LeidenGlobal Masterclass | Defending Nature’s Rights: Paradoxes and Challenges

The LeidenGlobal Annual Event on 30 September is organised by the KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies and Cultural Anthropology & Development Sociology at Leiden University. The event will consist of a Masterclass for PhD candidates and (Research) Master Studentsat KITLV, followed up by a Panel Discussion and drinks & bites afterwards, organised at Wereldmuseum Leiden.

Over the past 15 years or so, the global rights-of-nature movement has steadily gained strength. In 2008, Ecuador added the rights of nature to its Constitution, and the State of Uttarakhand High Court in India recognized the Ganga and Yamuna rivers as legal persons, rulings about non-human entities’ right to exist.

These decisions are characterized as much by tensions and paradoxes as by success, and have created new legal and political challenges. Who decides where a mountain begins or ends, or where it needs? Is the idea of giving rights to nature the best way to change how humans and nature interact? Which beliefs should guide these decisions, and why? Is there a risk that giving rights to ecosystems might harm indigenous communities, whose traditions support these rights?

In this Masterclass you will explore those questions together with dr. Shivant Jhagroe (Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs, Leiden University), who is studying and promoting the rights of water bodies in the Netherlands, and dr. Diana Vela Almeida (Copernicus Institute, Utrecht University), a scholar and activist working on indigenous land rights in Latin America.

Read more about the Masterclass.