Paper short abstract:

What kind of nature is produced by judges when granting rights to natural entities? I follow the role of experts in these judicial decisions arguing that judges produce a legal capture of nature, similar to the capture practiced by natural scientists.

Paper long abstract:

After the Colombian Constitutional Court decided in 2017 to grant rights to the Atrato river, a series of natural entities have been granted rights as well. From rivers, to mountains, páramos, and even the Amazon, all have been recognized rights before different courts in Colombia. However, these decisions raise questions regarding what nature are we talking about and what nature is able to appear before the court. Unlike other decisions on environmental law, the appearance of natural entities before courts has academicians asking questions on different ontologies and the law. It is argued that the relationship between humans and non-humans before the law are transformed through these decisions.

By following few of these cases before the Constitutional Court, I ask what kind of nature is being produced. I focus on the role of experts in these decisions. I introduce the concept of legal capture which I use to explain how judges capture nature drawing a comparison with the practices carried out by natural scientists. I argue that something similar occurs as when an animal or plant or any living organism is turned into a species. Law has its own mechanisms to capture nature and allow legal standing before the court.

Paper short abstract:

New urban redevelopment projects in Asunción, Paraguay, deem that floodplains areas of the city “rightfully” belong to the river and that marginalized communities living there should move elsewhere. This ethnographic research examines how top-down environmental claims could be used against the poor.

Paper long abstract:

In recent years, there has been an emerging debate about the “rights of nature” and “nature’s jurisprudence.” From rivers to forests to animals, holders or claimants of rights are no longer presumed to be exclusively “human.” This research centers on the case of the Paraguayan river and marginalized indigenous/mestizo communities’ struggle over access to urban spaces in the city of Asunción. State-run new urban redevelopment projects deem that floodplains areas of the city “rightfully” belong to the river and that marginalized communities living there should move elsewhere. However, these areas, known as Bañados, were never empty floodplains. Indigenous, mestizos, and rural migrant communities have lived there since colonial times, forming a historically rooted socio-ecology with the neighboring river. This project aims to understand the way(s) in which the recent urban redevelopment projects in Asunción create a socio-ecological conflict between what is understood as the “rights” of the river in direct contradiction to that of marginalized urban communities. It raises the main question of: how is the Paraguayan State evoking the social and political jurisprudence of the river as a way to delineate environmental claims and deny access to land, housing, and basic services to the urban poor? It combines ethnographic accounts in different locations of Asunción city and state institutions with historical archival research. In this way, the goal is to advance understandings about novel forms of governing people and the “environment” in an era marked both by climate change as well as greater social and political inequalities.

Paper short abstract:

Wildfires increasingly ravage the Portuguese landscape, posing risks for its rural inhabitants. This paper follows residents of the Serra de Monchique in their attempts to build sustainable citizenship in order to increase their resilience against their changing environment.

Paper long abstract:

This paper, based on three months of ethnographic fieldwork research, explores the rural location of the Serra de Monchique in Portugal, and how it is connected to global processes, by positing the concept of landscape, on a local scale, opposite the global interconnectedness of the countryside, often assumed to be relatively isolated. In this way it portrays the frictions experienced by locals, and analyses how these frictions contribute to local perceptions of powerlessness and precarity.

The residents depict how they experience inadequate rights applying to them in their landscape of residence, as they perceive threats from corporate conduct and climate change, while the responsibilities imposed on them through neoliberal and political narratives are unjust and cumbersome. Subsequently, the residents of Monchique attempt to negotiate more appropriate rights and responsibilities through acts of citizenship, as reactions to local perceptions of powerlessness and governmental neglect. This is illustrated by the ways residents try to procure more rights and resilience to combat the annually increasing wildfires that ravage the local landscape and livelihoods.

These local acts of citizenship are contrasted with theoretical debates on sustainable citizenship, pursued by residents of Serra de Monchique. Narratives surrounding sustainable citizenship often fall prey to common limitations in sustainability discourses, inhibiting it from being applicable and effective on a more local and rural scale. Thus, in an attempt to expand the concept of sustainable citizenship, and advance its applicability in the context of Serra de Monchique, this thesis critiques existing literature on sustainable citizenship.