El alcance de los derechos de la naturaleza en la titularidad de componentes específicos: ríos, bosques y animales

Abstract

The recognition of the rights of nature in the 2008 Ecuadorian Constitution was an unprecedented innovation in constitutionalism. Although its initial approach dates back many years in history, it was a series of internal and external factors that allowed these rights to be recognised for the first time in our country. From that moment on, it took a few years for these rights to be developed by the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court, where, as in other countries around the world, specific components of Nature are being recognised as subjects of rights in order to adequately guarantee their rights. However, faced with a phenomenon such as climate change, which currently threatens to destabilise not only natural systems but also the political, economic and social systems that sustain our current civilisation, we ask ourselves whether the rights of Nature are really sufficient to protect ecosystems and species from phenomena such as climate change, This is why, in this research project, we analyse the background, development and current status of these rights, in order to understand a profound contradiction between the economic interest of the state and the rights of nature, as well as a deep-rooted disinterest or indifference to what happens to these rights on the part of both the state and the people.