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Crimes against nature are a crime against humanity. The two cannot be seen in isolation from one another. In fact, it is problematic to separate the two. #RightsofNature Thread 1/n
Indigenous leaders in Brazil and human rights groups are urging the court to investigate the Brazilian president over his dismantling of environmental policies and violations of indigenous rights, which they say amount to ecocide. 2/n #Ecocide #Amazon https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/23/jair-bolsonaro-could-face-charges-in-the-hague-over-amazon-rainforest
No sane person would argue against the need to protect the ecological integrity of Planet Earth. But, the question is can you accomplish that goal by granting independent legal standing to trees, rivers, or "mother Earth"? 3/n
If we cannot enforce the fundamental human rights for humans, should we be naive about being able to offer a universally enforceable protection for Nature and natural entities? 4/n #RightsofNature
It is not an epistemic question that can be "solved" by new innovations in social and political theory. Sorry, you cannot. At the end of day, any rights regime is anthropocentric. How does one argue that "rights of nature" is non-anthropocentric. Someone, i.e., a human will...5/n
...claim to stand for "mother Earth" or Nature. Who decides or proclaims to be the authentic representative of nature. Please do not put it on "indigenous peoples". There is no homogeneous indigenous culture with a monolithic view about nature and nature-society relations... 6/n
If you are a non-indigenous person, who finds oneself referring to "indigenous people" and their culture to justify your arguments frequently, that's a problem. You may also be engaging in the practice referred to as "noble savaging" of indigenous peoples. 7/n #IndigenousRights
You cannot selectively instrumentalize indigenous rights toward the ends of your choosing. Indigenous people's ideas of nature and nature conservation are much diverse and richer than many advocates of conserving 'pristine' nature would accept. A scholar whose work I find... 8/n
...insightful on these issues is Kyle Whyte. Please read his work carefully to see what I mean above by homogenization and instrumentalization of indigenous cultures and their views of nature-society relationships...9/n https://seas.umich.edu/research/faculty/kyle-whyte
The question of rights of nature go beyond the debates over indigenous rights under settler colonial conditions. My preliminary arguments on these Qs are in this piece that I wrote recently for @Outlookindia's Jan '21 Special Issue on Human Rights. 10/n https://magazine.outlookindia.com/story/india-news-our-wronged-rights/304138
The full text of the article is available here. I will post a fully referenced text of the article very soon, which should be debated from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. 11/n #RightsofNature #CrimesAgainstHumanity https://www.researchgate.net/publication/348716357_Rights_Of_Nature
