Sustainable Development, Moral Law and Legality in Defense of Cultural and Landscape Heritage

Abstract

Moved by Pope Frances’ urgent call to protect our common home by dealing with the environmental challenge and its human roots to achieve sustainable and integral development, the historical-legislative and institutional recognition act was drawn up on the protection and valorization of cultural-landscape-environmental heritage, matrix of the progress of civilization outlined in the fundamental principles of the Italian Constitution in the “cultural programme” focused on the relationship between cultureperson and environment-person. It recalls the action of the institutions to protect nature and the ecological-environmental balance and the activities of international organizations to safeguard nature from human actions. They are a sign of the critical issues of codification in the field of cultural, landscape and environmental heritage (2006-2009) due to a departure from natural legal right (jus) envisaged as a moral law for enjoyment, compatible with a loving, responsible and prudent use, aimed at guaranteeing an integral sustainable development for future generations. In losing the natural moral law, one encounters the decisive factor in the fall of legality, with serious consequences for heritage protection and people’s growth, based on shared standards. A glimmer of hope can be discerned in the community/EU legislation to harmonize the protection and valorization of the environment according to criteria of substantive law, where the primary aims for the guarantee of future generations lead to regulatory processes anchored to the ethics of natural moral law, under the bulwark of true cooperation and good faith, in a strict justicial and sanctioning system, tempered by the use of fairness when the general interest of the common good prevails.