Literature Review

Is there a necessary, in‐principle connection between ecocentric values and democracy or is the relationship merely contingent? Is it possible to incorporate the interests of the non‐human community into the ground rules of democracy? Through an immanent ecological critique of the regulative ideals and institutions of liberal democracy, it is suggested that ecocentric values and democracy can be connected to some extent ‐ at least in the same way that liberalism and democracy are connected ‐ through an extension of the principle of autonomy and the rights discourse to include ecological interests. However, the move from autonomy, to rights, to an ecologically grounded democracy encounters a number of hazards, not all of which can be successfully negotiated owing to the individualistic premises of the rights discourse. While the rights discourse may be extended to include human environmental rights and animal rights in relation to captive and domesticated species, it becomes considerably strained and unworkable (ontologically, politically and legally) in relation to the remaining constituents of the biotic community.

This response article written from ‘outside’ the Swedish–Danish contexts of this special issue considers how we might highlight and make additional ecocentric meaning of some of the terms most frequently used in this collection. In the first instance my focus is on ‘meaning’ but this is expanded to include other terms such as valuing, values, ethics and democracy. The way we value meaning demands elaboration because ‘meaning‐making’ is pedagogically central to the ecological experience of learning, crucial to fulfilling the not always clear aims of environmental and sustainability education and their regional variations (including education for sustainable development), important for their research, and, indeed, underpins the philosophical quest more generally. Thus in this article, I introduce an ecology of the meaning of meaning, meaning levels, valuing and values, as they might inform stronger notions of democracy in critical approaches to learning, education, sustainability and development. This existentially focused introduction to ‘meaning’ and its ‘making’ is set against the politics of ‘climate change’ where political leaders have recently made grand declarations about the globalized moral challenge induced by human‐induced climate change. How might pedagogues and researchers imagine the place of meaning and role of value in learning and in an education for sustainable development when the crisis of meaning lies at the intersections of the intensely personal and moral and the globally abstracted political?

Today, numerous constitutions provide for a rights-based approach to environmental protection. Based as they are on an instrumentalist rationality that seeks to promote human entitlements to nature, the majority of these rights remain anthropocentric. Although there are growing calls within academic and activist circles to reorient rights alongside an ecocentric ontology, only one country to date has taken the bold step to bestow rights on nature in its constitution. The Ecuadorian Constitution of 2008 announces the transition from a juridical anthropocentric orientation to an ecocentric position by recognizing enforceable rights of nature. This article critically reflects on the legal significance of granting rights to nature, with specific reference to Ecuador’s constitutional experiment. It first provides a contextual description of rights in an attempt to illustrate their anthropogenic genesis, and then explores the notion of environmental rights. The following part traces the discourse that has developed over the years in relation to the rights of nature by revealing aspects of an ecocentric counter-narrative. The final part focuses specifically on the Ecuadorian constitutional regime and provides (i) a historical-contextual discussion of the events that led to the adoption of the rights of nature; (ii) an analysis of the constitutional provisions directly and indirectly related to the rights of nature; and (iii) a critical appraisal of whether those provisions, so far, measure up to the rhetoric of constitutional ecocentric rights of nature in that country.

This article reflects on how Colombia, as an important laboratory in transitional restorative justice, a 60-year long internal conflict, is experiencing an ‘ecocentric turn.’ This transition is not free from contradiction, ambivalence or great challenges. For this article, ‘ecocentric turn’ means an epistemological movement from anthropocentrism to ecocentrism, with biocentrism as the middle stage between the two ends. We argue that the ecocentric turn does not exclusively imply postures that are purely anthropocentric or ecocentric, but also ones that are hybrid and eclectic, which for the purposes of this article will be called biocentric positions. The ecocentric turn is reviewed on two levels: the first is the institutional level, focusing on the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP for its name in Spanish); and the second level corresponds to the experience of Palestina, Huila, a non-ethnic campesino community.

Since 2016, at least three domestic Colombian tribunals have each issued a decision that represents a new era for Colombian environmental justice.These decisions represent an advance towards changing the anthropocentric paradigm of Colombin justice, for two key reasons. First, they recognize that certain ecosystems hold rights, for example the Amazon rainforest. Second, they include an explicity ecocentric understanding of protecting natural habitats. However, this change has been gradual. For example, whilst the decisions of the Colombian Constitutional Court in 2016 and the Supreme Court of Justice in 2018 both recognized some natural entities as subjects of rights, they also reaffirmed the instrumental value of ecosystems for the human species. And although the sentene issued by the Administrative Tribunal of Boyaca in 2018 emphasised an ecocentric perspective, prioritising the rights of nature over the rights of communities, the court still confirmed the need to compensate communities affected by this decision. Nevertheless, these decisions, which are the result of persistent environmental activism, have improved environmental protection in Colombia through the judicial system, integrating a perspective that transcends the traditional anthropocentric view.

The ecocentric rights paradigm – also expressed as ‘rights of nature’– gains increasing traction at the national and international levels. While in some countries revolutionary ecocentric laws have been adopted for the recognition and protection of the rights of nature in her entirety; in others an emerging jurisprudence built on ecocentric rights-based approaches to environmental protection is admitting the intrinsic value of non-human elements of nature – such as rivers, mountains and forests – recognising them as subjects of rights. Precisely, one country where such jurisprudential paradigm shift took place recently is Colombia, one of the world’s mega-diverse countries.

In 2008, Ecuador became the first nation to give rights to nature when it ratified constitutional amendments (new articles 71-74) that grant the environment the inalienable right to exist, persist, and be respected. Environmentalists hope Ecuador’s amendments will lead to improvement in a country devastated by resource exploitation, and that other countries will follow. Yet, many wonder whether the amendments will be enforced. This comment argues that—all things considered—successful execution of the amendments is unlikely. Ecuador’s President has not demonstrated a sincere intention or ability to implement the amendments. Further, plaintiffs who sue under the amendments face significant legal barriers, such as Ecuador’s lack of a standing doctrine and a history of judicial corruption and dysfunction. To counteract these problems, Ecuador should grant lifetime tenure to its constitutional court judges, codify a standing doctrine, create an independent enforcement body, and create an independent environmental tribunal with criminal contempt power.

In a number of States all over the world civil society actors have turned to climate litigation as a strategy to compel States to address climate change, and Uganda is no exception. Despite the absence of a climate-focused legal regulatory framework, Ugandan non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have adopted a rights-based litigation strategy to secure anthropogenic environmental rights and the rights of Nature. In this quest, however, they have encountered obstacles in the form of security for costs and adverse costs orders. This article examines Ugandan Courts’ approach to awarding security of costs and costs in climate litigation initiated by NGOs. We argue that security of costs and costs threaten access to environmental justice by making climate activists very reluctant to approach the courts. We conclude by proposing ways to overcome these hurdles.

This Article analyzes the rise and persistence of the U.S.-based nature rights movement and its engagement with social movements in the Global South and with Indigenous ideas. The story told here of the U.S. nature rights movement is also significant because it reveals dynamics about the circulation of legal ideas across borders and legal traditions. Scholars have argued that, in the transnational flow of legal ideas, states in developing regions like Latin America act as sites of reception of transnational theories of law rather than sites of production. Legal actors based in the periphery have the role of receiving canonical theories, doctrine, and institutions of law developed in and for the North and adapting them to local experience and politics. The causes of this lopsided exchange are both material and cultural. Northern scholars have more funding and greater access to knowledge, as well as a greater ability to export their ideas. They also enjoy more prestige or symbolic capital. To counterbalance these dynamics, some scholars have promoted the idea of the South as an underutilized source of innovative intellectual production. This scholarship highlights ways in which ideas from the Global South can exert influence in the North and how Indigenous legal ideas can find expression in the national legal system and beyond—a process sometimes referred to as “interlegality in reverse.” Similarly, in scholarship on climate change in particular, the idea that the West can learn from Indigenous systems of knowledge has recently been given much weight. This Article contributes to these debates. It shows a path by which legal ideas developed in the periphery can influence and nourish U.S. social movements and even local laws. Part I introduces the origins of the global rights of nature movement, with emphasis on several sources: U.S. Indian tribes; U.S. NGOs; and Latin American laws and social movements. Part II shows how the movement in the United States has persisted by shifting toward more aspirational and symbolic uses of law, by redefining itself as part of a transnational movement, and by turning toward engagement with Indigenous peoples and ideas. Part III presents the implications of this case study for our thinking about the symbolic use of law and about how legal ideas are deployed and travel—between the periphery and core and between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples—in a time of perceived environmental crisis

The Rights of Nature movement is at the precipice of watershed social changes. Leaders of this international, Indigenous-led movement call upon the public to radically re-imagine the human relationship with nature. This symposium Article comes at a crucial moment when some leading environmental law scholars are questioning the potential Rights of Nature within the United States. This Article responds by building upon the ideas of Christopher Stone to chart the theoretical and doctrinal pathways that breathe life into the legal framework of Rights of Nature. It sketches the present status of Rights of Nature in the United States and links this overview to environmental, animal, and natural resources law literatures. Most scholarly discourse about the Rights of Nature focuses on a few well-known examples outside of the United States, such as constitutional rights in Ecuador or New Zealand and Australia granting rights to wind and rivers. In fact, the United States has a growing body of diverse Rights of Nature that legal scholars have largely overlooked. For example, in six federal statutes, natural resource damages have resulted in over ten billion dollars of tort remedies that benefit nature. Indigenous governments located throughout the United States — including the Band of Ojibwe, Ho-Chunk Nation, Navajo Nation, and Ponca Nation — have created legal personhood, statutory personhood, and constitutional provisions in tribal government. Additionally, wildlife holds many rights hidden in federal statutes, as with bald eagles claiming property rights superior to those of humans in the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. Collectively, this diffuse and innovative set of laws forms a body of existing Rights of Nature, showing that such rights exist in the United States today — examples that deserve discussion, consideration, and potential extension. This Article seeks to uncover and elevate these rights, thus promoting, amplifying, and calling attention to many diffuse efforts to capitalize upon their collective potential to reshape the human relationship with nature and address the environmental problems of our time. It links popular discourse on the Rights of Nature with its theoretical foundations and well-established statutory systems of environmental law. It seeks to help and inspire legal thinkers in disparate fields to collectively co-create a more robust role for Rights of Nature — within the United States and beyond.

This research analyses the collective discourse of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) promoting the Rights-of-Nature (RoN) in Uganda, which have recently gained legal recognition. Findings reveal the framing of RoN by NGOs challenges anthropocentric law, claiming to protect the intrinsic value of Uganda‟s nature. Importantly, RoN is claimed to facilitate greater recognition of customary-ecological-governance systems, which are being revived in specific communities in western Uganda, and are understood to traditionally value the RoN through their protection of sacred-natural-sites. The NGOs‟ orchestrated professional strategies and cohesive vision suggests they are an 'epistemic community' which has gained agency to promote their discourse at national, regional and international levels of decisionmaking. The discourse risks being somewhat essentialist, and there are future uncertainties regarding RoN‟s implementation and enforcement. Nevertheless, this study argues NGOs assembled as an epistemic community can play a positive role in realising radical environmentalism by creating legislative instruments upon which grassroot actors may use to strengthen their claims.

With the growth of the ecocentric approach to protecting non-human natural entities and the increase in the number of countries granting legal personhood to non-human natural entities in different parts of the world, it is worth questioning whether this approach can be extended to Africa and shift the African approach of protecting non-human natural entities from anthropocentric to ecocentric. Therefore, this chapter applies a doctrinal research method, with the use of primary and secondary sources of materials to analyze the current African approaches to protecting non-human natural entities. This is juxtaposed with the existing approach of granting legal personhood to non-human natural entities and helps to determine how viable this concept will be in Africa.