In the wake of the current climate crisis, conceptions over recognising nature, or non-human entities as subjects with legal rights, are receiving large-scale public support across the globe. Nature’s rights advocates base their ideas on scientific findings as much as on indigenous knowledge, understanding nature – its flora fauna, and dynamic landscapes – as living entities. They argue that national justice systems have to become viable spaces through which non-human living subjects can seek protection. Following the amendments made to the Ecuadorian constitution in 2008 to integrate non-human claimants into judicial processes, this anthropological research uses ethnographic methods to examine the practical application – debates and outcomes – of nature’s rights claims in a court of law.
This project was funded by the Amsterdam Centre for European Studies (ACES)
Related Publications
Dietrich, M.-C., L. Affolter, A. Gutmann and J. García Ruales (2024) Stories of Systemic Failure? Landscaping the Rights of Nature in Europe. Journal of Legal Anthropology. Volume 8, Issue 1, Summer 2024: 46–76 doi:10.3167/jla.2024.080103 • ISSN 1758-9584 (Online) • ISSN 1758-9576 (Print)
Related Activities
WORKSHOP “Ontological and Normative Collisions: Struggles over Nature’s Rights” on the 27th and 28th October 2021 at the Hamburg Institute for Social Research
Listen to the Manchester Museum Podcast, episode “Nature’s Rights – Who cares?” The herpetologist Andrew Gray in conversation with the social anthropologist Martha Dietrich.