UDTR Global Rights of Nature Radar

The ‘rights of nature’ in an age of white supremacy?

Identification

Public canonical key

doi:10.1177/23996544231164508

Authors

Erin

Reported year

2023

Reported language

en · eng

Source type

Article

First detected

2026-11-09T19:04:47.866739+00:00

Last metadata observation

2026-11-10T16:58:51.263801+00:00

Last HTTP verification

Not checked

Institutions reported by the source

The University of Melbourne

Reported affiliation countries

AU

Documentary abstract — original language

The past 10 years have witnessed a flourishing of interdisciplinary research across the social sciences that aims to better theorize the relationships between structural racism and the deepening ecological crisis. In this article, I consider how grassroots lawyers and community activists for the ‘rights of nature’ (RoN) in the United States are transforming their discourses, legal tactics, and pedagogical strategies in the face of a national context marked by pervasive anti-Black racism. After considering how racism has historically accompanied efforts to extend moral and legal ‘personhood’ to ecosystems in ways that continue to make solidarity work with racial justice organizations vexed and difficult, I show that, despite these exclusionary legacies, RoN activists are experimenting with municipal law-making in ways that are bringing them into closer conversation with contemporary racial justice struggles. Instead of focusing narrowly on the problem of the denial of ‘rights’ to non-humans, RoN activists are increasingly concerned with the broader structural problem of state pre-emption over local decision-making and the profoundly anti-democratic nature of a state/corporate nexus that is limiting possibilities for progressive action across a wide range of justice issues. Whilst these legal experiments do not resolve enduring tensions between anti-racist and environmental struggles, they suggest important re-directions taking place among historically white environmental activists.

Identifiers

OPENALEX

W4377088528

DOI

10.1177/23996544231164508

OPENAIRE

doi_________::c17687d9e8fb8d51a7fa27c42fe6987b

Documentary context

Documentary family

Scholarship

Source-reported types

Article · article

Natural entities mentioned

Ecosystem

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/10.1177/23996544231164508
• OpenAlex · https://openalex.org/W4377088528

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:w2051421761 · CITES
• Should trees have standing? Law, morality, and the environment · CITES
• openalex:w2096012443 · CITES
• Imagining Corporate Personhood · CITES
• openalex:w2324274005 · CITES
• Nature Advocacy and the Indigenous Symbol · CITES
• openalex:w2336822056 · CITES
• openalex:w2339983425 · CITES
• openalex:w2342514655 · CITES
• openalex:w2342655129 · CITES
• openalex:w2580715104 · CITES
• openalex:w2779190168 · CITES
• Creating legal rights for rivers: Lessons from Australia, New Zealand, and India · CITES
• Developing deeply intersectional environmental justice scholarship · CITES
• Producing juridical knowledge: “Rights of Nature” or the naturalization of rights? · CITES
• Challenging Corporate “Personhood”: Energy Companies and the “Rights” of Non‐Humans · CITES
• Constructing Rights of Nature Norms in the US, Ecuador, and New Zealand · CITES
• openalex:w2900621324 · CITES
• openalex:w2904519652 · CITES
• openalex:w2909893027 · CITES

5 incoming references within the detected corpus

Documentary status

Relevance pending

Library

This identity is not yet included in the Legal Library.