01/01/2007

 

 

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.