The guiding constitutional principles and the environment

Abstract

The constituent processes represent imaginative moments conducive to the debate about which society one wants to build. The guiding constitutional principles not only guide the edition of constitutional norms by the constituent legislators, but also serve, in the application of the law, as a compass for judges in the rendering of their judicial decisions and for administrators when adopting public policies. Since such principles will shape the forms of social-political organization, the question is: which future do you want to build for which society? Faced with the climate emergency that came with the Anthropocene, the Constitution, as a fundamental diploma of social organization, needs to reflect a new paradigm in which nature is no longer seen as a mere instrumental object at the service of human potential and human beings come to understand themselves as integral part of nature. With this scope, it was analyzed how the protection of nature was given in the Constitutions of Brazil of 1988, of Ecuador of 2008, of Bolivia of 2009 and in the draft Constitution of Chile of 2022, as well as biases - anthropocentric, biocentric, ecocentric and holistic – adopted in these texts.