Legal certainty in the Anthropocene

I

If I were asked to fill in the blank of “When conditions of uncertainty, complexity, conflict and incompletion are increasing, also increasing are pressures for _____________” I’d write: “legal certainty.” Others would instead, I believe, opt for something like: better political arrangements.

Which raises a question: How are the quests for politics and legal certainty inter-related?

II

By legal certainty, I mean not just contracts but licenses, public tenders, procurement agreements and the like. These exist in the domain of reliability professionals who don’t operate at the level of macro-principles for legal certainty nor do they operate at the street-level with respect to an individual license, tender or procurement issues. Their domain instead spans (1) from having to modify broad contract principles in light of inevitably different contexts (2) to those systemwide patterns and practices that, while they do not match macro-principles, nonetheless are emerging across a range of spatial and cultural contexts with respect to more reliable licenses, tenders and procurement.

Now, of course, each node–macro, micro, localized design scenarios, and systemwide patterns and practices–can be labelled “political.” That would, however, miss the point here: Differentiating the nodes and domains necessarily differentiates “politics”.

III

So what? At least one point becomes clearer when legal certainty is the pathway into discussing politics under turbulent times: Cities and municipalities, not just nations and the planet, become an obvious unit and level of analysis. It’s cities that work to ensure legal compliance and bear legal liability in many of the contract specifics just mentioned.

Again, so what?

Take degrowth. Currently, the focus is on the economics and politics of degrowth at the national and international levels. Instead ask: What are the implications for legal certainty in cities that are environmental innovators in the face of unpredictable change, including but not limited to degrowth strategies?

The answers (plural) would point to track records (plural) upon which then to assess the more fine-grained politics involved, let alone required.