Rights of nature as an alternative or a complement to existing environmental protection

Abstract

One of the most refined expressions of rights-based approaches to environmental protection, rights of nature have come a long way since the early 2000s. They have developed into full-fledged governance structures that could either improve or potentially replace duty-based existing environmental protection within domestic jurisdictions. However, even though they advance sustainable development values, both eco-theological and local participative governance strands of rights of nature have encountered shortcomings; several of them particularly related with the scope of protection derived from their explicit content. From a legal analysis perspective, a predominantly doctrinal and comparative approach can contribute to shedding light on rights of nature legal potency. Preliminary conclusions wouldshow that from a legal analysis under this approach comprising four European domestic rights of nature legal frameworks, a bundle of indicators can be extracted to determine whether a certain rights of nature provision could be discarded as capable of enhancing or even substituting existing environmental protection