What is the meaning of the concepts of sustainability and
sustainable development? How can the ideal of ecological
sustainability be legally conceived in conformity with the theory of
the planetary boundaries? The paper focuses on these topics starting
from an analysis of the origins of the term sustainability up to
introducing the concept of sustainable development and its failure to
halt the loss of biodiversity, the ecological deficit and the
anthropogenic climate change. In seeking new tools to deal with these
challenges, the paper illustrates the concepts of demodiversity,
commons and, in particular, it deepens the contents of some recent
legal principles that draw inspiration from ecology, namely the
principles of non-regression, resilience, ecological integrity, ecological
proportionality, ecological landscape restoration.
