Constitutional Law, Ecosystems and Indigenous Peoples in Colombia: Biocultural Rights and Legal Subjects (2020)

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Type of Content
Journal ArticlePublisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)ISSN
2047-10252047-1033
Language
enCollections
Abstract
The recognition of rivers and related ecosystems as legal persons or subjects is an emerging mechanism in transnational practice available to governments in seeking more effective and collaborative natural resource management, sometimes at the insistence of indigenous peoples. This approach is developing particularly quickly in Colombia, where legal rights for rivers and ecosystems are grasping onto, and evolving out of, constitutional human rights protections. This enables the development of a new type of constitutionalism of nature. Yet legal rights for rivers may obscure the rights of indigenous peoples and their role in resource ownership and governance. We argue that the Colombian river cases serve as a caution to courts and legislatures elsewhere to be mindful, in devising ecosystem rights, of the complex and interrelated rights, interests and tenures of indigenous peoples and local communities.
Citation
Macpherson E, Torres J, Clavijo Ospina F (2020). Constitutional Law, Ecosystems and Indigenous Peoples in Colombia: Biocultural Rights and Legal Subjects. Transnational Environmental Law. 1-20.This citation is automatically generated and may be unreliable. Use as a guide only.
Keywords
Colombia; ecosystem rights; biocultural rights; legal personhoodANZSRC Fields of Research
48 - Law and legal studies::4807 - Public law::480702 - Constitutional law
48 - Law and legal studies::4804 - Law in context::480413 - Race, ethnicity and law