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- Convenors:
-
René Kuppe
(Uiversity Vienna)
Manuel Caleiro (Universidade Estadual de Mato Grosso do Sul (UEMS))
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- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Thursday 28 October, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Case studies should consider links, relationships and possible contradictions between the indigenous law and official state law, or state environmental policy, from an anthropological perspective. The panel also wants to open a theoretical debate on legal pluralism in environmental policy.
Long Abstract:
National and international law increasingly recognize the rights of indigenous peoples over their traditional natural resources.
The international frame for indigenous rights also implies (as an example, Article 26 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples) that indigenous resource rights to be recognized by the state are to be based on traditional forms of property or possession of Indigenous Peoples or on indigenous customary law. This leads to an increasing interaction between officla (state) environmental law and the indigenous institutions.
The aim of the panel is twofold: On the one hand, it wants to lead to an overarching theoretical debate, how recognition of indigenous resource rights constitutes a special form of legal pluralism. and special forms of pluralist resource governance. On the other hand, the panel invites to present case studies on the role of indigenous customary law in the conservation / sustainable use of natural resources:
Possible examples pof case study topics:
The role of indigenous law in Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs), and in consultation procedurs.
Indigenous law in the adminstration of protected areas
Indigenous law in wildlife management,
Indigenous law in terrestrial and marine biotope conservation and management.
In general, these case studies should consider the links, relationships and possible contradictions between the indigenous institutions and official state law, or state environmental policy. In this way, different or opposing patterns and objectives of indigenous and state environmental policy should also be discussed from an anthropological perspective.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 28 October, 2021, -Patricia Urteaga-Crovetto (Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru)
Paper short abstract:
Indigenous peoples in Peru regard water as part of complex ecological systems. As as result of global processes, the study cases that I describe here account for the interlegal formation of local law on water and ecosystems as inextricably linked.
Paper long abstract:
The cases analyzed here demonstrate that local understandings of water rights have transcended in the midst of environmental-water conflicts, thus becoming ‘glocalized’ in response to the wider ‘glocalization’ of the market and the state. These newly formed contents of water rights can be understood as legal assemblages stressing alignments of relations, nature and culture in contexts of unequal power. They draw not only from local understandings of water and ecological systems, but also from global environmental discourses that simultaneously nest and are appropriated by local indigenous discourses. In this process, indigenous movements have re-appropriated water by representing it not as a national common good but a local-global common they should look after.
Tine Suartina (The University of Western Australia)
Paper short abstract:
The encounter of customary law and government agriculture and the National Park zoning systems. The strong-weak legal pluralism depends on the factoring point. This study adopts legal anthropology and socio-legal approach and ethnographic techniques in Kasepuhan communities in Sukabumi and Lebak.
Paper long abstract:
My research examines legal pluralism in adat/customary communities in western parts of Java, including their distinctions in the agriculture and zoning systems. These communities still maintain their traditional system, although with various practices as the result of their encounter and responses toward modern systems imposed by the government.
Customary law is significant to communities’ agricultural and zoning system because their annual agriculture and area management are arranged and legitimised by their law. Hence, when the modern and government systems were imposed through the agriculture national policy and the National Park system, the contestation and conflict between the two systems is unavoidable.
Findings show that, first, at the point of tension between legal systems, the local communities tend to privilege customary laws more. Thus, the understanding of strong-weak legal pluralism cannot be conducted solely based on the lawyerly or formal point of view, because the result will be different if we use community’s factoring point. Second, in terms of the community’s formal acknowledgment, it can strengthen communities and their law in securing their territory and political autonomy but not with regard to dispute resolution due to the continuing state law’s hegemony
This study adopts legal anthropological and socio-legal approaches to the study of legal pluralism in Indonesia, applying qualitative and controlled comparison using ethnographic techniques in three Kasepuhan communities in Sukabumi District-West Java and Lebak District-Banten. Their various encounters with formal laws and arrangements, thus exemplify different constellations of legal pluralism in Indonesian society
Dirk Hanschel (University of Halle) Jenny García Ruales (Philipps University of Marburg, Max Planck Institute Social Anthropology)
Paper short abstract:
This paper will examine to what extent rights of nature as entailed in the Ecuadorian constitution correspond to indigenous notions of how human beings should interact with their immediate environment.
Paper long abstract:
Rights of nature as a category of environmental rights feature prominently in the Ecuadorian constitution. The question is to what extent this state law corresponds to indigenous notions and worldviews that define the relationship of human beings with their immediate environment. In spite of negotiations with indigenous communities that informed Ecuadorian constitutional reform, the rights paradigm as developed in continental Western legal scholarship seems to be at odds with more cosmological or ecocentric notions of justice and indigenous respect to various entities within nature. This will be examined through the Kawsak Sacha (Living Forest) declaration [still waiting for state recognition]. This declaration launched by the Kichwa People of Sarayaku, in the framework of their autonomy acknowledges their territory as a "living, and conscious being, a subject of rights". We reflect on possible reasons behind this declaration and on the translation process of the Kawsak Sacha concept from the Amazonian ecologies into the law. Environmental protection of the Kichwa People of Sarayaku is based on their assemblage as part of the six worlds of the forest, shaped by the Sumak Kawsay (good living) principle and its three pillars: Sumak Allpa, Runa Kawsay, and Sacha Runa Yachay.
The paper will deal with the question how such indigenous notions of environmental justice can be translated (if at all) into state law and what the benefit of such endeavours is. The analysis forms part of a broader research agenda on environmental rights in cultural context pursued at the Max Planck Institute of Social Anthropology.
Michaela Lang (University of Vienna)
Paper long abstract:
This paper will discuss the challenges and opportunities of the right to consultation of indigenous peoples regarding conservation, focusing on the situation in Indonesia. Many areas that conservationists are striving to preserve are located within the territories of indigenous peoples. A focus on nature protection that excluded people is gradually overhauled by recognising natural resources, people and cultures as interconnected. Indigenous peoples are responsible for the relatively intact state of the ecosystems in the areas they inhabit. How the right of these peoples to participate in the use, management and conservation of natural resources and especially their right to be consulted regarding the conservation of resources pertaining to their lands and territories impacts conservation will be examined.