The hype of Rights of Nature: Critical considerations

Abstract

The world can no longer deny that the planet is on the brink of catastrophe. While scientists from various fields and around the world debate the causes, impacts, challenges, and solutions to the arrival of the Anthropocene, a new geological era induced by humans, the field of law can not stay behind. Rights of Nature (RoN), which grant legal personality to nature and its elements, such as rivers, constitute an emerging transnational legal framework rapidly gaining ground among Euro-Amer-ican legal scholars and practitioners as a new tool to combat environmental destruction. Based on reflections derived from long-term collaborative ethnographic work with Indigenous communities through research projects different, this article aims to critically and empirically unveil several interrelated concerns and blind spots at this snowballing moment of RoN worldwide. This includes considerations regarding claims that this new legal proposal is rooted in indigenous lifestyles and perspectives on nature and the environment.