Literature Review

Eduardo Gudynas looks at the main trends of the discourse around Buen Vivir in South America. He looks at the rich and multiple discourses around Buen Vivir, as a political platform for different visions of alternatives to development. The paradox that development can be declared defunct and yet in the next step promoted as the only way forward is deeply embedded in modern culture. Therefore, any alternative to development must open paths to move beyond the modern Western culture. Buen Vivir, he argues gives that opportunity.

In 2008, Ecuador became the first country in the world to declare nature as a subject of rights based on the ‘Buen Vivir’ (Good Living) philosophy which is premised on an indigenous principle that envisions a world where humans are part-and-parcel of a larger natural and social environment. Although Ecuador’s constitution is groundbreaking from a legal standpoint, the question arises of how the rights of nature is spatially manifested beyond the designation of protected areas? To shed light on such interrogation, this article, based on qualitative research, focuses on the linear park component of the mega-project Guayaquil Ecológico heralded as a first materialization which champions the “Rights of Nature” under the vision of the Buen Vivir. It unravels the contested rhetoric and realities of the Guayaquil Ecológico linear park in a critical review of the as-built project in relation to the larger objectives of Buen Vivir. The Guayaquil Ecologico linear park promised to simultaneously upgrade both social and environmental dimensions. However, it did not fully address the complexity of Guayaquil’s socio-ecological context and some of the structural injustices of the estuarine territory. Buen Vivir was rhetorically mobilised to implement a project where aesthetic dimensions dominated, further perpetuating socio-ecological vulnerabilities through relocation and evictions. Furthermore, its implementation was dependent on a specific political moment, leaving it in a state of abandonment and neglect. The Buen Vivir philosophy—as a decolonial stance that challenges western forms of development—can offer a fundamental base to question current modes of territorial occupation based on extractivist planning and design strategies. It holds significant potential to serve as base to re-think the relationship between forms of settlement, natural dynamics, and worldviews.

This article examines the ideology and the politics of buen vivir as the government of Rafael Correa in Ecuador has implemented them from 2007 to 2013. The analysis focuses on the implications of this model, which is based on a traditional Andean world view. The article first explores the main components of buen vivir including its focus on strengthening democratic participation and environmental justice. Second, the implementation of this ideology is analysed through a review of the new constitution and government policies. Third, key outcomes are assessed through various social and economic indicators. Fourth, a critical approach to the government's interpretation of buen vivir is taken and the many contradictions and inconsistencies in its implementation are unfolded. Nevertheless, the policies of buen vivir have the potential to create innovative and inspiring solutions, especially in the face of the environmental and social challenges brought by the anthropocene.

Ecuador’s new constitution recognizes “rights of nature” and peoples’ right to benefit from the environment and natural resources that enhance the Buen Vivir (Quality of Life). The national plan for Buen Vivir calls for spatial planning to guarantee territorial and global environmental sustainability, increase people’s safety by minimizing the impact of natural hazards such as floods. Within this context, we analyzed opportunities for green infrastructure in Cuenca (Ecuador’s third largest city). We mapped existing green areas and linkages, analyzed the roles of implementing institutions with structured input from 33 government, academic, and industry experts. We found that fragmented authorities and often-contradictory mandates of different agencies prevented optimal management of open-space areas within the city. Moreover, planning efforts within the city of Cuenca are completely disconnected from the rapidly-urbanizing peri-urban areas outside the city limits, resulting in missed opportunities for connected green space for wildlife, human recreation, and water quality benefits.

Can the principles of Buen Vivir support forest cover transition in Latin America? This paper explores the effects of the Ley de Derechos de la Madre Tierra (Law 071), the fundamental law for regulating the rights of nature and the environment in accordance with the principles of Buen Vivir, in Bolivia. By means of a country-level panel dataset, we compare forest cover trajectories of Bolivia with the dynamics of a synthetic counterfactual that simulates what would have happened in the absence of the policy. Our results show that, in the absence of the Law 071, Bolivia would have experienced a different forest cover pattern. In particular, the recognition of the rights of Mother Earth has proven effective in supporting forest cover in the country despite the effect was modest in magnitude and declined over time. This evidence sheds light on the value of the institutional endorsement of informal Indigenous principles for sustainable development.

In the context of the danger to human existence of climate change and loss of biodiversity, and the failure of governments to prevent deforestation and other human activities that result in unsustainable levels of carbon emissions, this chapter explores indigenous peoples’ relationship to nature and the lessons the West has learned from indigenous worldviews and practices. It traces the evolution of global indigenous environmental movements and the incorporation of sumak kawsay/suma qamaña and the Rights of Nature into the Ecuadorian and Bolivian constitutions. It indicates the ways in which indigenous cosmologies, and indigenous movements, have influenced intergovernmental bodies’ environmental initiatives and led to the incorporation of indigenous peoples’ rights into international law. The successful outcomes of rights of nature litigation in countries across the continents, including in Latin America, highlight the role of local judiciaries in protecting both indigenous cultures and the world’s wild places.

Awajun, Wampis, and other Amazonian indigenous peoples in Peru have acquired title to the collective property of their native communities as a legal strategy for the defense of their ancestral territory. This strategy, however, has failed to stop the expansion of extractive industries and the degradation of their livelihoods. In response, indigenous peoples in the northern Amazon are proposing the legal recognition of their “integral territory” under a politics of buen vivir. This new model for territorial governance is aimed at transforming indigenous peoples from ethnic communities with property entitlements to nations with territorial rights.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—a normative (non-binding) global international environmental agreement (IEA)—claim to be universal as they were multilaterally negotiated between UN member states. However, is giving the Global South a seat at the table truly inclusive development? This article looks at a cross-cultural comparison of the African philosophy of Ubuntu (specifically in South Africa), the Buddhist Gross National Happiness (Bhutan) and the native American idea of Buen Vivir (e.g. Ecuador) and how they view the SDGs, how they view ‘development’, ‘sustainability’, goals and indicators, the implicit value underpinnings of the SDGs, prioritization of goals, and missing links, and leadership. Viewed through the lens of the three cosmovisions of the Global, the SDGs do not effectively address the human–nature–well-being interrelationship. Other cosmovisions have an inherent biocentric value orientation that is often ignored in academic and diplomatic circles. These claim to be more promising than continuing green development approaches, based in modernism. On the positive side, the SDGs contain language of all three worldviews. However, the SDGs are not biocentric aiming to respect nature for nature’s sake, enabling reciprocity with nature. They embody linear growth/results thinking which requires unlimited resource exploitation, and not cyclical thinking replacing growth with well-being (of all beings). They represent individualism and exclude private sector responsibility. They do not represent collective agency and sharing, implying that there is a need for ‘development as service’, to one another and to the Earth. Including these perspectives may lead to abolishing the word ‘development’ within the SDGs, replacing it by inter-relationship; replacing end-result-oriented ‘goals’ with process thinking; and thinking in cyclical nature, and earth governance, instead of static ‘sustainability’. The glass can be viewed as half full or half empty, but the analysis shows that Western ‘modernism’ is still a strong underpinning of the SDGs. Bridges can be built between Happiness, Ubuntu and Buen Vivir in re-interpreting goal frameworks, global governance and the globalization process. This article is largely based on Van Norren 2017 (Development as service, a Happiness, Ubuntu, and Buen Vivir interdisciplinary view of the Sustainable Development Goals.

In 2008, Ecuador became the first country in the world to make nature a subject of constitutional rights, and they did so by invoking nature as la Pachamama, the Kichwa Mother Earth deity. This is a biocentric notion which challenges the modernist vision of nature as resources subject to human use, which could imply a fundamental transition in the human-nature relationship with implications far beyond the legal system. With this point of departure, the aim of this article is to explore how Ecuador’s rights of nature are understood and employed rhetorically by relevant actors, particularly in relation to the country’s development model, which is based on extraction and export of natural resources, i.e. a subject understanding of nature. The rights of nature’s meaning have been attempted fixed in a discursive struggle, and three different discourses regarding the rights of nature have been identified from interview data: The Anti-Capitalist Ecologist Discourse, the Transformative Discourse and the Anthropocentric Developmentalist Discourse. The latter, which conceptualizes the rights of nature as anthropocentric sustainable development has become hegemonic. This can explain why the rights of nature can co-exist alongside continued and increased resource extraction with detrimental socio-environmental effects.

The concept of development and the ways of achieving it have been widely criticised from various viewpoints. In the face of the apparent obsolescence of long-standing models, the novel Buen Vivir approach (roughly translated as ‘living well’ or ‘good living’), which has arisen in different parts of Latin America, may offer an alternative paradigm. However, the implementation of policies that could lead to this Buen Vivir model requires profound changes that follow a range of complex transitions, which may often even seem contradictory in countries like Ecuador, where this approach has already been enacted in the new constitution and laws but where old development practices still continue. Accepting the plurality of visions on Buen Vivir (from the indigenous ontology to the ‘Western–modern’ approach), while at the same time positing common ground in which to define a new development strategy able to overcome a natural resource extraction-based economic pattern, is one of the immediate challenges.

In 2008, Ecuador became the first nation to grant constitutional rights to nature, or pachamama (Mother Earth to many indigenous Ecuadorians). The prevalence of laws granting rights to nature has dramatically increased in recent years at local, state, and national levels. In the United States, approximately 200 municipalities have passed ordinances that grant rights to nature in some manner. This movement was substantially catalyzed by Ecuador’s 2008 Constitution. Granting rights to nature shows a fundamental rethinking of the purpose of law. Nearly all legal systems were designed only for the benefit of people. Property law, in particular, was built on the premise that the modification of the natural environment for human benefit should not only be acceptable, but incentivized. John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government provided the foundation for the labor theory of property, which establishes that in a world given by God to all of humanity in common, individual property ownership of any specific aspect of that world should be based on the labor that the individual puts into utilization of natural resources for human benefit. Similarly, traditional environmental law is largely based on protecting the rights of people to have the benefits of a healthy environment and the resources it provides. Even the Endangered Species Act, which was enacted for the sake of protecting species, states in its text under the section, “Findings, Purposes, and Policy,” that endangered species are of “esthetic, ecological, educational, historical, recreational, and scientific value to the Nation and its people,” highlighting that its purpose is, at least officially, anthropocentric. Granting rights to nature is a new approach to environmental law that conceptualizes the natural, non-human world as something worthy of protection for its own sake, and not just as something to be used for the benefit of people. While a great deal has been written by scholars theorizing about what the effects of granting rights to nature might be, it is difficult to find information about how Ecuador’s law has actually been used in legal practice. To help fill this gap, the emphasis of this Article is on analyzing how nature’s rights have been utilized and implemented in Ecuador, and what effects they have had. A final summary of key takeaways and lessons learned, that might be relevant for other rights of nature jurisdictions, is provided.