Living on the banks of the Marañón River, Indigenous leader Mari Luz Canaquiri has seen nature die and fish stocks dwindle after frequent oil spills poisoned her ancestors’ pristine land in Peru’s Amazon rainforest.
But rather than focus on the cleanup, Canaquiri and other Kukama Indigenous women turned to the law, securing a landmark ruling in March that recognised the Marañón River as a living entity with inherent rights.
In the first decision of its kind in Peru, the court ruled that the Marañón - one of the country’s most important freshwater sources that links the Andes to the Amazon - has a right to be protected and to flow free from pollution.
“The river is life, it gives us life and by protecting our river we are defending life and our food security for our children and future generations,” Canaquiri said.
She spoke with Context at the two-week United Nations COP16 summit in the Colombian city of Cali, where nearly 200 countries are debating how to safeguard nature under threat.
Biodiversity is diminishing at a rapid rate, especially in Latin America and the Caribbean, which saw their recorded wildlife populations drop by 95 per cent between 1970 and 2020, according to a recent World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) report.
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Rights of nature is really about representing nature in the core of the legal system. The status quo of most legal systems is we can take and take and exploit and exploit up until the point where nature is right on the verge of collapse.
Grant Wilson, head, Earth Law Center
Loss of habitat is a key driver of that loss - hence the push to protect rivers and ecosystems under “rights of nature” laws, and to better support the Indigenous people and local communities at the vanguard of protecting their habitat.
Environmentalists at COP16 are urging the eight countries that are home to the Amazon basin - site of the world’s largest rainforest and one of the most biodiverse regions on earth - to view it as a single entity with nature rights.
“We need to use new legal tools to protect the environment and stop degradation,” said Javier Ruiz, an environmental lawyer at the non-profit Earth Law Center, which supported the Kukamas to file a lawsuit in 2021 against the government of Peru and state oil firm Petroperu over oil pollution.
He is now working on a case with an Indigenous group in Peru to award nature rights to a native bee species they rely on to produce honey.
“These legal tools are there for Latin America and the world. Peru and other countries have shown it’s possible,” Ruiz said.
Latin American victories
This year’s Peru ruling follows what environmental lawyers hailed in 2011 as the world’s first “rights of nature” courtroom victory after judges in Ecuador stopped a road-widening project from dumping gravel in the Vilcabamba River.
In Colombia, one of the world’s most biodiverse countries, more than 20 rivers have won the legal right to exist and flourish, including the Atrato River, following a landmark ruling by the Constitutional Court in 2016.
Two years after, the same court recognised Colombia’s Amazon as an “entity subject of rights“, meaning the rainforest was granted the same legal rights as a human being.
“Rights of nature is really about representing nature in the core of the legal system,” said Grant Wilson, head of Earth Law Center, an advocacy group of environmental lawyers.
“The status quo of most legal systems is we can take and take and exploit and exploit up until the point where nature is right on the verge of collapse,” he said.
Although the rights of nature movement is growing fast, turning court wins into action is challenging as it requires government authorities to interpret and implement court rulings.
In the case of Colombia’s Atrato River and Amazon rainforest rulings, a 2023 study said the authorities “shirk responsibility” by not complying with the court rulings, even as illegal gold mining continues to contaminate the river.
Amazon rainforest
Now, environmentalists hope successful litigation in Latin America can help win rights for the Amazon as a whole, where illegal gold mining is a major driver of forest loss.
Protecting the rainforest is vital to curbing climate change, as the vast amounts of carbon stored in its trees and soil prevent the release of planet-heating carbon dioxide.
“The Amazon is a living entity with inherent rights that need to be recognised. It is one biome,” Natalia Greene, global director of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature, told an audience of academics and policymakers at COP16 this week.
“People are ready to go to court for this,” said Greene, whose campaigning helped her home country of Ecuador become the first nation to protect nature under its constitution.
Two years later, in 2010, Bolivia followed suit, enshrining a far-reaching vision of nature’s rights in its constitution.
While Brazil and Colombia have made progress on reducing deforestation rates in their share of the Amazon, protecting the fragile and vital biodiverse ecosystem is more urgent than ever.
Scientists say climate change, deforestation, fires and human action are pushing the rainforest to a point of no return.
“If the Amazon reaches a tipping point we are doomed as a species. There is no way we can cool the planet if we don’t take care of the biome,” said Greene.
This story was published with permission from Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, climate change, resilience, women’s rights, trafficking and property rights. Visit https://www.context.news/.
