Non-Reformist Reforms in Environmentalism: Legal Theory and Praxis

This Article explores how non-reformist reforms—as opposed to traditional environmental law—are required for ecologically transformative futures. Traditional environmental law is a critically flawed regime due to its embeddedness in our current ecological political economy, which functionally requires perpetual accumulation and growth. However, this accumulation- and growth-based paradigm is incompatible with the material realities of our planetary boundaries. This paradigm has thus engendered our current era of profound ecological crisis (i.e., as associated with notions of the Anthropocene).

Non-reformist reforms are an alternative framework that can help drive transformations of our ecological political economy vis-à-vis building and operationalizing people power from below. Unlike traditional environmental law, non-reformist reforms are liberatory: The ultimate aim is not law reform alone, but rather true systemic change towards ecologically viable and socially emancipatory futures. This Article explores non-reformist reforms in the context of leading and entwined contemporary transformative environmental movements. This Article then examines specific critical environmental legal theory and praxis modes that can support such novel environmental non-reformist reform efforts.