LITES - Legal Issues in Transdisciplinary Environmental Studies

The ‘Legal Issues in Transdisciplinary Environmental Studies’ (LITES) Book Series is based on the assumption that the process of dialogue and cultural integration between law, life and earth sciences, and social and human sciences should be strengthened and updated, by relying on transdisciplinary research platforms such as agroecology, environmental studies, environmental science, and sustainability science. According to the new paradigm of social-ecological systems (SES), the concept of the environment is conceived as a complex system of relationships between ecological and social factors, including the cultural and economic ones. The primary purpose of law, in this conceptual framework, is to preside over the durability of the essential conditions for the survival of the social-ecological systems and the protection of life at all scales (of individuals, societies, ecosystems).

LITES Series aims to explore the relationships between legal and environmental sciences according to a transdisciplinary perspective. On the one hand, natural and social environmental sciences need to integrate the point of view of law: this entails to study the complexities of SES in the light of normative and institutional variables, with the lens of categories such as rights, duties, powers, responsibilities, and procedural safeguards. On the other hand, law is called upon to review its own internal geometries, confronting them with the holistic approach toward sustainability in the scientific debate. Accordingly, law should address the need of changing the approach that so far has led to both hypertrophy and disarticulation when regulating closely linked matters such as the environment, agriculture, forestry, landscape and cultural heritage, energy, and food.

LITES Series is addressed to a wide international and interdisciplinary readership, targeting academic researchers and scholars, experts and practitioner lawyers, public administrations, judges, and law-makers. Its volume editors and contributing authors have different backgrounds and come from all over the world in order to provide a forum for discussion and normative analysis about new legal frontiers of human-environment interactions across disciplinary barriers.