By Aliya Khan; Daniel Nobre Fernandes da Silva; Emma Bickers; Raquel Freitas Colaço
Going Global: A Legal Podcast for Today’s Global Challenges is a collaborative podcast series between Newcastle Law School and São Paulo State University (Unesp). It is dedicated on discussing contemporary legal issues related to global transformations and the challenges faced by international (and post national) community. This series comprehend three episodes that will explore Extractivism as a global issue. This is episode 2 ‘Posthumanism as a new standard for responsible extractivism?’. It was hosted by Emma Bickers and Aliya Khan (Newcastle Univerisity), and Raquel Freitas Colaço and Daniel Nobre Fernandes da Silva (Unesp).
Introduction
How can a legal system built on human mastery and resource extraction solve a global ecological crisis? In this episode, we come together to critically evaluate the boundaries of public international law in the face of climate breakdown. Our discussion challenges orthodox environmental frameworks and explores radical alternatives to shift how the law conceptualizes the natural world.
The Speaker
Our guest for this episode is Dr. Emily Jones, a NUAcT Fellow at Newcastle Law School. Dr. Jones is a renowned scholar specializied in Public International Law, Environmental Law, and critical Legal theories, specifically pioneering feminist, queer, and post humanist approaches to jurisprudence. Her groundbreaking work re-examines foundational concepts of sovereignty, exploitation, and legal personhood.
Overview of the Field: Why It Matters
Traditional international environmental law operates within a deeply anthropocentric framework, viewing nature primarily as an inert ‘resource’ destined for human appropriation, property, and capital accumulation. Under this orthodox paradigm, well-established legal principles like permanent state sovereignty over natural resources and the ‘sustainable development’ model often act as legal shields that facilitate, rather than restrict, ecological destruction and global extractivism. Discussing critical jurisprudence is essential since it uncovers how international law historically enabled colonial plunder and continues to reproduce North-South structural inequalities. To confront issues like deep-sea mining or the corporate accountability gap in ecocide, the legal architecture must be destabilized from its core human-centered bias.
What is Discussed in the Episode
Throughout the episode, the conversation flows through three major conceptual pillars:Posthumanism and Critical Architecture: We dive into the definition of (a feminist) posthuman theory, exploring how it dismantles both the hierarchy between humans (along axes of race, gender, and class) and the dangerous split between humans and the non-human world. Dr. Jones answers hard-hitting questions about whether a fundamentally human-centred legal structure can ever genuinely safeguard global supply chains.
- The Rights of Nature vs. The Relational Approach: Moving beyond the ‘Universal Declaration of Mother Earth’, we evaluate the limits of standard legal transfers. Dr. Jones explains the vital need to shift away from granting nature human-like ‘rights’ – which can easily be co-opted by neoliberal interests – and instead adopt an indigenous-informed, relational approach centred on human kinship and reciprocal responsibilities to care for dynamic ecosystems. We also reflect on how the law is evolving following recent regional climate litigation, such as the Klimaseniorinnen case at the ECHR.
- Extractivism and Hope: Finally, we confront the stark realities of sustainable extractivism and international jurisdiction in unregulated areas like the deep seabed. Despite the overwhelming scale of global ecocide, the episode concludes with a profound reflection on ‘queer hope’ and political affirmation, rejecting paralysis to imagine incremental, transformative steps toward structural climate justice.