Rights of Nature in Practice: A Case Study on the Impacts of the Colombian Atrato River Decision

Philipp Wesche

Journal of Environmental Law, 2021, vol. 33, issue 3, 531-555

Abstract: In recent years, several countries have adopted a new legal approach to address ecological damages by granting fundamental rights to non-human natural entities. Yet, little is known about the actual impacts of this new constitutionalism of nature on environmental protection. This article seeks to better understand these impacts by presenting a case study of the Colombian Atrato River decision. Based on implementation reports and qualitative interviews with the river’s legal guardians and state officials, it argues that rights of nature can be an important impetus for change. However, at least in Colombia, their impacts relate less to legal standing of natural entities, as presumed in the literature, but rather to improvements in policymaking. To transform complex ecological crises in weak governance areas, strengthening local state institutions and integral environmental policies are more important than rights of nature. But they can play a role in this regard.

Keywords: rights of nature; wild law; constitutional law; illegal mining; Atrato; Colombia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jel/eqab021 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:envlaw:v:33:y:2021:i:3:p:531-555.

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Environmental Law is currently edited by Sanja Bogojević

More articles in Journal of Environmental Law from Oxford University Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().