We Are The River

Rights of nature, human species identity, and political thought in the anthropocene

“…In New Zealand, as Takacs (2021: 571) has pointed out, both Whanganui Maori and Crown government representatives involved in the negotiations believe that the relocation of power transmission cables and the installation of a bridge for bicycles constitute “muscle flexing to show seriousness and strength.” More consequential tests await the Whanganui agreement, including the impending re-authorization of a hydroelectric power system that takes a large majority of the Whanganui’s water. Thus far the Whanganui Maori exhibit, as O’Donnell (2020: 662) puts it, “a reluctance to rely on the power of the rights to protect the river.” One of the reasons for this preference for non-juridical resolution processes is that judges may not yet “be properly socialized.” Takacs (2021: 571) notes the perception of Gerrard Albert, a Whanganui Maori negotiator, that Te Awa Tupua is engaged in “‘reconditioning a community and nation to speak as we speak.’” Albert’s awareness of the importance of communicating an identity to a broader audience again raises the question of scope. Ecuador’s RoN constitutional provision and its encompassing scope are imagined mechanisms for diffusing particular values which the state and civil society is charged with defending.…”

“…Despite their use of the tool of legal personhood, by providing Maori iwi with administrative agency, the settlements facilitate Maori focus on responsibility and reciprocal, relational obligation rather than rights when managing land. Indeed, legal scholar Takacs (2021: 561) has suggested that the developments in New Zealand amount to a transition in “legal forms” from “an anthropocentric notion of rights (what can nature provide me ?) to an anthro-ecocentric notion.” In the latter, “the law is still first and foremost a reflection of human beliefs and human needs, but the law situates those needs in a web of interrelatedness,” thereby implicitly understanding humans as one among many species.…”

“…The hegemony of rights is a colonial legacy, and Kauffman and Martin (2021: 141) observe that rights such as those to property have themselves previously functioned as tools “used to marginalize” the Maori and other Indigenous peoples. Other scholars have noted (Takacs, 2021: 568) that some Maori responsible for negotiations with the Crown government have maintained that to seek rights of ownership over the river would unrecognizably distort Maori concepts. Legal personhood avoided this danger by making it possible to treat the river itself as a living being, but as Erin O’Donnell (2020: 644) has pointed out, the outcome of such transpositions “may obscure or undermine the rights of Indigenous peoples.”…”

“…There is no single unified theory of RoN, although it is informed to a significant extent by Earth Jurisprudence (EJ), which holds that human systems should fit within natural systems (Kauffman and Martin, 2021: 4). According to legal scholar Takacs (2021: 550–551), despite their differences, the various initiatives to extend rights to natural non-humans share a common “aim to enshrine in the law the fundamental symbiosis between human and nonhuman ecological health, and to empower suitable stewards who will nurture that symbiosis.”…”