Start
31 Mar 2026 @ 12:00:pm
Finish
31 Mar 2026 @ 1:00:pm
Location
University of Cologne, GSSC Seminar room 3.03
Event Link
Event Details
UPDATE: THIS SEMINAR HAS BEEN POSTPONED UNTIL JUNE 2026. MORE INFORMATION IN DUE COURSE.
GSSC Seminar Series: Rethinking Nature’s Rights. Camila Bustos (Pace University, USA)
31 March 2026 - 12:00-13:00. At the University of Cologne.
Laws are moving away from seeing nature as just a "resource" for humans and instead recognising it as a subject with its own legal rights.
Recognising the rights of nature is powerful, but it requires a solid legal roadmap to truly protect our planet and its people.
This edition of the GSSC Seminar Series with Camila Bustos digs into this in detail. Her research and publications focus on human rights, climate law, and environmental justice, and she frequently speaks and provides expert testimony on climate displacement and environmental issues.
"The emergence of constitutional provisions, legislative initiatives, and judicial decisions recognizing natural entities such as rivers, forests, and parks as subjects of rights seemingly marks a shift in the legal paradigm. The rights of nature movement has garnered considerable global attention as it seeks to reorient the anthropocentric character of the law and protect natural entities through a different conception of the natural world. However, the development of nature's rights has had a paradoxical effect. While its emergence ostensibly vindicates the demands of indigenous communities to respect nature, the implementation of nature's rights remedies has at times had negative implications on indigenous land tenure, consultation, and public participation.
This Article examines the broader implications of implementing nature's rights jurisprudence and other legal strategies across the Americas and their relevance for environmental law. The Article first explores the rights of nature phenomenon, focusing on developments in Ecuador, the United States, Colombia, Peru, and the Inter-American System of Human Rights. The Article then undertakes a mapping of the doctrinal and policy challenges that arise within nature's rights jurisprudence.
This analysis contends that while judicial reliance on nature's rights as a legal theory offers a powerful framework to rethink human-centric legal regimes, the absence of clear operationalization and implementation guidelines can obscure legal analysis and standing requirements in judicial decision-making. This lack of clarity can, by extension, lead to ambiguity in governmental obligations towards specific ecosystems and the communities reliant upon them.
Last, this article proposes a three-pronged approach involving legislative, judicial, and expert guidance to strengthen nature's rights frameworks and overcome criticisms of nature's rights as symbolic window dressing, overtly vague, and antidemocratic."
