생태주의 법사상의 수용과 발전

Abstract

In order to solve environmental problems, countries around the world have enacted and enforced many environmental laws so far, and efforts have been made to ensure the legislative purpose and effectiveness of environmental laws through litigation systems operated in each country for those who damage the environment by violating such laws. However, such environmental laws and litigation systems had limitations in preventing or curing global environmental crises. At its root, the following structural problems were inherent. First, anthropocentrism, the widespread belief that humans are separate from and superior to the rest of the natural world. Because of this sense of superiority, we saw humans as at the pinnacle of evolution. Second, the idea that everything in nature, animate and inanimate, is our property and we have the right to use it as we please. Third, it is the idea that unlimited economic growth can and should be pursued as the foremost task of modern society. Anthropocentric ideas and property rights are the foundation of modern industrial society, supporting everything from law and economics to education and religion. Economic growth has consistently taken precedence over environmental concerns as a primary goal for governments and businesses. The formation of such ideas was rooted in a long history of philosophy, religion, morality, and ethics from the ancient Greek times to the present. The consciousness that humans are distinct from other animals and superior to them has permeated deeply into the Western legal system, resulting in a gap between law and reality.
 However, under the above accident, the perception that it is impossible to overcome the global environmental crisis gradually spreads. Entering the 20th century, anthropocentric thinking was overcome, and the idea of ecology (naturalism) that humans are part of nature came to the fore. It can be said that the natural rights movement, which was discussed mainly in the United States in the 1970s, was the starting point that caused such a change in thinking. Of course, at the time, the movement developed under the laws and systems based on the existing anthropocentrism, and the limitations were still there.…