Who Needs Rights of Nature?

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Perspectives Issue 2017/6

Jens Kersten outlines the five possible ways of framing Nature that currently exist within our legal system.

Disrobing Rights: The Privilege of Being Human in the Rights of Nature Discourse

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Perspectives Issue 2017/6

Tabios Hillebrecht examines layers of power involved in human-nature relations, and how they can undermine Rights of Nature.

Defending Rivers: Vilcabamba in the South of Ecuador

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Perspectives Issue 2017/6

Berros describes some of the first cases in which Rights of Nature was directly referenced in the courts of Ecuador.

River Rights and the Rights of Rivers: The Case of Acheloos

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Perspectives Issue 2017/6

Kalantzakos describes how flawed policy decisions damaged Greece’s Archeloos river, and how Rights of Nature could have mitigated the damage.

Rights of Nature and the Precautionary Principle

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Perspectives Issue 2017/6

Mariqueo-Russell highlights the mutually supportive relationship between Rights of Nature and the Precautionary Principal.

The Philippine Mining Act of 1995

The Philippine Mining Act, a pro-mining piece of legislation providing heavy incentives to foreign companies, is signed into law on 3 March 1995. It stirs extensive court battles between the government and anti-mining indigenous people.

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acts

economy

indigenous peoples

mining

protests

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Landscape Transformation

Resources

Regions:

Philippines

Signing of the American Antiquities Act

Since June 1906 the Antiquities Act gives the United States federal government the power to protect and preserve areas of public land or resources that hold cultural or historic value.

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Environmental Knowledge

Environmental Politics

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Washington, DC

RCC Perspectives

To read the RCC Perspectives issue “Beyond Doom and Gloom. An Exploration through Letters” please click on the image and the issue will open in a new tab.

Cover of the Perspectives issue Beyond Doom and Gloom

Contents

Introduction

Beyond Doom and Gloom: An Exploration through Letters

“Doom and gloom” has become the de facto cultural construct not only for environmental communication but for the environmental science it seeks to communicate. We are interested in engaging in deep conversation about what it means to shift beyond “doom and gloom,” and to create movement toward more hopeful, solutions-oriented environmental narratives.

Elin Kelsey

About the author

Kelsey, Elin

Royal Roads University, Canada

My work intersects conservation biology, environmental communications, and creative non-fiction. I focus on the prevalence of “doom and gloom” environmental narratives; the hopelessness, shame and other emotional issues that arise from them; and their impact on conservation scientists, environmental communicators, children, and the broader quest for public engagement with environmental issues.

I am particularly interested in the capacity for community and ecological resilience that emerges through social networks—human, and other-than-human. While human social networks crowd-source humanitarian responses to crises, fungal networks that trees use to communicate, support faster recovery of forests following disasters. Elephants with stronger social networks have higher breeding successes. Social networks between humpback whales drive humpback population recoveries in the north Pacific, even as the marine environments in which they live grow noisier and more impacted by pollution, shipping and overfishing. For a richer exploration of these themes, please watch this video of a lunchtime colloquium I delivered at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society.

Recognition of the emotional impact of fear-based environmental narratives, and their implications for engagement with conservation, biodiversity and sustainability initiatives is gathering momentum in both academic and popular contexts. In May 2014, Elin Kelsey built upon the interest in hope generated through the RCC walking colloquium, by co-hosting a 48-hour workshop in London, England with a small group of conservation biologists, young journalists, environmentalists and designers. Together, they launched an #OceanOptimism twitter hashtag and encouraged others to share hopeful, marine conservation successes. On World Oceans Day (8 June 2014) the tweets came in thick and fast, going viral to reach over 30 million users in its first year. More than 58 million users were using the #OceanOptimism by the time this virtual exhibit opened in March 2016. See more at www.elinkelseyandcompany.com.

Browse the exhibition

The Ukrainian Famine "Holodomor": Natural Disaster or Genocide?

In 1932, the Soviet Union dictator Joseph Stalin enacts policies in Ukraine that seek to decimate nationalist aspirations for independence and force collectivization on the peasantry. These measures amplified into a grand famine and led to the death of an estimated 3.5 million people.

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"Aesthetic Disillusionment: Environment, Ethics, Art"

Does it make sense to say that one should not, or ought not, take pleasure in certain objects or events within the natural environment? Cheryl Foster explores ethical constraints on aesthetic activity and appreciation.

Read more about "Aesthetic Disillusionment: Environment, Ethics, Art"