Justice for the whole forest : How legal recognition of interspecies justice could help avoid triggering forest-related Earth system tipping points

Current international law has failed to stop large-scale forest exploitation driving forests towards imminent Earth system tipping points. Such tipping points are critical thresholds at which a part of the Earth system can take no more disturbance without rapidly and often irreversibly shifting to a fundamentally different state, with catastrophic consequences. The urgent threat of tipping changes how law should be understood. In this thesis, I argue that some principles of international environmental law should be interpreted to create obligations to stop driving forests towards tipping. So far, however, international environmental law has both been insufficient in mitigating, and complicit in facilitating, the exploitation at the core of tipping drivers. This supports the well-established conclusion that keeping within Earth system boundaries requires the system of international law to transform, towards sustainability and justice and in ways that address drivers of tipping. Built on the concept of interspecies justice and inspired by existing Indigenous and other laws aligned with this notion of respect, care, and reciprocity, this thesis envisions a new, planetary-scale legal governance structure where forests govern themselves. In this vision of forest self-determination, forests have exclusive authority to decide which forest uses shall be permitted and to make its own Forest Laws. Synergies between interspecies justice and counteracting drivers of forest tipping indicate that legal governance structures informed by interspecies justice could effectively address such drivers. This thesis imagines a legal system where the power to address drivers of forest tipping is held in the hands/paws/wings/roots/mycelium of those most affected and knowledgeable: forests themselves. This vision of law could be a beginning to a much larger and urgent effort of thought and action required to turn a dream of life within Earth system boundaries, characterised by justice for all and safety from the catastrophes of tipping, into reality.