1st Edition

A Global Corporate Trust for Agroecological Integrity New Agriculture in a World of Legitimate Eco-states

By John W. Head Copyright 2019
324 Pages
by Routledge

324 Pages 32 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

324 Pages 32 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This book examines global environmental governance and how legal, institutional, and conceptual reform can facilitate a transformation to a new ‘natural-systems’ form of agriculture. Profound global climate disruption makes it essential that we replace our current agricultural system – described in this book as a fossil-carbon-dependent ‘modern extractive agriculture’ – with a... Read more

PART I: Reorienting agriculture: the promise and the challenge of agroecological husbandry  1. Modern extractive agriculture and agroecological husbandry  2. Legal challenges of transitioning to agroecological husbandry  PART II: Reorienting sovereignty: from nation-state to eco-state  3. Eco-zones and eco-states  4. Pluralistic sovereignty for agroecological governance  PART III: Reorienting ecological governance: a global public trust  5. International institutions, agroecology, and a defense of multilateralism  6. Designing the Global Corporate Trust for Agroecological Integrity

Biography

John W. Head is Wagstaff Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Kansas School of Law, USA. Previously he worked for ten years in legal practice. He is the author of several books on international law, including International Law and Agroecological Husbandry (Routledge, 2016).

"John Head challenges us to think differently about the kind of political structure the world needs in order to meet global agricultural and climate crises. He questions state sovereignty. He proposes “eco-states” that would carry responsibility for agricultural and ecological sanity. And he designs a new international institution to facilitate the fundamental transformations we need. This is a timely, well-written, and important book." — Tim Crews, Director of Research and an Ecologist at The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, USA

"John Head offers a radically sensible proposal for responding to the global agricultural crisis. A Global Corporate Trust for Agroecological Integrity is appropriately ambitious, daring to challenge the status quo not just with critique but with exciting ideas about reshaping international law and global governance. Head’s proposal for “eco-states” is one of the most important innovations I’ve seen in the quest to create a truly sustainable world system." — Robert Jensen, Emeritus Professor, University of Texas at Austin, USA

"John Head is a systems thinker par excellence. It’s only natural that he takes on two of the largest global systems—agriculture and governance—while putting them into creative conversation, and reasoning his way to sensible conclusions about our most pressing challenges. And not a moment too soon. Highly recommended." — Bill Vitek, Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, Clarkson University, USA

"After 10,000 years of soil degradation, our farming plainly requires radical transformation – and our decision making systems often seem equally divorced from ecological reality. John Head proposes a bold alternative: recasting governance on an eco-regional basis. With creativity and rigor, he outlines a legal framework for a world where wise conservation decisions happen bec