Blue Community Ambassador Erin O’Donnell suggests this Sunday reading:
How are the rights of nature kindling policy and decision-making change, a transnational perspective.
By Lidia Cano Pecharroman, University of Texas at Austin.
Abstract
The recognition of the rights of Nature has turned into an opportunity to bring to the fore non-anthropocentric value systems to policy making and planning. This elicits the question: how does planning and policy-making change with the recognition of natural entities’ rights? Examining five case studies across three countries (Colombia, Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia) where nature’s rights were legally recognized, this paper offers insights on the types of transformations that the recognition of the rights of nature is eliciting in the policy and planning making cycle. The study finds that across a transnational set of cases this recognition invites more relational ways of understanding the human-Nature relationship, triggers the inclusion of a wide spectrum of stakeholders and foster new institutional arrangement. What is more policy formulation and implementation are transformed by new attempts at co-management and institutional collaboration, and the consideration of new economic and development rationales that are attuned to place. Further research, however, should examine whether these changes persist overtime, what are the challenges that emerge in adopting these changes, and whether policy changes still occur when the rights of Nature are symbolically recognized but not legally enforceable.
