Rights of nature, an ornamental legal framework: water extractivism and backbone rivers with rights in Colombia

Abstract

Rivers have been at the centre of judicialization processes that have forged post-human legal experiments, gaining new rights, personhood, and legal agency. This article interrogates river rights jurisprudence through discourse analysis and using my engagement as situated researcher, revealing the positionality of rivers in the configuration of extractive regimes and contributing to the conceptualization of ‘water extractivism’. I argue that the enshrinement of rights to watercourses has become an ornamental legal framework that doesn't dismantle the private law ‘legal arrangements’ that provide stability and fluidity to extractive projects and interests that still take precedence over human and non-human rights.