The End of Sustainability: Resilience and the Future of Environmental Governance in the Anthropocene

The continued invocation of sustainability in policy discussions ignores the emerging reality of the Anthropocene, which is creating a world characterized by extreme complexity, radical uncertainty, and unprecedented change. Updating Aldo Leopold’s vision of nature and humanity as a single community for the Anthropocene, Benson and Craig argue that the narrative of resilience integrates humans back into the complex social and ecological system known as Earth. American environmental and natural resources laws date to the early 1970s, when the steady-state “Balance of Nature” model was in vogue—a model that ecologists have long since rejected, even before adding the complication of climate change. As such, it empowers humans to act for a better future through law and policy despite the very real challenges of climate changeMelinda Harm Benson is an associate professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of New Mexico.. From a legal and policy perspective, we must face the impossibility of even defining—let alone pursuing—a goal of “sustainability” in such a world.Melinda Harm Benson and Robin Kundis Craig propose resilience as a more realistic and workable communitarian approach to environmental governance. In the Anthropocene, a new era in which humans are the key agent of change on the planet, thes

Robin Kundis Craig is a professor of law at the University of Utah Law School. She is the author of Comparative Ocean Governance, Environmental Law in Context, and The Clean Water Act and the Constitution.. Melinda Harm Benson is Dean and Wyoming Excellence Chair at the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Wyoming

“Resilience is the new buzz word; everyone wants resilience for themselves and their communities, economies, and environments. By offering an alternative to the polar opposite views of a doomed planet or one in which we can have it all that gridlocks U.S. Sustainability—about preserving a balanced status quo—is not possible, and Benson and Craig offer a competing cultural narrative of resilience that can shape how we govern the environment. In an era in which political leaders are considering eliminating the US EPA, climate change policies, and public-lands protections, this book couldn’t be more timely.”—Tony Arnold, Boehl Chair in Property and Land Use, University of Louisville “Benson and Craig beautifully illustrate that the capacity of society to