International Law of Abeyance: Our Sovereign Wild

Ecological ethics is gaining traction. Can this new attitude towards our ecosystems help to motivate a change in our relationship with land and nature? Can we move towards a legal system that supports the legal personality of land, devoid of human ownership? There are substantial amounts of international environmental law that have been hovering on the fringes of defining and then redefining our relationship with land, with more emphasis on respecting the land as itself, rather than as a vehicle with which humanity can gain wealth. This article briefly explores the conjunction of international environmental law history and ecological ethics in the hope that it will encourage a segue in our approach to conservation, ecology and being.