1. Introduction
Today we are facing multiple phenomena of anthropogenic disasters in Asia and beyond. Such human-induced disasters include the threats of zoonotic virus pandemics, rising sea levels, deforestation, desertification, species extinction, powerful monsoons and other seasonal disruptions, and increasing levels of contamination of the environment and further destruction of ecosystems on Earth. Since its inception in Singapore, the Asian Law and Society Association (ALSA) has organized multiple panels and innovative sessions to examine the impact of emerging natural disasters and ecological catastrophes across multiple regions of Asia. Footnote 1 The subsequent annual ALSA conferences in Taiwan, Australia, and Japan further examined these anthropogenic crises and ecological devastations, and explored innovative theoretic approaches and socio-legal strategies to protect and conserve ecosystems and the fragility of nature; to devise effective domestic and international policies to preserve the indigenous communities and their self-sustaining culture and knowledge; and to propose innovative legal programmes to deal with food scarcity, resource conflicts, and the anticipated proliferation of climate refugees, environmental migrants, and asylum seekers. Footnote 2
In December 2019, the Fourth ALSA Conference in Osaka, Japan included a Plenary Presidential Session on the “The Anthropocene and the Law in Asia”—the first such session to address this theme. Two separate panels over two days addressed the impact of climate change and natural disasters upon the welfare of organized human society in Asia and beyond, exploring many possible legal responses to mitigate, if not eliminate, the devastating effect of human-made environmental disasters and the continuing destruction of ecosystems and the natural environment. Panel presenters discussed innovative ways to regulate the influx of climate refugees, to introduce the Rights of Nature (RoN) approach as part of robust Earth Jurisprudence to protect fragile ecosystems, and to restore the self-sustaining cultures practised by indigenous nations and aboriginal communities that had stewarded and protected their own ancestral homelands across multiple regions in Asia for many centuries. The timing of such critical discussions of climate change and environmental disasters in Osaka, Japan in December 2019 turned out to be prophetic, as major anthropogenic disasters had just begun to arise, not only in China, but also in Australia and beyond.
2. Anthropogenic disasters: the climate change and coronavirus pandemic
As the ALSA Conference in Japan was underway in December 2019, an unprecedented magnitude of regional wild bushfires began to engulf the state of New South Wales in Australia. The massive extent of these fires was such that the smoke had soon reached Argentina, Chile, and other countries in South America. In Argentina, for example, the effect was so striking that the sky of its capital, Buenos Aires, had turned bright red with smoke. Footnote 3 By the time that Melbourne, the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, finally lifted the state of emergency in February, the bushfire had already killed or displaced more than 3 billion animals, making it the worst wildlife disaster ever in modern history. Footnote 4 The anthropogenic disaster was entirely predictable, however, as the warning of such an extraordinary bushfire in Australia had been recorded exactly one year before, in December 2018, when a series of uncontrolled wild bushfires in Tasmania, an island off the south coast of New South Wales, had devastated the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. Footnote 5 The disaster report had demonstrated the urgent need for the government to address climate crises through stricter environmental policies and strong environmental enforcement to curtail ecologically unsustainable corporate development in the region, including the stopping of corporate clearing of large territories for industrial agriculture. Footnote 6
As the wild bushfires began to engulf the south-eastern region of Australia in December 2019, another anthropogenic disaster was brewing in China. A new pneumonia outbreak was reported in the City of Wuhan in China’s Hubei Province after the first onset case was identified on 1 December. Footnote 7 By late December, Chinese scientists had determined that the new outbreak was traced to a novel strain of zoonotic coronavirus. The Chinese government soon reported it to the World Health Organization (WHO), which then named the virus as SARS-CoV-2 and the resultant disease as COVID-19. Footnote 8 On 5 January, the WHO issued a warning and published a comprehensive package of guidance documents for the world, covering the management of a new disease and the threat of its potential outbreak. Footnote 9 The SARS-CoV-2 is a zoonotic virus that is transmitted from animals to humans. Scientists have long warned that the adoption of neoliberal programmes of industrial development across the globe, including systemic deforestation, illegal wildlife trade, and industrial agricultural encroachment on indigenous communities’ ancestral homelands and territories, has eradicated the barrier of “natural borders” that once existed between wild animals and humans, making cross-species, zoonotic virus transmission more frequent and dangerous. Footnote 10 Given the fact that Asia contains over 60% of the global population and covers more than 30% of the planetary continents, the current and future threat of anthropogenic disasters and ecological catastrophes continues to exert significant impacts upon the ecological balances of the natural environment in many regions in Asia. Further, the threat of anthropogenic catastrophes has the potential to produce large numbers of climate refugees and climate-induced ethnic conflicts due to poverty and resource scarcity. Anthropogenic disasters can also generate the risk of hunger and food insecurity in large cities and populous areas due to sudden population upsurge and urbanization spikes. Footnote 11
2.1 The coming crisis of more serious climate disasters in Asia and beyond
In 2018, Nature Communications, a popular journal of natural science, issued the grave warning that Asia would become the region most affected by anthropogenic disasters. Footnote 12 Other studies have identified specific climate-affected regions in Asia, including China, Bangladesh, Vietnam, India, Indonesia, Thailand, and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Footnote 13 These studies have warned that many Asian countries would soon face coastal elevations of more than six feet, or two metres. These areas included such megacities as Bangkok in Thailand and Vietnam’s economic centre of Ho Chi Minh City, with much of southern Vietnam and its adjacent regions in Southeast Asia at risk of disappearing by 2050. Footnote 14 Due to the projection that a quarter or more of Jakarta may be submerged into the sea within the next ten years, Indonesia has decided that its national capital, with a population of 30 million, will move from Jakarta on the island of Java to the province of East Kalimantan on Borneo, which is the world’s third largest island. Footnote 15 Guangzhou and Dongguan, two major cities in China’s Pearl River Delta Economic Zone that are responsible for 20% of Chinese GDP, are also projected to be in great danger in coming decades due to rising sea levels. Footnote 16 Indeed, 11 of the 15 most at-risk cities with populations of greater than 1 million are located in Asia. Footnote 17 Additional studies have warned that more than 300 million people in East Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia will soon face the risk of becoming climate refugees because of rising sea levels—a figure that is three times higher than previous estimates. Footnote 18
Various other aspects of climate change have affected many central regions in Asia. Nepal has suffered from emerging environmental and ecological catastrophes due to the rapid melting of the glacier at the Himalayan Plateau due to global warming and climate change. In 2020 alone, the Nepalese government reported 445 instances of flooding and landslides in 70 of the 77 districts in the country, leading to 132 deaths, 53 missing, and 128 injured. Footnote 19 Such impacts are intensified due to the after-effects of the 2015 earthquake that destroyed many buildings, roads, and other infrastructure. Global warming has exacerbated temperature rise in other countries in Central Asia, causing frequent and longer droughts. Footnote 20 The World Bank (WB) estimated that total crop yields in Central Asia were expected to decrease by 30% by 2050 due to changing climate patterns and seasonal weather disruptions. Footnote 21 In Afghanistan, prolonged drought, armed conflicts, and poverty had already created by 2019 a food-insecure population of 13.3 million. Footnote 22
2.2 The anthropogenic epidemic: the SARS-CoV-2 virus and COVID-19
The coronavirus pandemic is another egregious example of the anthropogenic crisis. Asia has witnessed multiple instances of devastating pandemics in its history, including the Black Death that lasted from 1346 to 1353, killing between 75 and 200 million people not only in Asia, but also Europe and Africa; the Spanish Flu Pandemic from 1918 to 1920, killing more than 20 million across the globe, in which the majority of casualties occurred in India; the Asian Flu from 1956 to 1958, killing 2 million in China, Singapore, and the US; and finally the HIV-AIDS pandemic from the early 1980s to the present, killing 36 million people in Asia and across the globe. Footnote 23 The Black Death was a bacteria-caused disease, but the other deadly pandemics have been caused by zoonotic viruses originating in animals. Footnote 24
Epidemiologists have warned that the frequency of zoonotic virus pandemics would accelerate in the future. Since the year 2000, there have been at least five instances of such outbreaks: (1) the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003; (2) H1N1 influenza Virus or H1N1 flu in 2009; (3) the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronavirus in 2012; (4) Ebola in 2014; and (5) SARS-CoV-2 in 2019. In order to respond to the possibility of ever-increasing instances of zoonotic epidemics, the WHO adopted the International Health Regulation (IHR) in 2005 and mandated all member states to prepare and strategize for the detection and response to public health threats and emergencies. However, only 20% of countries reported full compliance with the 2005 IHR. Footnote 25 Until recently, the US had played a prominent role in suppressing zoonotic virus pandemics in the world. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), its Global Disease Detection Operations Center (GDDOC), and the Incident Management System (IMS) had efficiently responded to past pandemics. Nearly 4,000 CDC staff, for example, participated in the quick response in Ebola-affected countries and regions. Footnote 26 The US military also participated in providing support in past disasters and pandemics, activating Operation United Assistance. For instance, the US military provided a humanitarian response to the Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa in 2014, with the 101st Airborne Division leading the mission to eradicate the pandemic threat to other West African regions and countries. Footnote 27 The Obama administration also created the Directorate of Global Health Security and Biodefense in the National Security Council (NSC) in 2016 in order to prepare for future disease outbreak and prevent it from becoming an epidemic. Footnote 28 Two years later, in 2018, this was disbanded by the Trump administration and, in 2020, the US announced its withdrawal from WHO membership. Footnote 29 Consequently, the US lost its global leadership role in the prevention and suppression of the dangerous zoonotic pandemic around the globe.
As a result, many countries were forced to create their own pandemic response teams and strategies. Many countries in Asia, including Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Vietnam, and others, responded immediately to the latest coronavirus outbreak. Taiwan, for example, whose people had suffered from the SARS outbreak in 2003, examined the reported outbreak of flu-like symptoms in Wuhan, China and sent a warning e-mail to the WHO in late December, although it is a non-WHO member. Footnote 30 Despite the fact that the beginning period of the alleged zoonotic virus outbreak overlapped with the time of their presidential election, Taiwan swiftly prepared their governmental response. Footnote 31 In late December, Taiwan began airport screening of all passengers from Wuhan; in January, set up a central emergency command centre; imposed an entry restriction on all Chinese nationals; requisitioned all surgical masks produced in Taiwan for domestic use; and in February implemented a rationing system of protective masks for the public. Footnote 32 In March, Taiwan moved to ban all foreign visitors; imposed mandatory 14-day self-isolation for all arriving passengers, including Taiwanese citizens; mandated that all passengers on public transportation had to wear a face mask; and put forth an economic relief package for people and businesses affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Footnote 33
As of today, Taiwan, with a population of 24 million, has a total of seven casualties and 527 confirmed COVID-19 patients. Footnote 34 Yet, in other parts of the world, coronavirus cases and death tolls have continued to mount, including in Western democracies in Europe and North America. While the UK and many other advanced industrial countries remain WHO members, they have failed to properly react to the WHO’s early warning about the pandemic. US President Donald J. Trump waited until 13 March to declare a national emergency in response to the coronavirus pandemic, despite multiple warnings given by administrative aides and health specialists. Footnote 35 By the end of September 2020, the US had suffered more than 200,000 deaths, accounting for 20% of the world’s casualties due to the pandemic, although the US accounts for less than 5% of the global population. Footnote 36 COVID-19 has also infected 33 million and killed more than 1 million people across the globe. Footnote 37
Many scientists have predicted that more frequent and serious pandemics would continue to haunt humanity in the years and decades to come. Footnote 38 Globalization and neoliberal policies have increased the possibility of ever-threatening perfect storms of zoonotic diseases to spill over from wildlife into human societies. The egregious impact of human-induced climate change, accelerated species extinction, the radical alteration of natural landscapes, the rapid exploitation and eradication of natural ecology, and the pollution and contamination of oceans and ecosystems requires serious debate and critical consideration in order to mitigate the effects of anthropogenic disasters in coming decades.
The following section provides a brief synopsis of three articles in this Special Issue that draw on the most recent socio-legal research in exploring possible approaches to tackling future anthropogenic disasters Asia and beyond.
3. The Anthropocene and the law in Asia: Presidential Session papers
These three articles offer a number of innovative approaches to dealing with anthropogenic disasters and human-made catastrophes that have already devastated many regions of Southeast Asia, South Asia, and other vulnerable areas in Asia. Professor Liesolette Viaene’s opening article, “Can Rights of Nature Save Us from the Anthropocene Catastrophe? Some Critical Reflections from the Field,” provides a critical analysis of the recent evolution of the RoN movement to establish the robust “Earth Jurisprudence” in order to tackle the threat of anthropogenic catastrophes. Professor Viaene first evaluates the efficacy of the RoN approach that transformed nature into “rights-bearing” entities in order to protect the environment; to preserve the rights of indigenous people, their knowledge and cultures that have long protected their ancestral homelands; and ultimately to preserve and maintain the ecological health of Earth. Professor Viaene then offers a careful analysis of the historical evolution of the RoN movement and the legal approaches involved, as well as its recent adoption in multiple countries around the world, including, most prominently, Ecuador, which enshrined the RoN principle in its Constitution in 2008, following the legislative adoption in Bolivia in 2010. In 2017, the New Zealand court decided to reify the river as a “rights-bearing” legal person, followed by Colombia in 2018, which also recognized the river and forest as legally protected natural subjects to be protected from ecologically unsustainable state and corporate projects. Footnote 39
Professor Viaene warns that despite its widespread application to legal protection of the ecological health of rivers, forests, and other “subparts” of natural elements, there are dangers in RoN’s law-centric approach due to the implied acceptance of the predatory root of coloniality embedded in Euro-American legal enterprises. Nature, in the eyes of Western legal systems, has been confined to the realm of, and has long been treated as, commodified properties. Professor Viaene similarly warns of the Western tendency to romanticize and essentialize indigenous knowledge and culture without acknowledging the totality of nature as an over-encompassing holistic entity. Drawing on the voices of indigenous elders, the author notes that the history of anti-ecological human activities, such as regional conflicts and armed excursions in Guatemala, Colombia, and other countries in Central America in the late twentieth century, had already invoked the wrath of nature, leading to widespread water scarcity, disease, land infertility, and the devastation of eco-diversity. Finally, Professor Viaene emphasizes the importance of preserving indigenous knowledge and culture so as to help guide the protection of remaining ecosystems by embracing nature and the environment as a whole, rather than dividing it into rights-bearing, atomized entities of rivers, waters, mountains, and other “heterogeneous” natural subparts. The indigenous approach is thus seen to require the holistic vision of harmony and natural balance of connectivity with the environment that includes all elements of life, including human and non-human species.
The second article, “Integrating the Anthropocene in Legal Education: Considerations for Asia,” by Professor Jonathan Liljeblad, explores the development of innovative legal education strategies by incorporating the “sophisticated theory” of creative teaching and the nuanced specificity of Asia’s cultural contexts into critical curricula and “pedagogical arsenals.” In an attempt to incorporate anthropogenic considerations into legal education, Professor Liljeblad suggests the aggressive integration of legal ethics, ethical standards, and professional responsibility into legal education curricula, while devising new pedagogical instruments to assess the effectiveness of legal duties and practices required for advocacy and the representation of public interests. According to Professor Liljeblad, these strategies should be independent of the state or corporate entities whose power and wealth can easily overwhelm litigative processes.
Finally, Professor Liljeblad identifies the deficits of critical legal programmes and suggests the incorporation of anthropogenic issues into curriculum and pedagogy, including the possible offering of mandatory or elective anthropogenic-related courses, as well as regionally sensitive and controversial contents, such as indigenous rights and ethnic struggles. Other potential topics may cover neoliberal projects of state and corporate actions vis-à-vis ecological devastation, as well as possible evaluations of hostile state actions against collective resistance of indigenous and ethnic nucleated communities undertaken in order to protect the environment.
Professor Peter D. Rush’s article, “A Sense of Place with Landmark Judgments: Anthropogenic Justice, Wildlife Extinction, and Climate Change,” offers creative topological approaches to dealing with the threat of anthropogenic disasters. Specifically examined is the possibility of establishing the jurisprudence of topology, namely a critical language of place, such as toponymy and topography, in order to respond to the global and transnational danger of anthropogenic threats and environmental disasters. The article begins with a critical assessment of the “Extinction Rebellion” protest in multiple locations, including Melbourne, Australia; Shibuya, Japan; London, UK; and other major cities around the globe. These popular non-violent direct-action protesters have been violently met by the repressive governmental forces of policing and military actions. According to Professor Rush, the peaceful movement has helped create the critical choreography of place-making narratives embodied in the state repression of popular uprisings and peaceful rebellions.
Professor Rush then attempts to extrapolate topographical imaginations of two landmark judgments in Australia. Using the emblematic imagining as guides to understand the significance of judgment in Friends of Leadbeater’s Possum Inc v. VicForests, Professor Rush carefully unwinds the choreographed tensions between law, impacts of logging operations, and species extinction, and discusses the rich, multivalent intersections of fauna and flora as the symbolism of “life” representing human and non-human species. In relation to the second judgment, Gloucester Resources Limited v. Minister for Planning, which involved the coal-mining company’s application to construct an open-cut coal mine in New South Wales, Professor Rush examines the unique topological intersections between the possible extinction of wildlife species and the corporate contribution to global warming accelerated by burning coals, and radical alterations of the ancestral homeland of the Woromi and Gooreengai people of the Wonnaruah Nation. In discussing the court’s denial of the company’s mining application, Professor Rush transforms the judgment into the legalized expression of the triangulation of the “vicinity, amenity of place, and their associated geographical and visual considerations [as well as] … social impacts on a sense of [indigenous] place.” Footnote 40
These landmark judgments and accompanying popular protests and non-violent direct actions of the Extinction Rebellion exemplify what Professor Rush terms the environmental emergency of our time: the need to preserve the natural habitat and indigenous lands. He indicates that the manuscript was prepared in two sites of topological imagination: (1) the original territory of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, whose ancestral homeland laid the topological foundation for today’s Melbourne, Australia; and (2) the Kita-Ku of Osaka, where the fourth ALSA Conference took place, which is also Melbourne’s sister city in Japan. The author’s analysis of place directly connects topological imaginations emanating from the aboriginal homeland in Melbourne, Australia to the sinking city of Osaka, Japan, one of the rapidly submerging megacities in Asia. As Melbourne has suffered from the aftermath of the significant wild bushfire that was exacerbated by climate change, the city of Osaka, the second most populous Japanese metropole, also faces its inevitable submersion into the ocean due to rising sea levels in coming decades. Footnote 41 Following the linking of topological imaginaries of two places across continents and spaces, the article concludes by suggesting that “the courts, streets, and seminars … [represent other topological] places where the writing of law and emergency [should] meet.” Footnote 42
4. Conclusions
As new anthropogenic disasters were unfolding in Asia and Australia, the first Plenary Presidential Session on “The Anthropocene and the Law in Asia” was convened at the Fourth ALSA Conference in Osaka, Japan. A total of nine papers were accepted for presentation in two separate panels held over two days. Three of those scholars were invited to submit articles for publication in this Special Issue of the Asian Journal of Law and Society. These highlight the latest debates and discussions concerning how to respond to the critical threat of anthropogenic catastrophes in Asia and the rest of the world.
These three papers provide careful examinations of the tenuous relations among the law, policies, environmental protection, indigenous rights, public advocacy, and the development of critical legal pedagogy and curricula options to tackle the threat of anthropogenic disasters. Themes approached include law-making activities to protect nature and the environment, highlighted by Professor Viaene’s analysis of the value and limitations of emergent legal scholarship in the area known as the RoN. Professor Liljeblad addresses the merits of intersectional approaches to legal education in connection with creative pedagogy and innovative curricular proposals, and suggests the need for critical legal education that incorporates legal ethics and case-study analyses. As also emphasized by Professor Viaene, Professor Liljeblad proposes active collaboration with international organizations to ensure the protection of indigenous rights to preserve indigenous knowledge and culture. Professor Rush examines two recent Australian court rulings in relation to the rights of natural species and indigenous nations, proposing the usefulness of topological approaches for the important recognition of the language of place, such as toponymy and topography, in responding to the threat of anthropogenic catastrophes and devastations.
This kind of serious discussion and critical debate concerning anthropogenic threats will continue in the future, including at the ALSA conferences in Bangkok, Thailand in 2021 and Hanoi, Vietnam in 2022. Given that scientists have warned that the major anthropogenic disasters will be concentrated in Asia, socio-legal scholars specialized in studies of that region must sustain this crucial focus on ways to address these catastrophes. The articles included in this series provide a sense of hope, as well as valuable perspectives on strategies for effectively responding to the many anthropogenic threats in Asia and throughout the world in the coming years and decades.
Acknowledgements
This Special Issue emerged from several years of co-operative work and discussions with contributing scholars and other legal researchers and environmental activists who presented their research at the Annual Meeting of the Asian Law and Society Association (ALSA) in Osaka, Japan. We would like to thank those who contributed their expert knowledge and technical assistance in the period before this particular Special Issue took formation. Credits for technical help are due: Jessica Lawrence, Wendy Martyna, and other office staff of the Sociology Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz; Kota Fukui of Osaka University, Yuka Kaneko of Kobe University and other organizers of the ALSA Conference in Japan; and Matthias Vanhullebusch and other CUP editors of the Asian Journal of Law and Society. With the aid offered by these colleagues and friends, we pursued our task of presenting our analysis of socio-legal responses to mitigate the anthropogenic crises in Asia and beyond. So needless to say, we alone are accountable for the contents, the facts presented, and the conclusions in this Special Issue.
