Literature Review

Animals are not voiceless. In fact, many animals are known to have sophisticated communication systems which can be considered a language. Animals communicate among themselves and with other species and make group decisions. This chapter explores how nature rights may be inclusive of diverse animal languages and invite new, more respectful multi-being relations. Acknowledging that animals speak gives rise to practical implications in terms of how to understand the intricacy of their inner lives, respect their agency, and discern their wishes. Deep listening, animal-language learning, and community-specific observational practices offer pathways to be inclusive of animal views and voices within decision-making structures. Initiatives in Europe can, and already are, engaging with wild animals as beings capable of mutually-shaping nature rights frameworks.

In diverse places across the planet, laws are emerging to change the legal status of more-than-human Nature from objects to subjects with rights. This chapter engages with the conceptual roots of legal subjectivity, in order to reveal the obstacles facing more-than-humans in employing legal statuses designed to solidify the exploitative relations of some humans towards more-than-human Nature. The chapter addresses how a logic and politics of human exceptionalism operates concurrently to exclude other lifeforms from the legal realm, as can be seen in the construction of Nature as object or resource, and to legitimise applications of extractivism towards Nature. Thereafter, the chapter questions whether the recognition of legal subjectivity for more-than-human Nature can be a means to resist extractivist politics, by considering experiences in Bolivia and Ecuador before turning to examine initiatives for the rights of Nature to be recognised in EU law. Ultimately, this chapter hopes to shine a light on the ongoing struggles for more-than-human subjectivities to access meaningful participation, not given realities, in the legal sphere.

In this chapter, which takes the form of an interview between an Indigenous person belonging to the Kichwa People of Sarayaku in the Ecuadorian Amazon and an activist anthropologist, the authors engage in dialogue and reflection on how the rights of Nature can be interculturally translated to Europe. Their interview encompasses various discussions that traverse between the Amazon and Europe, drawing on lessons learned from the process in Ecuador and addressing the current situation. Throughout, they emphasise the importance of foregrounding the beings of the Kawsak Sacha [Living Forest] while building bridges with the European context. They explore potential initiatives for translation and even establish a connection with the Sami People. They affirm that this translation is a vital component of decolonial law, as it paves the way for the emergence of a decolonial comparative law that also integrates specific elements from European contexts. To successfully bring this understanding to Europe, we must weave rights of Nature together in a “well-braided braid of knowledge”, ensuring a south-north dialogue understanding its epistemic enunciation. This requires fostering a meaningful intercultural dialogue and understanding between the Global South and the Global North, acknowledging the epistemic contributions of both perspectives.

The main objective of the research is to study and identify the essential preconditions for the successful implementation of the rights of nature for the Maas in the Netherlands, utilizing the rights of nature movement as an alternative approach to nature protection. The river Maas in the Netherlands is selected as the case study to define the potential challenges of implementing this approach within the Netherlands. An important part of the research is based on studying the roles of stakeholders and actors within the Netherlands, and the rights of nature concept in general.

The article analyses a series of decisions by the Constitutional Court of Ecuador on the rights of nature generally, and the rights of rivers and water bodies specifically. The selected cases are a representative sample of other similar ones and allow for uncovering the logic behind the Court's reasoning in general. The analysis focuses on four major themes. First, the importance of context in discussions of the rights of nature and water is demonstrated through the grounding of the analysis in the specific Ecuadorian context, and highlighting the value of this approach. Second, it engages with the concept of judicial activism, thus bringing a much-needed discussion to the wider literature on water and nature rights. Third, it details the concept of nature that is used in the Court's reasoning. Lastly, it traces the relationship between human rights and the rights of nature, specifically through a discussion of the relative importance of Indigenous law in establishing rights of nature jurisprudence in Ecuador. Perhaps surprisingly, given the general thrust of the literature so far, it shows that Indigenous law has been minimally important in this case. In engaging with these themes, the paper lays a fruitful basis for future comparative research that can bring more clarity and nuance to discussions of the rights of nature elsewhere.

The emergent trend of granting legal personhood to natural entities – environmental personhood – is a promising approach to nature's conservation. This inquiry explores its philosophical foundations and prerequisites for successful implementation. It argues that, along with a strong legal framework, its efficacy largely depends on the transition from anthropocentric to ecocentric values and on the appearance of a new ecological identity or eco-self. Critical for implementing the rights of nature are the ecocentric shift in culture and the consequent abandoning the “skin-encapsulated ego” in favor of the ecological self. This shift is what environmentalists strive for but couldn't achieve until now. To fill this gap, attention is given to one among the several traditions which can practically guide the identity transformation, namely Tantra yoga with its embeddedness in the natural world. It explains Tantra yoga's psycho-somatic methodology as a promising eco-spiritual practice to deal with current ecological challenges and to restore our planet's health by evoking biophilia.

As headlines over the last decade have made clear, people in the United States can no longer afford to take fresh water for granted. In the midst of increasing issues regarding both water quality and water quantity (allocation), Tribes are playing an ever-more-active role in the Nation’s water management. This Article provides an overview of the contemporary legal landscape governing tribal authority over water, emphasizing two recent Supreme Court decisions: Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency (May 2023), in which the Supreme Court cut back on the Clean Water Act’s jurisdictional reach, and Arizona v. Navajo Nation, in which the Court held that the federal government has no trust duty to help Tribes get water.

This paper evaluates U.S. policies regarding Indigenous land and water rights in the context of changing global climate conditions and a societal shift towards reparative justice models. Theories from the literature on Indigenous sovereignty and environmental protection at large, as well as the literature on reparative justice and post-colonial theory, are combined with case studies of environmental personhood in Ecuador and New Zealand to examine how a policy model could be created for the U.S. that strengthens Indigenous rights. It is argued that this colonial capitalist process has resulted in oppressive policies that harm Indigenous populations and negatively impact the environment. Two overarching research questions are addressed to support this argument. First, how have previous and current U.S. policymaking efforts impacted Indigenous groups and their ancestral environments? Secondly, how can a conception of environmental personhood be used as a possible policy framework for Land Back that addresses environmental protections while preserving Indigenous sovereignty in the U.S.? This paper argues for a new U.S. policy model that expands on "rights of nature" and environmental personhood frameworks; it combines green legislation, green state constitutions, and reform at the Bureau of Indian Affairs to increase Indigenous sovereignty and environmental protections.

Latin America is highly vulnerable to climate change. From a justice-centred approach, its communities have been using human and constitutional rights as a strategy to combat environmental degradation and protect ecosystems in climate litigation. Thus, the paper analyses the ecological dimension of human rights arising from the Latin American climate litigation by selecting disputes that link human rights and the protection of a specific ecosystem, which enables catching both the right to a healthy environment and the rights of nature. As for the results, the national courts interpret human rights from the notion of a socio-ecological system, emphasising a rights-duties approach based on social justice. The territory becomes a non-static space, there is a long-term temporal scale of rights, and the lawsuits elaborate on the interests of future generations. The rights of nature acknowledge a more-than-human world and argue that nature's legal titularity complements human rights, and both agendas meet at the intersection with the safe climate system. Although climate change appears as a secondary concern, applicants use the climate crisis as a crosscutting element aimed at ecosystems’ protection and its impact on human rights. In conclusion, these disputes are ecological legal experiences that extensively redefine human rights law from the meeting between the system of rights and the cultural context of groups historically excluded from the spaces of power. Human rights receive a new axiological content reoriented from the realities of peripheral territories and previously invisible ecological backgrounds through the dynamic interaction with plural subjects that become drivers of transformations.

The present work is characterized as a hypothetical-deductive theoretical essay with a bibliographic review, having as a theoretical-conceptual base the contribution of ecofeminism, environmental justice and nature´s right to the realization of climate justice. The work points out correlations between ecological crisis and gender inequalities through different dimensions of ecofeminism: distribution, representation, recognition, capabilities and participation. Climate change affects everybody and everywhere in a cross-border way, but with a lot of differences according to birth place, race, gender, age, sexuality, physical and mental health, socioeconomic conditions, among others intersectionalities. Ecofeminism theory and practices rearticulate the feminists identities promoting an equalization of environmental and climate justice. The feminist perspective adopted in this work permited sociopolitical categories discussions such as ecology, rights of nature, enviromental and climate justice as a gender issue.

Animal intelligence and sentience are increasingly being recognized by legal systems around the world. In recent years, ‘rights of nature’ reforms have bestowed legal “rights” to rivers, mountains, forests and other elements of nature. The implication of ‘rights of nature’ laws for animals is explored. A growing number of countries are also recognizing animals as ‘legal persons’ under the law, with legal rights and protections. Efforts in the United States to recognize animals as holders of certain legal rights is explored.

n/a