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

• Published in: Transnational environmental law Vol. 9; no. 3; pp. 521 - 540
• Main Authors: Macpherson, Elizabeth, Torres Ventura, Julia, Clavijo Ospina, Felipe
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press 01.11.2020
• Subjects: Aquatic ecosystems; Civil rights; Collaboration; Community; CONSTITUTIONAL LAW; Decision making; Ecosystem management; Ecosystems; Guardians; Human rights; INDIGENOUS PEOPLE; Indigenous peoples; Law and legislation; Local communities; Native peoples; Natural resource management; NATURAL RESOURCES; Nature; Resource management; River ecology; Rivers; Symposium Article; Transnationalism; COLOMBIA; Colombia; United States > US; Colombia; Ecosystem rights; Legal personhood; Biocultural rights
• ISSN: 2047-1025; 2047-1033
• DOI: 10.1017/S204710252000014X

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.