International Conference
Law, Governance and Sustainable
Development
The New Paths of Responsibility
Facults universitaires Saint Louis,
Bruxelles
25th-27th october 2007
The conference Law, Governance and Sustainable
Development. The New Paths of Responsibility is part of the dynamic
Law, Governance and Sustainable Development which is financed by
the Foundation Charles Lopold
Mayer pour le Progrs de lHomme (FPH) since 2003 and of the project the
Courage of alternatives financed by the Bernheim Foundation. It will be
held at the Facults universitaires Saint Louis in Bruxelles from 25th to 27th october 2007. Its aim is to
provide a platform to further contemporary research on Law, governance and
sustainable development in the context of globalization.
The conference has a double originality. The first is
linked to the perspectives which it intends to privilege and which will be
developed below. The second is due to its inscription into a broader and
longterm oriented research dynamic. This conference constitutes the conclusion
of a four years collective research in the frame of the FPHs project on Law,
Governance and Sustainable Development mentioned above. At the same time it is
also the opening of a new phase of research which will be conducted in
complementarity with the Bernheim project on the courage of alternatives. The
conference must thus be seen as one important element of a living and growing
network of researchers sharing an interest in the field[1].
Much is being published and many conferences and
seminars are held on Law, Governance and Sustainable Development. But the
paradigmatic transition that this concepts reflect and contribute to shape are
not sufficiently explored. Neither are the stakes and the emerging challenges
of a redefinition of the modalities of our living together where state,
government, development / growth as central analytical tools start to be
challenged.
If we must remain critical as far as the promises
contained in these notions are concerned, it cannot be denied that they open up
new spaces of possibilities.
Governance emancipates the shaping of our living
together from the State monopoly and from the legal paradigm in its strict
sense. Through its accent on reponsibilization and participation of the actors
in the elaboration and application of collective action, it points to a
broadened perspective of Law, which in an anthropological understanding can be
seen as that which puts forms and puts into forms the reproduction of humanity
and the resolution of conflicts in our societies. The notion invites us to
unveil the traps as well as the potentialities which are inherent in the
emerging forms of living together which seem to start to be built not anymore
solely around the idea of a society of rights, but also of responsibilities.
How to think this new rhetoric of a responsible living together and its
articulations ? How to rethink our laws and how to integrate legal realities
which are largely ignored by modern legal thought but have already been
addressed by more social science inspired authors dealing with questions of
legal pluralism, living laws, alternative mechanisms of dispute
resolution, coregulation etc.
If governance refers to a more holistic vision of the
legal, sustainable development which is often associated to it, emancipates
development from a purely economic sphere and links it to responsibilities in
the social and environmental spheres. Again modern divisions are broken down
and we have to learn to think the emerging complexity in an interdisciplinary
dialogue.
It is essential to question 1) the emerging forms of
regulation, 2) the ways to approach and to understand them intellectually, and
last but not least 3) to look for means to translate these new realities into
adapted institutions and mechanisms.
A purely Western approach, starting from the existing
analytical tools, cannot suffice. If governance and sustainable development
are globalized realities and may thus appear as new universals in the
continuity of the rule of law, democracy, human rights, development,
one should be aware that the institutional transfer of Western models to its
former colonies has not ceased to be problematic. What do this concepts mean in
very different cultural, economic, social and political contexts ? Beyond their
legality, are they legitimate and efficient ? What are the stakes of their
translation into idioms and worldvisions that do not share the Western cultural
matrix ?
What are equivalents to these concepts in non-Western
cultural settings ? How are the questions put and approached ? Could these
other approaches not also be an enrichment to the global, very Western, way
of putting questions and answers ? What are the conditions and the stakes of
genuine intercultural dialogue on the shaping of our living together ? The
requirement of intercultural dialogue is inevitable in order to complete the
analysis of the current situation and in order to map out new horizons for
action.
The aim of the conference is 1) to analyze the
emerging forms of Law and regulation in a field which is more and more shaped
by the notions of globalisation , gouvernance and
sustainable development (for ex. phenomena of coregulation, of
non-state law regulations); 2) to outline ways to approach these phenomena
taking into consideration the nexus of the redistribution of rights and
responsibilities (for ex. the question of the responsabilisation of
actors which often appears as a simple shift of responsibilities
deresponsibilizing some and responsibilizing others) ; 3) to highlight
ways to translate these new realities into adapted modes of regulation (for ex.
precautionary principle, common heritage of humankind approaches to
environment).
The conference will attempt to bring answers to these
questions through five panels that correspond to themes that have already been
explored during the last four years.
1)
The stakes and challenges of an
alternative approach to Law : through what approaches and what cases can we
map the emerging contemporary law in between globalization, governance and
sustainable development ? And for
what kind of projects of society ?
2)
Intercultural perspectives: How are the
questions of Law, governance and sustainable development put from non-Western
perspectives or in the context of the relationship with autochtonous people ?
What can intercultural dialogue teach us not only in order to answer our
contemporary questions, but further in order to change our questions themselves
and their underlying assumptions ?
3)
The challenges and stakes of the
environment and of natural resources management : How to rethink and reshape
our relationship to our environment in such a way that we assume our
responsibility to preserve it for future generations ?
4)
The challenges and stakes of global
governance : How to articulate global and local realities ? What about global
challenges (ex. fight against AIDS). Are the real stakes of global governance
where we believe them to be (reform of UNO and international institutions) ?
How to shift our focus on phenomena such as altermondialist movements or
dynamics of corporate social responsibility which seem to reconstruct a new
global governance from below ?
5)
Horizons for research and action: What
are the new paths to be explored between the critical anlaysis of existing
paradigms and the exploration of emerging possibilities ? What could
responsible alternatives to the world we live in mean ?
The problematics have been drafted widely on purpouse.
The contributors are invited to contact Christoph Eberhard (c.eberhard@free.fr) to crystallize their
proposals of intervention. To get a feeling for the general direction of the
dynamic they can refer to the books mentioned above as well as to the internet
site http://www.dhdi.org. Contributions can
be presented in English or French.
If you are interested, please contact Christoph
Eberhard soon. A provisional title with a small abstract should be sent to him
before the end of march so that the final programme can be finalized and
communicated to all the participants. This will facilitate the focusing of the
different contributions. A first draft of the contribution should be sent to
him for at the latest end of September so that they can be forwarded to all the
participants before the conference in order to allow deeper exchanges during
our meeting end of October.
[1] De nombreuses
rencontres ont dj t organises et continueront lՐtre. Concernant les
publications issues de la dynamique on notera : DUMONT Hugues, OST
Franois & van DROOGHENBROECK Sbastien (ds.), 2005, La responsabilit
face cache des droits de l'homme, Bruxelles, Bruylant, 544 p ;
EBERHARD Christoph (d.), 2005, Droit, gouvernance et dveloppement durable, numro spcial
des Cahiers dAnthropologie du Droit, Paris, Karthala, 2005,
376 p ; EBERHARD Christoph, Le Droit au miroir des cultures. Pour une
autre mondialisation, Paris, LGDJ, Col. Droit et Socit, 2006, 199
p ; EBERHARD Christoph (d.), 2007, Enjeux fonciers et
environnementaux. Dialogues afro-indiens, Pondichry, IFP, 2007
( paratre) ; EBERHARD Christoph & GUPTA Nidhi, Legal Pluralism in
India, Special
Issue of the Indian Socio-Legal Journal, Vol. XXXI, 2005, 148
p.