Constitution of Earth
Discussion Draft

Status note: This text is a draft for discussion. It does not claim to be a final or legally enforceable constitutional text. Some provisions are deliberately pointed in order to provoke debate. Expert comments, particularly from international, environmental, and constitutional law, are expressly welcome and will be incorporated into future versions: mail@constitutionofearth.org

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This draft is the long-term proposal. The principles it rests on are stated in the Declaration for an Earth Constitution (v1.6, 25 September 2026, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22960459), which is the authoritative text and is carried by an initial circle of signatories. The institutional architecture that makes the constitution workable, an Earth Council, an Earth Bank, a Biosphere Inspectorate, and a Biosphere Court, with measurable planetary limits and automatic triggers when they are crossed, is developed in the book This Is Not an Opinion (Earth Governance Press, 2026).

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First version: 5 February 2023 · Revised: May 2026 · Aligned with the Declaration v1.6: October 2026
Initiator: Donald C. Jacob (donaldjacob.ch)
Related publications: This Is Not an Opinion (Earth Governance Press, 2026); Eine Verfassung für die Erde (oekom, 2022); Die Erde als Partner (BoD, 2026).

PREAMBLE

The Earth system is the common precondition of all life. It is not property, not a resource, not a backdrop. It is the condition.

Democratic constitutions protect the rights of their citizens. They do not protect the system that makes their existence possible in the first place. This gap is no accident but a historical premise: constitutions were written in an age of seemingly unlimited resources. We live in a different age.

Climate change, species extinction, and the disruption of biogeochemical cycles are not isolated problems. They are symptoms of a constitutional order in which the Earth system has no rank. We measure the planet as a whole and govern it in pieces. What has no rank loses as soon as it matters.

This constitution proposes to think of the Earth as a legally recognised counterpart: not as a subject in the narrow legal sense, but as a protected good that is institutionally represented, with clear procedures, limits, and human responsibilities.

It proposes no world parliament, no eco-dictatorship, no dissolution of national sovereignty. It is an upgrade of democracy for a finite system: a constitution, not a government. It is carried by states that integrate it into their legal orders, and it provides for a limited planetary level of responsibility wherever the functioning of the Earth system as a whole is materially at stake.

PART I — PRINCIPLES

Article 1 — Recognition of the Earth System
(1) The Earth system is recognised as the common material precondition of life and of every human institution.
(2) The Earth system comprises the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, the soils and the lithosphere in their biologically relevant dimensions, the biosphere with all species and ecosystems, and the biogeochemical cycles that connect them.
(3) This recognition does not make the Earth system ownable. It establishes a duty of all state and private actors not to impair its functioning. Integrity means the continued functioning of these conditions and processes, not an unchanging state of nature.

Article 2 — Superior Rank
(1) Because every human institution depends on its functioning, the integrity of the Earth system has superior legal rank wherever actions or decisions can materially undermine that functioning.
(2) This superior rank is limited by its purpose. It applies only where the functioning of the Earth system is materially at risk. It confers no planetary competence over ordinary local or social conflicts. Outside that scope, other rights and interests are weighed as before.

Article 3 — Duty to Future Generations
(1) The people living today act as trustees for future generations.
(2) Decisions causing irreversible damage to the Earth system are impermissible unless there is a compelling necessity and no reasonable alternative exists. Scientific uncertainty is no reason to postpone protection where there is a credible risk of serious or irreversible harm.

PART II — OBLIGATIONS

Article 4 — Obligations of States
(1) States recognising this constitution commit to bringing their legal orders step by step into line with the principles of Part I.
(2) In particular, they commit:
– to set binding reduction pathways for climate-relevant emissions, land sealing, and pollutant inputs;
– to establish independent institutions that represent the Earth system and take part in decision-making procedures;
– to report at regular intervals on the state and development of relevant ecological indicators;
– to give scientific advice a binding role in central decisions;
– to support a limited planetary level of responsibility under Article 7.

Article 5 — Responsibility for Harm
(1) Economic actors are subject to a duty of care regarding the ecological consequences of their activities, covering direct and indirect impacts along the entire value chain. This duty is justiciable.
(2) Responsibility for ecological harm follows causation, control, substantial benefit, and historical contribution to the harm. When the shared costs of prevention, restoration, and transition are distributed, the capacity to act is also taken into account.
(3) Costs must not be shifted to the public, to other regions, to future generations, or to the wider community of life. Where restoration is possible, it is owed. Where it is no longer possible, proportionate liability and compensation are enforceable against those who caused the harm, controlled it, or derived substantial economic benefit from it.

Article 6 — Obligations of Individuals
(1) Every person is called upon to contribute to the preservation of the Earth system through their conduct.
(2) This duty is primarily a matter of education and public understanding, not of sanctions. Education places our dependence on the Earth system alongside civic, legal, and economic literacy. Awareness builds legitimacy; law gives it durability.

PART III — INSTITUTIONS

Article 7 — Representation of the Earth System
(1) Recognising states establish institutions whose sole mandate is the protection and representation of the Earth system. Constitutional courts, independent central banks, or courts of audit may serve as models.
(2) Because the Earth system functions as a whole, a limited planetary level of responsibility is needed, confined to cases where the functioning of the Earth system as a whole is materially at stake: institutions able to monitor the Earth system as a whole, set protective limits, assign responsibility, and ensure that serious damage is stopped and repaired.
(3) Planetary responsibility does not mean unlimited planetary power. Any such institution has a narrow mandate and democratic legitimacy. Its functions and powers are separated. It relies on independent scientific advice, acts through transparent and publicly accountable procedures, and is subject to review by independent courts as to whether it acts lawfully, follows its procedures, respects fundamental rights, and stays within its mandate.
(4) Within that mandate, its decisions are binding and enforceable. Protective limits, once adopted through legitimate procedures, remain binding unless revised through an equally rigorous, transparent, science-based, democratically legitimate, and legally reviewable procedure. They cannot be changed merely because political majorities, economic cycles, or affected interests change.
(5) The concrete institutional design, name, composition, powers, is left to each legal order and to the alliance under Article 11, provided it does not defeat the purpose.

Article 8 — Scientific Foundation
(1) Decisions substantially affecting the Earth system rest on the best available scientific knowledge.
(2) Scientific advisory bodies are set up to work free of instructions and to make their findings publicly accessible.

Article 9 — Transparency and Participation
(1) Procedures affecting the Earth system must be transparent. Evidence, funding, decision-making processes, and conflicts of interest are publicly disclosed, subject only to narrowly defined, legally reviewable exceptions.
(2) Civil-society actors have the right to take part in procedures and to seek legal remedies, in their own name or on behalf of the Earth system.

Article 10 — No Regression, No Evasion
(1) Protection must not disappear through the back door. Harm cannot be made acceptable by moving it elsewhere, changing its legal form, or weakening the rule that prevents it.
(2) No actor may evade these duties by shifting harmful activities, production, ownership, financing, or environmental costs to another jurisdiction, entity, or generation.
(3) Established safeguards may be revised in their design or form, but their level of protection must not be reduced unless compelling scientific evidence shows that the previous level is no longer necessary. Any such reduction follows the procedure in Article 7(4).
(4) Emergency measures must be necessary, proportionate, temporary, transparent, and independently reviewable. They must not cause serious or irreversible harm to the Earth system where less harmful alternatives are available.

PART IV — TRANSITION AND IMPLEMENTATION

Article 11 — Alliance and Recognition
(1) The path to this constitution runs from public debate to first signatories, from first signatories to a transdisciplinary alliance across science, law, economics, politics, and civil society, and from that alliance to institutions and states willing to give these principles legal effect. The alliance carries the way; the institutions are the goal.
(2) This constitution takes effect through voluntary recognition by individual states, subnational entities, cities, or organisations. Recognition may be symbolic, political, or legal. Its form and scope are determined by the recognising actor.

Article 12 — Step-by-Step Implementation
(1) Recognising actors commit to a serious, documented implementation of the principles. Implementation is not a single measure but a path.
(2) Recognising actors define indicators, stages, and reporting duties and communicate them publicly.

Article 13 — Further Development
(1) This constitution understands itself as a living document. Future versions will build on feedback, expert criticism, and practical experience.
(2) Versions are dated, annotated with change notes, and publicly archived.

Change note, October 2026: aligned with the Declaration for an Earth Constitution v1.6. "Biosphere" replaced by "Earth system" as the protected good (Art. 1); "highest protected good" replaced by "common material precondition" and precedence restated as superior rank limited to material risk (Art. 1–2); planetary level of responsibility and its safeguards added (Art. 7); responsibility for harm extended (Art. 5); new Article 10 on non-regression and evasion; alliance added (Art. 11). Former Articles 10–12 renumbered 11–13.

CONCLUSION

"If we carry on like this, it is not failure. It is a decision."

This constitution is a proposal. It is not a certainty, not a finished work, not a complete answer. It is an invitation to ask the question precisely: What legal order fits a finite system?

The answer will not be written here. It will be written in parliaments, courts, academies of science, social movements, schools, and private decisions. This text serves one purpose: to keep the question open.

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— Donald C. Jacob, Arlesheim, 2020 / May 2026 / October 2026