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.