For the last ten years and in the most diverse jurisdictions, there has been a movement to grant rights nature (either through constitutional and legal arrangements or judicial intervention). The adjudication of rights has also been central to attempts to undermine the differential effects that climate change has upon women, indigenous groups or slum dwellers. Rights carry important consequences such as transforming the view of nature, illuminating the conditions of environmental degradation and creating the mechanisms to counteract the excessive burden shouldered by a group. But there are also limitations related to national economic development goals in relation to global capitalism and the diverse ways in which law distributes resources. The talk will have as its goal to explore, situate in a specific context and critically evaluate the use of rights to protect nature.
About the speaker:
Helena Alviar García is a Colombian SJD from Harvard Law School and lawyer from Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. She served as Dean of Los Andes Law School where she also held tenure as full professor (profesora titular), teaching courses on Property, Public law, legal theory and feminist theory. An expert in law and development, property law, social and economic rights, feminism and transitional justice, she has been invited to participate in global networks regarding these issues and has edited and co-edited volumes with academics from Europe and the United States. She is the author of books, book chapters, published academic papers, and essays including: Authoritarian Constitutionalism: Critique and Appraisal, co-edited with Günter Frankenberg (2019); The Distributive Politics of Impunity and Anti-Impunity: Lesssons from Four Decades of Colombian Peace Negotiations (co-authored with Karen Engle), in Anti-Impunity and the Human Rights Agenda (2016), Distribution of resources led by courts: a few words of caution in Social and Economic Rights in Theory and Practice (2014), Feminismo y crítica jurídica. El análisis distributivo como alternativa crítica al legalismo liberal coauthored with Isabel Jaramillo (2012), The Unending Quest for Land: The Tale of Broken Constitutional Promises in the Texas Law Review Symposium (2011); Legal Reform, Social Policy, and Gendered Redistribution in Colombia: The Role of the Family in the American University Journal of Gender Social Policy & the Law; Law, Development, and Feminism in Latin America in 2008.