Rights of Nature: Recent Developments of Regulations and Jurisprudence

BERROS, MARÍA VALERIA

Münich

Workshop; Rights of Nature in Transatlantic Perspective; 2016

Rachel Carson Center for Environment & Society

Since the recent legal proposals from Ecuador and Bolivia, a number of tools and novel legal arguments have become available to defend Pachamama, the rights of Mother Earth as a legal entity. This paper aims to reconstruct the meaning given to this legal and constitutional recognition through an analysis of the judicial cases where these arguments first became mobilized. The first case involved a proposal to alter the natural course of the Vilcabamba River in Ecuador. A decision was passed in favor of the rights of the river on March 30, 2011. Since then, these arguments have started to appear in other judicial cases.But the judicial field is not the only space where innovative strategies can be observed. Institutional structures are also relevant and this is the focus of the second part of this presentation. Institutions inspired by particular southern worldviews have begun to be created; for example, the Bolivian Mother Earth Defender, the Plurinational Council for Living Well in Harmony and Balance with Mother Earth, and the Plurinational Authority of Mother Earth created by the Framework Act on Mother Earth and Holistic Development for Live Well in 2012, or the project to create the first court for defending the rights of nature in Galápagos in 2013. The focus on the institutional developments brings up a number of important challenges that must be addressed in order to think about the heterogeneous ?builders? of these proposals where the idea of rights of nature is embedded in a diversity of knowledge and alternative perspectives.Finally, I will look at how these ideas are circulating from these southern countries to other ones in Latin America and beyond.