Abstract

In 2008, Ecuador became the first country in the world to make nature a subject of constitutional rights, and they did so by invoking nature as la Pachamama, the Kichwa Mother Earth deity. This is a biocentric notion which challenges the modernist vision of nature as resources subject to human use, which could imply a fundamental transition in the human-nature relationship with implications far beyond the legal system. With this point of departure, the aim of this article is to explore how Ecuador’s rights of nature are understood and employed rhetorically by relevant actors, particularly in relation to the country’s development model, which is based on extraction and export of natural resources, i.e. a subject understanding of nature. The rights of nature’s meaning have been attempted fixed in a discursive struggle, and three different discourses regarding the rights of nature have been identified from interview data: The Anti-Capitalist Ecologist Discourse, the Transformative Discourse and the Anthropocentric Developmentalist Discourse. The latter, which conceptualizes the rights of nature as anthropocentric sustainable development has become hegemonic. This can explain why the rights of nature can co-exist alongside continued and increased resource extraction with detrimental socio-environmental effects.

摘要

在2008年，厄瓜多尔成为世界上第一个使自然成为宪法权利主体的国家，并通过援引自然为“拉帕哈玛玛（la Pachamama）”来实现这一目标，Kichwa大地神。这是一个以生物为中心的概念，它挑战了现代主义对自然的认识，认为自然是受人类使用的资源，这可能意味着人与自然关系的根本转变，其涵义远远超出了法律制度。以此为出发点，本文的目的是探索有关行为者如何以口头的方式理解和运用厄瓜多尔的自然权利，特别是在以自然资源的开采和出口为基础的国家发展模式方面。主题对自然的理解。人们尝试通过辩论来固定自然权的意义，并从访谈数据中发现了三种关于自然权的论述：反资本主义生态学家话语，变革性话语与人类中心的发展主义话语。后者将自然权利概念化为以人类为中心的可持续发展已成为霸权。这可以解释为什么自然权利可以与持续不断增加的资源开采同时带来有害的社会环境影响并存。