Cultural Rights and Natural Resources
This chapter examines the connections between cultural practices, cultural rights, and natural resources, and focuses on three different approaches. The first examines the human rights discourse on cultural diversity and how international human rights law has developed a link between the rights of minorities’ and indigenous peoples’ cultural practices and natural resources. The second focuses on cultural heritage and explores how the legal framework of cultural heritage is relevant to protecting certain traditional cultural practices and knowledge connected to the use of natural resources. The third concerns the connection between spirituality, religion, and natural resources, and examines how the human rights protection of religious practices and spirituality could be linked to a spiritual connection to natural resources.