Sustainability and its legal foundation - one perspective

In a covering letter for the academic paper "Environmental Laws and Sustainability” posted on the ‘Sustainability: Special Issues’ web page, Prof. Dr. John C. Dernbach states that “sustainability does not now have an adequate or supportive legal foundation, in spite of the many environmental and natural resources laws that exist. If we are to make significant progress toward a sustainable society, much less achieve sustainability, we will need to develop and implement laws and legal institutions that do not now exist, or that exist in a much different form.”(‘Environmental Laws and Sustainability’, Prof. Dr. John C.)

This suggests that the law is not adapting sufficiently to growing sustainability issues and that there is a lot to be done with the law to help achieve sustainability and to meet the demands of ever-growing issues regarding our interaction with the planet and how we will preserve it for future generations. By “supportive legal foundation”, the writer implies that sustainability is lacking in some way; it does not carry enough ‘weight’ or authority because it has little “legal foundation."

This suggests that without a strong legal basis, sustainability is merely a concept or a theory which cannot be fully applied or implemented by authorities across the globe. Therefore, sustainability and the law are interdependent regarding growing sustainability issues. Sustainability itself needs the law to back it up and provide it with substance and authority so it can be taken seriously and be used effectively by governments and the law also needs to keep up and adapt to incorporate sustainability and the environment to make sure that we can care for our planet and that the law is modern and always compatible with modern, global society.

Whilst a well-researched and well-regarded academic wrote the paper in question meaning it is mostly reliable, parts of the paper are opinion based and are therefore subjective. They are Prof. Dr. John C Dernbach’s own arguments and points of view. Therefore, these sections of the paper might be biased towards his opinion that “sustainability does not now have an adequate or supportive legal foundation”.