Planetary Health Episode 9: Regulated metasynthesis – How the law can shape disruption

Traditionally, the law is a system that ensures order, protects existing institutions, and guarantees social stability. This conservative role has its purpose: it enables predictability, trust, and protection against arbitrary intervention. Especially in uncertain times, a stable legal framework appears to be an anchor in times of change. But this very strength can become a weakness if it prevents necessary change. Innovations that challenge existing practices, business models, or values encounter not only economic resistance but also normative barriers. The law protects the status quo—and thus risks blocking the future.

But law can be more than preservation. It can also enable transformation. When new technologies bring not only technical but also social innovations, new products are created, but also new value systems. At such moments, a dual movement takes place: existing values are devalued – this process of devaluation affects not only material resources but also symbolic orders, legitimacy, and institutional authorities. At the same time, a revaluation takes place – new practices and norms gain in importance, are classified as sustainable or ethically superior, and receive social recognition or legal support. This transition is never neutral. It is negotiated – or enforced. Often, it is economically powerful actors who try to either prevent the devaluation of the old or influence the revaluation of the new in their favor. Lobbying, regulatory design, market monopolization, and strategic communication campaigns are means of exerting this influence. In this area of tension, the law is under pressure: Should it remain neutral, merely reflecting change? Or can—indeed, must—it take action itself and influence what will be considered valuable in the future by setting frameworks, standardizing, and shaping participation?

This tension is particularly evident in food systems. The debate about meat alternatives, ecological and regenerative agriculture, and digital transparency systems in the value chain shows that those who determine what constitutes healthy, sustainable, ethical nutrition are not only negotiating taste or health, but also economic interests, cultural identities, and political power. If the law limits itself to a purely technocratic role here, it runs the risk of becoming a pawn of particular interests. If, on the other hand, it promotes new practices or restricts old ones without public negotiation, it risks losing its democratic legitimacy.

The law therefore needs a new role: not as a static authority, but also not as a mere enforcer of market logic or technological narratives. We propose understanding this change as a process of regulated metasynthesis. By this we mean the conscious combination of devaluation and revaluation under active legal design, whereby the law not only protects or permits, but actively creates spaces in which new values can emerge and be legitimized. Such a legal system would not be reactive, but adaptive. It would not only regulate, but also continuously evolve. It would respond to technological developments as well as to social discourses, cultural practices, and ecological necessities. It would be open to uncertainty without becoming arbitrary—stable in its principles, but flexible in its application.

Such an approach requires a new way of dealing with risks. Until now, regulation has often only been activated once damage has already occurred – whether in the financial system, data protection, or environmental law. However, it is clear that missed opportunities can be just as consequential as damage that has already occurred. If new food technologies are blocked for too long because old standards are not adapted, it is not only industry that loses out, but society as a whole. And when legal uncertainty prevents more sustainable practices from scaling up more quickly, the environment—and thus all of us—end up paying the price. That is why risk must be redefined in the context of metasynthesis: not as a mere threat, but as a tension between missed progress and hasty devaluation.

In this sense, the legal structuring of devaluation and revaluation is a social negotiation process. Whoever decides what is considered valuable decides on participation, resource distribution, and shaping the future. This process must not be technocratic or exclusive. It requires democratic participation, transparency, and institutional independence. Meta-synthesis can only succeed if regulatory authorities can act independently, if legislative processes are open and transparent, and if public debates on value systems are permitted and encouraged. Our experience in working with food systems shows that new technologies are only accepted if they are not only efficient but also embedded in a narrative. People orient themselves by stories, by meanings, by cultural references. Law that ignores these dimensions runs the risk of losing its own impact. A learning legal system must therefore also be culturally adaptable—sensitive to narratives, compatible with everyday practices, and open to change.

What we need is not a revolution in law, but its evolutionary opening. A legal system that does not remain stuck in the past, but has the courage to help shape the future – cautiously, reflectively, but resolutely. In a time of planetary crises and exponential developments, the future lies not in static standardization, but in the ability to continuously update. Only in this way can the law achieve what is expected of it: not only to regulate, but to create spaces in which the future becomes possible. Planetary health requires more than new products—it demands a cultural, legal, and economic meta-synthesis. Transformation begins in the mind—and culminates in the law.