Christianity, Law, and the Ecological Crisis

Humanity is experiencing a global ecological crisis. This chapter examines theological and political approaches to the environment across the Christian tradition. It acknowledges the human roots of the ecological crisis and argues that its main origin can be found in the dominant technocratic paradigm that has shaped human development in the past two centuries. Humanity will be able to tackle the ecological crisis only by developing a different relationship with nature, based on an individual and collective ecological conversion. This should rely on the paradigm of ecological integrity, which recognizes the existence of a close connection between the well-being of humanity and the health and integrity of ecosystems. It is a paradigm that is also giving rise to new ecological understandings of the law.