Presentation short abstract

This paper examines how reconciliation and resurgence, two decolonial frameworks, intersect with Indigenous-led conservation in Canada. Through theoretical engagement and grounded analysis, we argue that transforming conservation is possible when responsibilities accompany rights.

Presentation long abstract

This paper examines the shifting landscape of conservation in Canada, where colonial models—long characterized by the exclusion and dispossession of Indigenous Peoples—are being challenged by the rise of Indigenous-led conservation. This paper considers how these developments intersect with two divergent but interconnected frameworks for decolonial change: reconciliation and resurgence.

Reconciliation is taken up by some Indigenous Peoples as a relational approach to bring about positive change in the Indigenous-state and/or Indigenous-settler relationship, with the goal of advancing Indigenous self-determination. However, reconciliation can become a form of political recognition in which the state confers certain rights and opportunities to Indigenous Peoples within the broader Canadian project, thereby limiting the possibilities for alternative conservation futures. Proponents of resurgence tend to pursue transformative change through a turn away from the harmful relations of domination that animate settler colonial society, instead focusing on strengthening Indigenous governance, legal systems, economies, and languages.

Through theoretical engagement and grounded analysis—particularly the case of Thaidëne Nene, a protected area led by Łutsël K’é Dene First Nation—the paper explores how Indigenous Peoples navigate these frameworks. Considering the risks and opportunities of both orientations to change, this paper offers theoretical and practical guidance for conservationists seeking to support Indigenous self-determination while resisting the reproduction of colonial relations in environmental work. Ultimately, we argue that rights must be accompanied by individual and collective responsibilities to care for one another and the Land.

Presentation short abstract

This study examines emerging Rights-of-Nature initiatives in France, drawing on interviews and fieldwork in the Loire and Tavignanu rivers. It highlights their potential to reshape human–nonhuman relationships, as well as the barriers to their institutionalization and implementation.

Presentation long abstract

Today’s freshwater crisis highlights the need for water governance to move beyond anthropocentrism. Globally, Indigenous cosmologies that conceive nature as living beings have inspired the Rights of Nature (RoN) movement, leading to the legal personhood of rivers in Colombia, Australia, New Zealand, and beyond. While some cases foster bottom-up governance and empower riverine communities, many river rights remain largely symbolic and weak in implementation. In France, RoN initiatives are also emerging, e.g., the Parlement de Loire (2019) and the Déclaration des Droits du Fleuve Tavignanu in Corsica (2021). The Parlement de Loire, centered on the country’s last major undammed river, reimagines the Loire as a subject rather than an object, fostering dialogue among scientists, stakeholders, and citizens through artistic and participatory approaches. The Tavignanu Declaration, initiated by a Corsican NGO to oppose a landfill project and later endorsed by the Corsican Assembly, represents the 1st formal political recognition of river rights in France. Despite their innovation, both initiatives face significant obstacles in translating Indigenous-inspired legal/ethical concepts into France’s highly institutionalized and technocratic water governance framework. Local NGOs/activists act as temporary “spokespersons” for the rivers; neither has yet achieved enforceable legal status. Drawing on 38 interviews with actors in the Loire and Tavignanu, alongside participant observations of meetings and events, this study explores the opportunities and challenges surrounding the RoN in France and how these social movements may reshape human–nonhuman relationships and support bottom-up eco-centric governance practices. This research is part the French 10-year PEPR programme OneWater – Eau Bien Commun.

Presentation short abstract

This study examines the impact of legal pluralism among the Rights of Nature, Indigenous Rights, and the Right to Water on community water governance in Ecuador, using the example of Lake San Pablo in Otavalo.

Presentation long abstract

In Ecuador, the incorporation of Rights of Nature, Indigenous Rights, and the Human Right to Water within the constitution aims to enhance socio-ecological justice and empower marginalized and indigenous citizens. However, when these rights are invoked simultaneously in a context of legal pluralism, it has implications on Water Governance. This paper explores these implications through the case of Lake San Pablo, which faces severe eutrophication primarily due to inadequate wastewater treatment. An integrative community initiative, “Tejiendo Agua en el Territorio,” is underway to improve community water management. Yet, this legal pluralism impacts the dynamics of participation and power relations between certain community groups.

This study, rooted in a transdisciplinary research framework and employing qualitative social methods, examines the contradictory implications of legal pluralism on Water Governance. By focusing on the interplay between these rights as different stakeholders invoke them, we aim to provide insights into the complexities of water governance in Ecuador, contributing to broader discussions on social and ecological justice.

Presentation short abstract

This presentation reflects on research into the ways in which large, international conservation NGOs conceptualise and implement rights-based approaches in their work. It discusses what this means for the concept of "transformation" in conservation and the ways in which rights might support this.

Presentation long abstract

“Rights-based” approaches (RBAs) are viewed by many non-governmental organisations (NGOs) as a transformative solution to ensuring just and equitable conservation for Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities. Despite rights featuring in conservation discourses since the early 2000s, gaps remain between rhetoric and practice. As RBAs to conservation become prioritised by international conservation NGOs and global governance processes, such as the Global Biodiversity Framework, it is important to understand if and how RBAs can meet their aims in the ways in which they are currently deployed, and if this gap can be closed

This presentation reflects on research that has drawn on environmental justice and political ecology to interrogate the concept of RBAs. It demonstrates the procedural, recognition and epistemic implications of RBAs and how these are constructed through the power and discourses of NGOs. These insights are then considered in the context of much-lauded transformation in conservation.

The outcomes of this research suggest that the impact of RBAs is limited by the ways they are currently applied by large international conservation NGOs, but that change could be achieved by moving beyond a purely human rights focus, towards those that consider alternative perspectives on justice. This will require systems change in the funding sphere, the development of truly participatory and locally led practices and new ways of braiding knowledge and perspectives on justice from different worldviews together. The presentation ends with a discussion of how these changes might be implemented, which can be continued in the subsequent discussion.

Presentation short abstract

The presentation examines the strategic mobilisation of human rights language by the Rioni Valley protest in post-Soviet Georgia through articulating and crafting a counterhegemonic narrative against environmental extraction. Yet, the protest encountered the limits inherent in liberal human rights.

Presentation long abstract

In 2020, four residents of Rioni Valley laid the foundation for the largest environmental protests in post-Soviet Georgia. Two mothers and two sons, with the support of local people, gathered at the site of the planned Namakhvani dam project in the Rioni Valley, where a large orthodox cross was erected as a symbol of the anti-dam protest, marking the beginning of a continuous resistance for 554 days and nights. During the entire resistance, the Rioni Valley Movement strategically mobilized the language of human rights and conscious citizenship as a communicative infrastructure that enabled peripheral agents to become speakable, intelligible, and politically consequential. Yet, this same linguistic apparatus became its own limit. Although the movement consciously developed a counterhegemonic language blending legality, ethics, and a vernacularized vocabulary of human rights and conscious citizenship to gain widespread legitimacy and establish a shared political consciousness across diverse groups, the movement suffered a catastrophic downfall after it joined an anti-Pride demonstration in 2021, leading to the withdrawal of support from crucial allies, including Queer groups, who were supporting them throughout the process. This affective clash caused the language that had initially played an important role in their legitimacy to become the source of its destruction, which was also strategically used by the government and the company. The presentation reveals how the human rights framework becomes a site of state maneuver, where regulatory contradictions are mobilized to contain and neutralize peripheral actors once their political practices exceed the bounds of the liberal human rights paradigm.

Presentation short abstract

Rights evolve through social struggles, allowing actors who mobilize them to move beyond their original ontological premises. Yet framing an environmental issue through rights only shifts the language, and sometimes the arenas, of conflict, without resolving its underlying political stakes.

Presentation long abstract

In this contribution, I seek to move beyond two dominant scholarly engagements with rights in ecological contexts: ontological critiques and post-political perspectives.

First, longstanding critiques of rights in environmental theory highlight their individualistic, Eurocentric, and anthropocentric foundations. On this view, rights presume a liberal subject endowed with legal prerogatives to dominate an externalized, inert nature. Such critiques, however, overlook both the diversity of ways rights are mobilized and the malleability of rights frameworks, particularly their capacity to be reshaped through contestation, including ecological struggles. A sociological understanding of rights thus opens space for ecological movements to appropriate and transform rights discourse.

Second, advocates of rights-based approaches to environmental action often claim that extending rights to ecological issues offers an effective tool for transformation. Yet this perspective glosses over entrenched rights regimes such as property, housing, and labor rights. The ecological transition is therefore a site of competing rights claims rather than harmonious synergies. The formalism of rights language, which presents rights as interdependent and indivisible, can obscure these underlying political conflicts.

Taken together, these observations suggest that rights are continuously shaped and reshaped by social movements, enabling actors to move beyond their original ontological premises. However, framing an environmental issue through rights merely shifts the language, and sometimes the arenas, of conflict, particularly through judicialization; it does not resolve the political stakes at the heart of ecological struggles.