Beyond Compliance: Sustainable Development, Business, and Proactive Law

Scholarly work shows that the existing legal framework for sustainable development is insufficient, cautious, incremental, and incomplete. Despite public and private efforts to address sustainable development, environmental and social problems and conditions continue to worsen. This Article posits that the status quo is a direct result of the systemic failure to recognize the potential for a synergistic relationship between the private and public sectors to create a comprehensive, yet effective, regulatory framework. Based on an analysis of the current national and international legal framework and alternative regulatory approaches in the “New Governance” literature, this Article aims to engage law, science and sustainable business to determine the best way to develop a governance regime for sustainable development based on “Proactive Law”.

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