Anthropocene Legalities: Reconfiguring the Material, Subjective, Spatial and Temporal Boundaries of Climate Justice
Location:
Moot Court Room,
Old College
Date/time
Thu 30 November 2023
14:00 - 16:00
About this event
Dr. Marie Petersmann is Assistant Professorial Research Fellow at LSE Law School.
The register of human rights has become central to press governments into action against ecological catastrophes symptomatic of the Anthropocene, including climate change. This approach bears much rhetorical traction and litigating potential, as evidenced in recent transnational climate cases that strategically broadened the scope of who can be considered legally affected by climate change, where and how. Yet, the deployment of rights-based approaches also entails significant limitations in how we perceive, account for and address climate harms. These limits are reflected in how rights and obligations are materially, subjectively, spatially and temporally defined and delineated. While progressive legal action is pushing these boundaries by shifting from actual to potential harms, from human to nonhuman rights, from territorial to extra-territorial obligations and from present to future generations, these developments remain committed to and constrained by liberal underpinnings that limit legal and political actions for climate justice. This article ties together insights from posthumanism, new materialism and critical Black studies to draw out four pressure points on which legal thought and practice can be pushed further: by shifting from potential to entangled harms, from nonhuman to more-than-human victims, from extra-territorial to terrestrial space, and from future to enduring temporalities. This intervention – captured through the concept of Anthropocene Legalities – aims to inspire and energise new strategies for reparative legal action and climate justice.