Benjamin J. Richardson's The Art of Environmental Law: Governing with Aesthetics argues – with vivid illustrations – that aesthetics plays a major role in how we formulate and implement environmental law.Footnote 1 Employing a broad definition of ‘aesthetics’, as in ‘relating to sensory perception rather than just artistic quality or beauty’ (p. 275), Richardson argues that aesthetic engagement shapes how we value which kinds of nature, how we market forms of environmental protection, and how these become crafted into law.
The book first introduces us to how scholars and artists think about aesthetics. Part I then highlights the connections between aesthetics and environmental law, while demonstrating how difficult it is to codify or account for aesthetics in the law. Part II of the book provides numerous examples and case studies of how our aesthetic preferences are formed and manipulated, with those preferences then shaping how law is written and implemented. The chapters in Part II on corporate greenwashing, ecological restoration, and the aesthetics of climate change are among the book's most enlightening illustrations.
The book concludes in Part III by emphasizing Richardson's goal: he advocates a ‘critical aesthetics that not only enriches our sensory engagement with nature but also guides it productively’ (p. 276). His main message is that we have relied too much on economic methods and scientific data in our approaches to managing the ecological world around us. We refract the results of science through the prism of what we value en route to formulating normative claims about how we should all live our lives. These norms are then written into laws that tell us what we can and must (and cannot and must not) do. As Richardson writes, ‘our failure to manage the environment wisely stems more often not from lack of knowledge, but from lack of affection and altruism – values that aesthetic appreciation can help nurture’ (p. 7).
Richardson thus argues that ‘[w]e must also value the aesthetic realm, including the arts, in our emotional and ethical engagement with nature. Naïve appeals to natural beauty, however, will not get us very far. Aesthetic appreciation must ultimately align with the conservation of critical ecological processes and the web of life’ (p. 318). At the same time, however, Richardson is not an aesthetic relativist. Even though the precise ways in which people sense and thus value the natural world will differ with the ecological situation and cultural context, he claims it is possible to distinguish better and worse ways of seeing beauty. To arrogate Aldo Leopold's famous dictum, for Richardson, aesthetics is right when it tends to lead us to craft laws that preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community.Footnote 2 Aesthetics is wrong when it leads us otherwise. Accordingly, in the concluding words of the book, ‘[e]nvironmental lawyers must take aesthetics seriously’ (p. 320), because this will lead us to formulate more enlightened and sustainable environmental laws.
Of course, some of us are more open to the aesthetics of the surrounding ecology than others. As Woody Allen once famously quipped, ‘I am two with nature’.Footnote 3 Richardson discusses evolutionary psychology – how we have evolved so that nature stimulates our neural pathways. We all have some affinity with the natural world; it would make a mockery of natural selection if we did not. However, some of us have this trait more finely honed than others. The trick is to mould the raw material, to nurture and even manipulate it so that we see a nature that is worth saving.
How do we ‘curate’ our societies’ appreciation of the natural world so that we care about it and write that care into our laws? Richardson provides many pages of examples, particularly in the chapters of Part II. Corporations greenwash their records through seductive advertising. Non-governmental organizations counter with their own aesthetic portrayals of worlds destroyed, or of pure nature worth salvaging. Conventional or political art may move us or inspire us to action. New-fangled tools like geographic information systems depict data in striking visual form, and help bureaucrats to monitor compliance and provide evidence in actual court cases.
Richardson also shows how science clearly plays a role in shaping our aesthetic view. For example, citizen activists sometimes fight the installation of wind turbines on the ground that they are ugly, noisy blights on the landscape. However, as scientists reveal more about the forthcoming catastrophes that climate change will bring, we might instead view windmills as beautiful tools for our continued survival as a species. Glorious, shocking ‘before’ and ‘after’ photos of glaciers melting over time help in making slow-motion climate change more mediagenic, and spur us into action. Through aesthetic alchemy, landscape artists, photographers, and skilled writers have turned ‘wilderness’ from something frightening to be vanquished into discrete areas of land to be protected in the law.
Richardson highlights how aesthetic perceptions of non-human imperilled species can contribute to their salvation or extinction. Australia's Bramble Cay melomys (Melomys rubicola) is regarded as the first species to become extinct as a result of climate change – rising sea levels swamped its remaining island redoubt – and was considered to be quite unappealing. Far from being a charismatic megavertebrate, biologist John Woinarski noted that the melomys ‘suffered from being a long way away from anywhere else, and being a rat and not being particularly attractive’ (p. 126). However, just as a species’ perceived ugliness may contribute to its demise, so may aesthetic makeovers lead to greater species protection: thus, the United Kingdom's Ugly Animal Preservation Society rallies us to save the homely. Focusing on a species’ uniqueness could itself add to aesthetic allure. By discovering truths about endangered species and the miraculous details of how natural selection has shaped every species’ adaptation to the biophysical world around it, we might come to see even conventionally unattractive species as more appealing and worth fighting for.
Similarly, changing modern-day depictions of species that were once considered dangerous or destructive can affect their fate. In recent years, our views have been curated to see wolves not as fearsome predators, but as beautiful creatures who play keystone roles in making resilient ecosystems. Before 2010, motorists in Tasmania (Australia) were alerted to the possibility of Tasmanian Devils on the motorway through signs depicting a snarling creature with fangs. As part of the species’ image makeover, signs were replaced so that now drivers confront a cute creature looking vaguely like a French bulldog. As a result of the makeover, we might swerve away from them, rather than aim for them. Through these illustrations, Richardson demonstrates convincingly that aesthetics matters for species conservation.
Aesthetics also always comes into play when an area is being restored, as Richardson details in Chapter 6. This chapter is important reading for anyone interested in ecological restoration, rewilding, or biodiversity offsetting, as it addresses challenges that are often disregarded. One such example is how to choose a baseline to which to restore? Is it the landscape that existed before mining, logging or other industrial disturbance, or might we create a novel landscape that meets certain aesthetic criteria? Do our perceptions of the landscape change if the observer knows the result is an anthropogenic restoration? Now that we understand more about how indigenous peoples around the planet have reshaped landscapes we once viewed as ‘pristine’, and now that climate change and microplastics and toxins pollute every corner of the globe, how do we visualize what we want a restored environment to resemble when nothing is ‘primeval’ or ‘untouched’? Even if our goal is to restore ecosystem function or help in sustaining a particular species, Richardson notes that ‘appearances matter and indeed degradation obvious to the eye may trigger a quicker response than hidden or obscured deprivation such as the invisible soil contaminants or the missing invertebrates’ (p. 208). Or, by way of another example, what if the local inhabitants prefer the aesthetics as they are now? The ‘rewilding’ movement often faces resistance when aesthetic views clash: the locals may not want the apex predator brought back or the habitat restored to its prior state. In Scotland, where once forests covered broad swathes of the countryside, citizens sometimes prefer current bare pastoral landscapes to which they are accustomed and fight reforestation to previous pre-clearing and pre-grazing conditions. What we want our landscapes to look like must elide scientific conceptions of ecological resilience with a community's preferences for what is aesthetically pleasing.
I am awed by the breadth of Richardson's explorations, deftly weaving together the hermeneutics of art, anthropology, psychology, popular culture, and, of course, environmental law in many jurisdictions. It must have taken many, many hours (and delightful meanders in dusty libraries and Google cul-de-sacs) to explore and synthesize material from such disparate fields. Richardson wanders down many scenic sidetracks on the journey to his central point that aesthetics matter in environmental law. Some of those meanderings feel a bit like dead ends that do not necessarily enlighten his central thesis, but readers in the mood for wide-ranging creative exploration will enjoy the trip. As befits a book about aesthetics, Richardson's prose is elegant.
If your senses require a break from the quotidian bad news about our planet, I recommend this delightful book about beauty and environmental law.
