues that whilst re-imagining the law is necessary to enhance new institutional arrangements for achieving sustainability, there are likely to be major institutional, political, jurisprudential and cultural impediments to legal and regulatory innovations in the field of natural resource management. To support this view, the author uses a case study, which has been developed as part of a PhD program.