Department seminar: John-Andrew McNeish

Seminar paper

In the past three years, rivers have been granted rights as legal subjects or persons in diverse settings stretching from Colombia, India and New Zealand. These cases are concrete manifestations of broader proposals of giving legal rights to nature. My colleagues and I have recently received support from the Norwegian Research Council to explore the implications of this socio-legal innovation through comparative and in-depth studies of these three country cases.

In this seminar I aim to outline further details of the project and to discuss the evident tensions and synergies between human and nature’s rights, and the challenge to establish a new mode of human-nature relations through the courts and existing law. In doing so I will confront some of the theoretical dilemmas of recent trends towards an ontological anthropology and its meeting with complex empirical political and economic environments. With specific reference to Atrato River case and the political history and contemporary dynamics of Colombian politics, I will demonstrate that whilst river’s rights may make sense from a position of grassroots environmental activism and the lived eco-philosophy of local communities, political realities indicate that these legal innovations may not always serve those interests or ensure the expected protection of rivers.

Indeed, bestowing legal personality on rivers may add new complication to what may already highly charged contexts, making the resource and territorial rights claims of marginalized sectors of the population even more difficult. If, in the process of recognizing legal personhood, rivers are framed as competitors to human interests, perverse outcomes may also result. Indeed, increased formal legal powers may undermine rather than support the cultural narrative of protection expressed by indigenous peoples.

About the lecturer

John-Andrew McNeish is a Professor of International Environment and Development Studies, at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU)

Light refreshments will be served in the Corner Room after the seminar. All interested are welcome!