Rights of nature, human species identity, and political thought in the anthropocene
Identification
- Public canonical key
- doi:10.1177/20530196221078929
- Authors
- Seth Epstein
- Reported year
- 2022
- Reported language
- en
- Source type
- article
- First detected
- 2026-11-09T19:04:47.877569+00:00
- Last metadata observation
- 2026-11-10T16:58:51.312735+00:00
- Last HTTP verification
- Not checked
Institutions reported by the source
Uppsala University
Reported affiliation countries
SE
Documentary abstract — original language
While much has been written about the efforts in multiple jurisdictions to recognize nature and natural features as rightsholders, there has been relatively little research into the relationship of these Rights of Nature developments to the Anthropocene. This article uses historian Dipesh Chakrabarty’s argument for the adoption of a human species identity in the Anthropocene as a jumping off point to analyze how legal rights for nature, such as those enacted in the Ecuador and New Zealand, can help address what Chakrabarty identifies as the challenges the Anthropocene presents to contemporary political thought. These pressing challenges include how to politicize relations between humans and non-humans, extend justice and the sphere of human morality to non-humans, cope with human limitations on our abilities to represent non-humans, and to initiate a withdrawal from a human-dominated world that is a common though uneven legacy of imperialism, capitalism, and globalization. The article argues that by providing responses to these challenges, Rights of Nature laws may also further the development of a human species identity. However, it also qualifies this conclusion in several important regards. First, the more expansive of these protections, embracing all of nature within political boundaries and relying on a remedial approach to justice and broad notions of representation in fact may hinder the adoption of the kind of species identity for which Chakrabarty has called. Second, as a cosmopolitan identity, this identity may be inhibited by continued circumscription of Rights of Nature by notions of state sovereignty.
Identifiers
- OPENALEX
- W4225386797
- DOI
- 10.1177/20530196221078929
- OPENAIRE
- doi_dedup___::c74a93105a6e6e3063f4ef54723d2d46
Documentary context
- Documentary family
- Scholarship
- Source-reported types
- Article · article
- Jurisdictions studied — explicit sources
- EC · NZ
- Natural entities mentioned
- Species
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
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:w1976345684 · CITES
- openalex:w2072047324 · CITES
- openalex:w2315638584 · CITES
- Rights of Pachamama: The emergence of an earth jurisprudence in the Americas · CITES
- Environment, Political Representation and the Challenge of Rights: Speaking for Nature · CITES
- Can Rights of Nature Make Development More Sustainable? Why Some Ecuadorian lawsuits Succeed and Others Fail · CITES
- The Rights of Nature: A History of Environmental Ethics · CITES
- Personhood and the Rights of Nature: The New Subjects of Contemporary Earth Politics1 · CITES
- openalex:w2591499342 · CITES
- openalex:w2755160433 · CITES
- Exploring Wild Law: The philosophy of earth jurisprudence · CITES
- openalex:w2890066665 · CITES
- openalex:w2942396545 · CITES
- Conferring legal personality on the world’s rivers: A brief intellectual assessment · CITES
- openalex:w2966932355 · CITES
- Sustainability and the Rights of Nature in Practice · CITES
- Nature’s Law or Law’s Law? Community of Life, Legal Personhood, and Trusts · CITES
- Decolonizing Law and expanding Human Rights: Indigenous Conceptions and the Rights of Nature in Ecuador · CITES
- Rights of nature, legal personality, and indigenous philosophies · CITES
- openalex:w3083888021 · CITES
8 incoming references within the detected corpus
Documentary field provenance
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Status from the preserved documentary extraction: Unestablished
Cite this reference
Seth Epstein. Rights of nature, human species identity, and political thought in the anthropocene. 2022. https://doi.org/10.1177/20530196221078929
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APA, Chicago, ISO 690: bibliographic formats using available fields. OSCOLA / Bluebook: structured data only; full legal citation compliance is not claimed without verification of required elements.
- APA
- Seth Epstein. (2022). Rights of nature, human species identity, and political thought in the anthropocene. https://doi.org/10.1177/20530196221078929
- Chicago
- Seth Epstein. Rights of nature, human species identity, and political thought in the anthropocene. 2022. https://doi.org/10.1177/20530196221078929
- ISO 690
- Seth Epstein. Rights of nature, human species identity, and political thought in the anthropocene. 2022. https://doi.org/10.1177/20530196221078929
UDTR Global Rights of Nature Legal Library. Rights of nature, human species identity, and political thought in the anthropocene. Documentary record: https://www.declarationuniverselledesdroitsdelarbre.org/global-rights-of-nature-radar/reference/r-bdb2700a872703a3a373dab3e4683e9b/ · Last HTTP verification: not performed
Field provenance and record version
Version acb0379ded3bee38 · udtr-reference-1.1.2
- Title
- OpenAIRE · source · 2026-11-09T19:06:33.880022+00:00
OpenAlex · source · 2026-11-10T16:58:51.312735+00:00 - Authors
- OpenAIRE · source · 2026-11-09T19:06:33.880022+00:00
OpenAlex · source · 2026-11-10T16:58:51.312735+00:00
Multiple reported values; disagreement retained. - Year
- OpenAIRE · source · 2026-11-09T19:06:33.880022+00:00
OpenAlex · source · 2026-11-10T16:58:51.312735+00:00 - Identifiers
- OpenAIRE · source · 2026-11-09T19:06:33.880022+00:00
OpenAlex · source · 2026-11-10T16:58:51.312735+00:00
Multiple reported values; disagreement retained. - Source URL
- OpenAIRE · source · 2026-11-09T19:06:33.880022+00:00
OpenAlex · source · 2026-11-10T16:58:51.312735+00:00 - Source-reported author ORCID
- OpenAlex · source · 2026-11-10T16:58:51.312735+00:00
History tracks record metadata and does not certify the state of the law.
d9c737904105a75b · 2026-11-09T19:06:33.880022+00:00
c272751e2ab3f219 · 2026-11-09T19:06:33.880022+00:00
b266306ca929295e · 2026-11-09T19:06:33.880022+00:00
94616bae15fae7bb · 2026-11-10T16:58:51.312735+00:00
acb0379ded3bee38 · 2026-11-10T16:58:51.312735+00:00
Research dossiers and documentary relations
Source roles
Discovery source · https://doi.org/10.1177/20530196221078929
Discovery source · https://openalex.org/W4225386797
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