UDTR Global Rights of Nature Radar

The Jurisprudence of Overshoot: Ecological Carrying Capacity, Planetary Boundaries, and the Structural Failure of International Environmental Law

Identification

Public canonical key

doi:10.5281/zenodo.20477793

Authors

Northon Salomao de Oliveira

Reported year

2026

Reported language

en

Source type

preprint

First detected

2026-11-09T19:04:47.594967+00:00

Last metadata observation

2026-11-09T19:07:07.114544+00:00

Last HTTP verification

Not checked

Documentary abstract — original language

The Jurisprudence of Overshoot: Ecological Carrying Capacity, Planetary Boundaries, and the Structural Failure of International Environmental Law By Northon Salomão de Oliveira What happens when the law is built for a planet that no longer exists? In The Jurisprudence of Overshoot, Northon Salomão de Oliveira confronts one of the most unsettling realities of the twenty-first century: humanity is operating beyond the ecological limits that sustain civilization itself. Drawing upon cutting-edge Earth system science, international jurisprudence, environmental governance, political economy, philosophy, behavioral science, and constitutional theory, the book argues that ecological overshoot is not merely an environmental problem. It is a profound legal crisis. At the center of this groundbreaking work lies a provocative thesis: international environmental law was designed for a world assumed to possess endless resilience, abundant resources, and recoverable ecological damage. That world has vanished. As planetary boundaries are crossed and ecological carrying capacity is increasingly exhausted, the legal architecture governing climate change, biodiversity, natural resources, and sustainability reveals a structural inability to respond at the scale demanded by reality. Through a rigorous examination of landmark developments including the International Court of Justice's 2025 Climate Advisory Opinion, emerging ecocide legislation, the rights-of-nature movement, environmental constitutionalism, and evolving doctrines of intergenerational justice, Oliveira exposes the widening gap between scientific knowledge and legal action. The result is a powerful diagnosis of a normative order struggling to govern a civilization living in ecological deficit. Yet this is not a work of pessimism. It is a blueprint for transformation. The book proposes a new paradigm of biophysically anchored governance, founded upon four revolutionary pillars: constitutionalized intergenerational rights, quantified ecological budgets, the criminalization of ecocide, and the legal recognition of planetary boundaries as enforceable normative limits. In doing so, it challenges centuries of anthropocentric legal thinking and advances a bold vision of law capable of operating within the realities of the Anthropocene. Combining the analytical depth of environmental jurisprudence with the urgency of planetary science, The Jurisprudence of Overshoot is essential reading for scholars, judges, policymakers, environmental lawyers, governance professionals, economists, sustainability experts, and anyone seeking to understand how law must evolve in an age defined by ecological constraints. This is not simply a book about environmental law. It is a book about the future of civilization, the limits of growth, the rights of generations yet unborn, and the fundamental question that will define the coming century: Can legal institutions adapt before the Earth system reaches its point of no return? ORCID ID: 0009-0007-4038-0609

Identifiers

OPENALEX

W7162948228

DOI

10.5281/zenodo.20477793

OPENAIRE

doi_dedup___::3695f0cb691e0678fe153035b262066d

Documentary context

Documentary family

Working paper

Source-reported types

Preprint · preprint

Entity mentions are not evidence of legal recognition. Jurisdiction studied is separate from author affiliation country.

Sources

OpenAIRE · Record 1 · Record 2

OpenAlex · Record 1 · Record 2

• DOI · https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20477793
• Document · https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20477793
• OpenAlex · https://openalex.org/W7162948228

Documentary status

Relevance pending

Library

This identity is not yet included in the Legal Library.