Legal rights for nature promote biodiversity conservation | News | Eco-Business

Living on the banks of the Marañón River, indigenous leader Mari Luz Canaquiri watched nature die and fish stocks dwindle after frequent oil spills poisoned her ancestors’ virgin lands in Peru’s Amazon rainforest.

But rather than focus on cleanup, Canaquiri and other Kukama indigenous women turned to the law, winning a landmark ruling in March recognizing the Marañón River as a living entity with inherent rights.

In the first decision of its kind in Peru, the court ruled that the Marañón – one of the country’s most important fresh water sources that connects the Andes to the Amazon – has the right to be protected and flow without pollution.

“The river is life, it gives us life and by protecting our river, we defend life and our food security for our children and future generations,” Canaquiri said.

She spoke to Context at the two-week UN COP16 summit in the Colombian city of Cali, where nearly 200 countries are debating how to save endangered nature.

Biodiversity is declining at a rapid rate, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean, where recorded wildlife populations fell by 95% between 1970 and 2020, according to a recent report from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

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Nature rights are really about representing nature at the heart of the legal system. The status quo of most legal systems is that we can take and take, exploit and exploit to the point where nature is on the brink of collapse.

Grant Wilson, director of the Earth Law Center

Habitat loss is a major driver of this loss – hence the push to protect rivers and ecosystems under “rights of nature” laws, and to better support indigenous peoples and local communities at the forefront of protecting their habitat.

Environmentalists at COP16 are urging the eight countries that are home to the Amazon basin – home to the world’s largest rainforest and one of the most biodiverse regions on the planet – to treat it as a single entity with rights on nature.

“We need to use new legal tools to protect the environment and stop degradation,” said Javier Ruiz, an environmental attorney at the nonprofit Earth Law Center, who helped the Kukamas file the lawsuit. justice in 2021 against the government of Peru and the State. the oil company Petroperu regarding oil pollution.

He is currently working on a case with an indigenous group in Peru to grant natural rights to a native bee species they depend on to produce honey.

“These legal tools exist for Latin America and the world. Peru and other countries have shown that it is possible,” Ruiz said.

Latin American victories

This year’s ruling in Peru follows what environmental lawyers hailed in 2011 as the world’s first legal victory on the “rights of nature” after Ecuadorian judges blocked an enlargement project road to dump gravel into the Vilcabamba River.

In Colombia, one of the most biodiverse countries in the world, more than 20 rivers have been granted the legal right to exist and thrive, including the Atrato River, following a historic ruling by the Constitutional Court in 2016.

Two years later, the same court recognized the Colombian Amazon as a “rights-encumbered entity,” meaning the rainforest enjoyed the same legal rights as a human being.

“Nature rights is really about representing nature at the heart of the legal system,” said Grant Wilson, director of the Earth Law Center, an advocacy group of environmental lawyers.

“The status quo of most legal systems is that we can take and take and exploit and exploit to the point where nature is on the brink of collapse,” he said.

Although the nature rights movement is growing rapidly, turning legal victories into action is challenging because it requires government authorities to interpret and implement court rulings.

In the case of the Atrato River and Amazon rainforest in Colombia, a 2023 study said authorities are “avoiding responsibility” by failing to comply with court rulings, even as illegal logging takes place. gold continues to contaminate the river.

Amazon rainforest

Now environmentalists hope a successful trial in Latin America can help win rights for the Amazon as a whole, where illegal gold mining is a major driver of forest loss.

Protecting the rainforest is key to curbing climate change, because the large amounts of carbon stored in trees and soil prevent the release of planet-warming carbon dioxide.

“The Amazon is a living entity with inherent rights that must be recognized. It’s one biome,” Natalia Greene, global director of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature, told an audience of academics and policymakers at COP16 this week.

“People are willing to go to court over this,” said Greene, whose campaign helped her native Ecuador become the first nation to protect nature under its constitution.

Two years later, in 2010, Bolivia followed suit, enshrining an ambitious vision of the rights of nature in its constitution.

While Brazil and Colombia have made progress in reducing deforestation rates on their part of the Amazon, protecting the fragile and vital biodiversity ecosystem is more urgent than ever.

Scientists say climate change, deforestation, fires and human action are pushing the rainforest towards the point of no return.

“If the Amazon reaches a tipping point, we are doomed as a species. We can’t cool the planet if we don’t take care of the biome,” Greene said.

This article was published with permission from the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, which covers humanitarian news, climate change, resilience, women’s rights, trafficking and property rights. Visit https://www.context.news/.