Earth Jurisprudence, the Rights of Nature, and International Rights of Nature Tribunals

Author(s):  
Hiroshi Fukurai ◽  
Richard Krooth
Author(s):  
Manuela L. Picq

It is extremely dangerous to resist extractive megaprojects in Latin America. The intensive accumulation of natural resources for export on global markets has long characterized Latin America, but the boom in exports of raw commodities since 2000 has accentuated a violent history of dispossession. As of 2020, Latin America represents 60% of nature defenders killed in the world. Governments license natural resources at unprecedented rates, pushing land- and water-grabbing to new levels. Resistance against mining, oil, hydroelectric, and agribusiness projects is framed as antidevelopment and repressed with brutal violence. Governments are expanding the extractive frontier fast, promoting megaprojects in the name of national development or to fund social policies, a so-called redistributive neo-extractivism. This extractive consensus has increased social conflict across the region; but it has also inspired new forms of resistance. Resistance, which is mostly Indigenous and largely female, is a political struggle against extractive industries that represent ongoing forms of colonial dispossession. Resistance against extractivism focuses on the defense of nature as much as on rights to self-determination, a central element to shape a postextractive world. Ecuador is a case in point. The country recognizes international rights to prior consultation and established the first rights of nature framework in the world, yet it criminalizes nature defenders as it continues to expand the extractive frontier. The emerging rights of nature framework, like mining bans, are alternatives to extractivism that offer insights into experiences of resistance in the highlands of Ecuador. The Rio Blanco mine, an iconic megaproject financed by China, was suspended in 2018 thanks to a solid network of resistance that secured a broad mobilization of rural communities and urban youth, lawyers and academics, blending street protest with legal action. The Rio Blanco case shows the complementarity of various strategies, the potential of courts as allies, and the powerful coordination between social movements and government to contest structural dispossession.


Author(s):  
Jerneja Penca

Penca examines the International Rights of Nature Tribunal (IRNT), exploring how and why the language and concept of an international tribunal is used. The aim of the chapter is to describe the endeavour aiming at legal authority, as an empirical fact, and flag some of the issues deserving of wider theoretical and practical study. The claim being made is that the disputes contemplated by the IRNT (which consist of disputes that fail to reach courts as well as those that are dissatisfied with the judicial rulings) constitute a valuable critique of where the existing international judiciary fails.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-103
Author(s):  
Komang Sukaniasa

International agreements are agreements between international subjects that give rise to binding obligations in international rights, which can be bilateral or multilateral. Based on these opinions, an understanding can be taken that international treaties are agreements or agreements entered into by two or more countries as subjects of international law that aim to cause certain legal consequences. International agreements, whether ratified or through approval or acceptance or accession, or other methods that are permitted, have the same binding force as ratified international treaties established in the Ratification Law of International Treaties. Once again, it is equally valid and binding on the state. Therefore, the authors consider that the position of international treaties are not made in the form of the Ratification Act of the International Agreement but are binding and apply to Indonesia. Then Damos Dumoli Agusman argues that ratification originates from the conception of international treaty law which is interpreted as an act of confirmation from a country of the legal acts of its envoys or representatives who have signed an agreement as a sign of agreement to be bound by the agreement.


2021 ◽  
pp. 053901842199894
Author(s):  
Frank Adloff ◽  
Iris Hilbrich

Possible trajectories of sustainability are based on different concepts of nature. The article starts out from three trajectories of sustainability (modernization, transformation and control) and reconstructs one characteristic practice for each path with its specific conceptions of nature. The notion that nature provides human societies with relevant ecosystem services is typical of the path of modernization. Nature is reified and monetarized here, with regard to its utility for human societies. Practices of transformation, in contrast, emphasize the intrinsic ethical value of nature. This becomes particularly apparent in discourses on the rights of nature, whose starting point can be found in Latin American indigenous discourses, among others. Control practices such as geoengineering are based on earth-systemic conceptions of nature, in which no distinction is made between natural and social systems. The aim is to control the earth system as a whole in order for human societies to remain viable. Practices of sustainability thus show different ontological understandings of nature (dualistic or monistic) on the one hand and (implicit) ethics and sacralizations (anthropocentric or biocentric) on the other. The three reconstructed natures/cultures have different ontological and ethical affinities and conflict with each other. They are linked to very different knowledge cultures and life-worlds, which answer very differently to the question of what is of value in a society and in nature and how these values ought to be protected.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Benjamin Richardson ◽  
Nina Hamaski

The rights-of-nature model is gaining traction as an innovative legal approach for nature conservation. Although adopted in several countries, it remains in its infancy, including in Australia. An important research question is whether rights of nature will offer superior environmental outcomes compared to traditional nature conservation techniques including creation of protected areas. This article investigates that question through a case study of the Tarkine wilderness, in the Australia state of Tasmania. It first identifies key lessons from existing international experience with affirmation of rights of nature, such as in New Zealand and Ecuador. The article then explores how rights of nature could apply in Australia’s Tarkine region and their value compared to existing or potential protected areas and other nature conservation measures under Australian or Tasmanian law. Affirming rights of nature represents a major conceptual shift in how people via the law relate to the natural world, but whether the model offers practical benefits for nature conservation depends on a variety of conditions, in addition to the need to address broader societal drivers of environmentaldegradation.


2022 ◽  
pp. 002087282110563
Author(s):  
Robert K Chigangaidze

Ubuntu has launched the Global Agenda for Social Work and Social Development, 2020–2030. This commentary stipulates how ubuntu can reinforce the Pachamama rights and its significance to social work practice. The African philosophy of ubuntu has potential to enhance the framework of understanding environmental rights from an eco-spiritual social work perspective and integrating the concepts of Pachamama rights. Clearly showing the link between Pachamama and ubuntu, this paper reminds social workers to advance the Rights of Nature.


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