The recent Encyclical by Pope Francis, Laudato Si’, On Care for our Common Home, is a remarkable document, both original and continuous within the tradition of Catholic social doctrine. Emerging from and grounded in a very specific religious tradition and constrained by the peculiar encyclical literary form, the document nonetheless seeks to open a dialogue with “every person living on this planet,” about care for our common home. Using the urgency of addressing global climate change as its point of departure, the Encyclical does a superb job summarizing the scope of the present environmental crisis and the disproportionate harms suffered by vulnerable populations of the poor and excluded. It also provides a careful analysis of the root causes of environmental degradation, mapping out the complex linkages and tensions between globalization, economic growth, liberalized trade, unsustainable patterns of consumption and production, environmental degradation, involuntary migration, immiseration and growing inequality. In this respect, the Encyclical, may well come to serve as a useful position paper for the upcoming Paris climate change negotiations or as a background text for a course on climate change or sustainable development. Yet, properly understood, this is not its true purpose. Rather, in its deepest sense, the Encyclical is an appeal to all of humanity to listen to “the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor,” to reject the “throwaway” culture of consumerism, and to embrace a culture of care and a commitment to pursue integral ecology. It is, in other words, a call to ecological conversion: a call addressed not only to individuals but also to individuals-in-community.

This article explores the structural link between international law's long-standing doctrinal commitment to commerce and its inability to act decisively on behalf of the environment. One of the fundamental rights the early authors of jus gentium discovered was the right to engage in commerce. Francisco de Vitoria, Alberico Gentili, and Hugo Grotius each drew on and applied a providentialist theory of commerce. The doctrine held that Providence distributed scarcity and plenty across the earth so that peoples could not be self-sufficient, but would need to go in search of one another in order to acquire what they lacked. Commerce imagined in its pure form of reciprocal, mutually beneficial exchange would be the means to bring separated mankind to friendship. The embrace of the providentialist doctrine by these early exponents of the law of nations, carried forward by Emer de Vattel, set the stage for international law's longstanding commitment to international commerce, viewed (despite all the distortions) as a virtuous activity that tends to the common good. The doctrine's additional legacy was the installation of a view of nature as commodity. The providentialist doctrine of commerce, adopted by the early authors of international law, remains embedded in the structure of international law and cannot easily be dislodged. Until this doctrine is dislodged, however, international law will continue to be hobbled in its ability to address the urgent task of protecting the natural environment.

Environmental harm is of increasing concern to peoples and states all over the world, whether in relation to ensuring access to healthy air, water, food, and sustainable livelihoods, or coping with the diversity of challenges posed by changing climates and ecologies. While international lawyers have focused on crafting solutions to environmental problems, less attention is paid to the disciplinary role in fostering harmful and unsustainable behavioural patterns. Environmental issues are usually relegated to the specialized field of international environmental law. This project explores instead the role of nature in the general discipline, arguing that the natural environment is a determinative factor in shaping international law, and that assumptions about nature lie at the heart of disciplinary concepts such as sovereignty, development, economy, property, and human rights.