Integration & Biocomplexity

Authors

Lakshman Guruswamy, University of Colorado Law SchoolFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication

Ecology Law Quarterly

Year

2001

Citation Information

Lakshman Guruswamy, Integration & Biocomplexity, 27 Ecology L.Q. 1191 (2001), available at https://scholar.law.colorado.edu/faculty-articles/569.

Abstract

Sustainable development (SD) is premised on the inescapable and integral role played by humans in shaping and impacting the natural world and has been recognized as a foundational norm of international environmental law and policy. Ecologicalism - an outlook that embraces a comprehensive approach to interdependent natural and human systems - provides the conceptual underpinnings for a creative and integrated environmental management philosophy for implementing SD. This Article argues that the daunting task of defining and applying such an integrated approach and philosophy to the multiple interacting changes affecting planetary life support systems can benefit from the U.S. experience in addressing the need for integrated pollution control (IPC). It also contends that the relatively new discipline of Industrial Ecology (IE) that pairs industry with ecology offers a promising new system paradigm for analyzing human activity within the biophysical environment. By entwining humans and their needs with ecosystems, IE does in fact aspire to become the "science of sustainability."

Comments

"Copyright © 2001 by The Regents of the University of California."

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