Greater civilisations have fallen because they failed to prevent land degradation and land use changes. “Land” is a broad term referring to solid ground, encompassing everything from mountains to valleys, with a composition that includes soil, rock, sand, and other terrains. Soil, in particular, is essential for sustaining all living beings—sustainability.
Soil fertility is both a biophysical and public property. It is also a social property because all of humankind depends on it for food production. A Harvard archaeologist, through research using remote sensing data and excavation findings, reveals exquisite signs of long–lost societies and shows that past civilisations made no attempts to adapt to natural landscapes, continuously insisting on developing urban lands for centuries until their land became uninhabitable, leading to the collapse of entire civilisations. Ancient pessimistic societies had a very thin margin for activism against their rulers’ will. This inflexibility may be the main reason for the collapse of most ancient civilisations worldwide. The United Nations has stressed that societies around the world are still ignoring land degradation, refraining from action against land development, while governments continue urban land expansion under the banner of sustainable cities.
This suggests that current societal beliefs are misguided and that more activism is needed to reverse the damage. Previously, it was widely accepted that the Earth was flat—a dominant yet erroneous worldview 2,000 years ago. Similarly, we are mistaken again as we ignore land degradation and fail to conserve global land resources.
Research findings
Archaeological research shows that civilisations rise and fall depending on how societies manage their land amidst population growth and urbanisation trends. Currently, around 35.9 billion tons of fertile soil are lost annually due to human activities like land use changes and soil erosion. If governments do not respond swiftly, the modern world will suffer a similar fate. Now some small steps to prosecution of environmental harm have already been made at the International Criminal Courts (ICC), Hauge. Netherlands, which has adopted the Rome Statue in 1998.
A silent hazard
Geoscientists at Virgina University revealed that major cities on the Atlantic coast are sinking by 1 to 5 mm per year. New York City, for instance, is sinking at an average of 1 to 2 mm annually. The city’s 1,084,954 buildings weigh about 1.68 trillion pounds—almost double the weight of all humanity combined. The Netherlands sinks at a rate of around 7 mm a year despite having an incredibly sophisticated system to keep the country afloat, now paying the price for unprecedented land use changes. This fate may be possible in Colombo if land use changes continue with numerous skyscrapers along the coastline.
Researchers believe that, in the next 25 years, there could be significant repercussions, with skyscrapers in urban areas eventually collapsing if land use changes persist. Against this backdrop, this research aims to explore the relationship between four variables: land use change, environmental activism, international treaties, and the environmental rule of law, while examining whether environmental activism can help mitigate land depletion.
The research reveals that environmental litigation has significantly increased over the last decade due to a rise in environmental activism along with international treaties aimed at curbing land degradation. Despite these developments, environmental legal frameworks remain fragmented, with insufficient coordination between national governments, indicating that the international community requires global, progressive environmental activism to address land degradation leading to ecocide law–unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts. By adding ecocide law as a fifth crime to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the perpetrators of environmental destruction would suddenly be liable to arrest, prosecution and imprisonment that can be justifiable.
Lastly, global environmental law must be jointly studied with human–land activity with ecology, society and law concurrently. Country policies should occupy a central place in the current debate over ‘law and society with ecology. Law and society with environmental law studies provide an important contribution to mitigating 21st–century emerging issues that provide green ideas for scholars in science, technology, engineering, social, economic, policy, and environmental study areas.
In our previous publication, this researcher speculated a similar argument for social change through business and society dimensions. This research will be published in a peer-reviewed Scopus-indexed journal. The authors continue the dossier on ‘business and society’ and ‘society and ecology’ with environmental law research through the lens of a holistic health, safety and environmental management paradigm.
(Dr. W. M. Wishwajith is an Agricultural and Food Scientist and Dr. S. P. H Spencer Vitharana works as an Environmental and Applied Scientist.)
