People For Earth

Session One consisted of three presentations and a round-table discussion with the theme “New Values of Earth Governance and the Transition of East Asia.” The first presenter, Dongsuk Oh, professor at the Ajou University Graduate School of Law, argued that the emergence of earth jurisprudence demanded a change in the existing constitutional paradigm and that “ecology” should be the constitutional ideology of the new era. Taehyun Park, professor at the Kangwon National University Graduate School of Law, while stating that humanity is bound up with the rest of the Earth as a community that shares the future, discussed the possibility of implementing new environmental governance using the case of New Zealand's Whanganui River as an example. He also suggested a new direction for the Earth community by stressing that environmental governance in the Anthropocene era is the key to building a harmonized relationship with nature. Byeong Jin Ahn and Chaewon Lim, professors at the Kyung Hee University Global Academy for Future Civilization, explored the possibility of realizing Biocracy in their joint presentation entitled "Can Democracy Overcome the Climate Crisis?” They argued that discourse on the transition of politics should go beyond mere state systems and should center on perceptions of the world, world governance systems, and the state-based view.