UDTR Global Rights of Nature Radar

Re-articulating forest politics through “rights to forest” and “rights of forest”

Identification

Public canonical key

doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2022.05.010

Authors

Eija Meriläinen · Ari Lehtinen

Reported year

2022

Reported language

en

Source type

article

First detected

2026-11-09T19:04:47.969429+00:00

Last metadata observation

2026-11-09T19:10:34.505244+00:00

Last HTTP verification

Not checked

Institutions reported by the source

Hanken School of Economics · University College London · University of Eastern Finland · Örebro University

Reported affiliation countries

FI · GB · SE

Documentary abstract — original language

Forests, and the politics around them, are posited both as a cause of and solution to the contemporary ecological crisis. This paper explores how rights to forest and rights of forest conceptualisations can re-articulate, and potentially challenge, the problematic dominance of capitalist forest politics in Northern Finland and beyond. Conceptually, the paper combines the debates on rights-to-nature and rights-of-nature. Rights-to-nature is concerned with how people can access and use nature to support their lives. Rights-of-nature, meanwhile, highlights the nature's intrinsic value and the rights of indigenous peoples. Combining the two perspectives might allow imagining politics of nature that is both ecologically and socially just. Empirically, the paper studies forest politics in Tornio River valley in Northern Finland through an ethnographic case study. The rights-to-nature conceptualisation associates locally with the existing use rights and ownership rights. Rights-to-nature may guarantee access to a forest, but it does not guarantee its existence. Rights-of-nature, meanwhile, associates with strong conservation, nature's power, and indigenous land rights. However, also the rights-of-nature conceptualisation is unlikely to challenge the gradual degradation of most Northern forests, as these “boring” forests lack both recognised human stewardship and intrinsic value. Thus, in the study area the rights conceptualisations do not decisively challenge the existing forest politics, even if the framings can acquire a more radical content. Overall, this paper shows that transnational rights discourses and conceptualisations entangle with local common senses. Factoring in the local understandings is essential for re-articulating politics of nature that could receive broad local support. Peer reviewed

Identifiers

OPENALEX

W4281956435

DOI

10.1016/j.geoforum.2022.05.010

OPENAIRE

doi_dedup___::26df1a7eeb0b2f31abb23ba9835371aa

Documentary context

Documentary family

Scholarship

Source-reported types

Article · article

Natural entities mentioned

River · Forest

Entity mentions are not evidence of legal recognition. Jurisdiction studied is separate from author affiliation country.

Sources

OpenAIRE · Record 1

OpenAlex · Record 1 · Record 2

• DOI · https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2022.05.010
• OpenAlex · https://openalex.org/W4281956435

Documented bibliographic relations

Source-declared references and links; they do not establish legal support or UGLC qualification. Up to 20 outgoing references are displayed.

• openalex:w140835117 · CITES
• openalex:w1438093620 · CITES
• openalex:w1495915061 · CITES
• openalex:w1547717305 · CITES
• openalex:w1620929339 · CITES
• openalex:w1880463559 · CITES
• BETWEEN ‘MARX AND MARKETS’? THE STATE, THE ‘LEFT TURN’ AND NATURE IN ECUADOR · CITES
• openalex:w1968102483 · CITES
• openalex:w1972742974 · CITES
• openalex:w1982248432 · CITES
• openalex:w1990993800 · CITES
• openalex:w2001990006 · CITES
• openalex:w2020353943 · CITES
• openalex:w2022544170 · CITES
• openalex:w2025016544 · CITES
• openalex:w2026107775 · CITES
• openalex:w2029707815 · CITES
• openalex:w2033831919 · CITES
• openalex:w2045746307 · CITES
• openalex:w2047678257 · CITES

15 incoming references within the detected corpus

Documentary status

Relevance pending

Library

This identity is not yet included in the Legal Library.