Introducing LDE·IR: The Laboratory for Anthropocene Law

Earth has crossed a threshold. The infrastructures that once guaranteed stability—from legal systems to energy networks—are now facing a new reality of radical discontinuity: climate collapse, global pandemics, and accelerated technological mutations.

Traditional law, designed for a stable planet and predictable human control, is obsolete. Regulation is no longer enough; we need a legal framework capable of regeneration.

Introducing the LDE·IR: Law for the Anthropocene Laboratory.

From the Manuel Ballbé Chair on Human Security and Global Law, we are launching a laboratory for thought and action to design the legal tools demanded by this new geological era. Our mission is as urgent as it is complex.

How do we respond? The LDE·IR operates on five fronts:

• 🚨 Anticipating Critical Scenarios: We model the systemic crises of the Anthropocene—energy collapses, climate tipping points, AI disruptions—so the law can stop perpetually lagging behind catastrophe.

• 🧠 Transdisciplinary Collective Intelligence: We fuse knowledge from jurists, scientists, artists, technologists, and indigenous communities. The challenges of the Anthropocene cannot be solved from a single discipline.

• 🌊 Recognizing New Legal Subjects: We expand legal status to the entities that define this era: ecosystems fighting to exist, algorithms with agency, and hybrid infrastructures.

• 🛠️ Designing Regenerative Normative Tools: We don't just write laws; we design living instruments for resilience: context-adaptive contracts, constitutions for communities in transition, and protocols for ecological emergencies.

• 🧩 Creating Experimental Legal Artifacts: We prototype the law of the future: legal personhood for rivers, governance frameworks for artificial intelligence, and soil remediation treaties.

  
  

The Law for the Anthropocene is not just another legal specialty. It is a necessary mutation.

It is a law for the radical uncertainty of this epoch, capable of operating in contexts of collapse, recognizing a plurality of voices—human and non-human—and enabling processes of institutional, ecological, and technological regeneration.

The LDE·IR is not a think-tank. It is a do-tank.

A space where thought becomes action, theory becomes prototype, and urgency becomes creation. For a world in profound transformation, a law finally emerges that is equal to the challenges of our time.