Rights of Nature in the Andean Community: Foundations, Constitutional Models, and Enforcement
The rights of nature have transformed Andean environmental law by challenging the assumption that only human interests can organize constitutional protection. This narrative legal review examines that transformation across Ecuador, Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru, the four members of the Andean Communit...
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| Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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| Formato: | Reference entry |
| Lenguaje: | inglés |
| Publicado: |
2026
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| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | Enlace permanente (DOI o Handle) Registro tomado de OpenAlex, que lo atribuye a la UPeU. Aún no está en el CRIS de la universidad. |
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| Sumario: | The rights of nature have transformed Andean environmental law by challenging the assumption that only human interests can organize constitutional protection. This narrative legal review examines that transformation across Ecuador, Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru, the four members of the Andean Community. The review analyzes a curated corpus of 91 academic, constitutional, legislative, judicial, regional, and international sources through four lenses: legal subjecthood, ecological normativity, intercultural legitimacy, and institutional enforceability. The comparison identifies four distinct pathways. Ecuador constitutionalized nature as a rights-bearing subject and subsequently developed an increasingly specific body of constitutional jurisprudence. Bolivia combined plurinational constitutionalism with statutory rights of Mother Earth and a state-centered framework for integral development in harmony with nature. Colombia reached comparable outcomes through judicial construction, especially through biocultural rights and guardianship arrangements for ecosystems. Peru retained a predominantly anthropocentric environmental-rights model, although constitutional doctrine, municipal initiatives, and reform proposals reveal a growing ecocentric opening. Across the subregion, formal recognition is neither necessary nor sufficient for ecological effectiveness, understood here as the capacity of legal rules and remedies to prevent, halt, or reverse the degradation of protected ecological functions and processes. Outcomes depend on standing, representation, scientific and Indigenous knowledge, remedial design, monitoring, budgets, and the capacity to confront extractive political economies. Andean Community instruments provide a valuable regional layer for biodiversity, genetic resources, and environmental cooperation, but they do not yet harmonize the legal status of nature. The review concludes that the strongest future model is a plural and enforceable ecological constitutionalism: one that protects nature’s intrinsic value, preserves human and collective environmental rights, embeds intercultural participation, and translates judicial declarations into measurable restoration and non-regression duties. |
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