Kelman Seminar: Reframing Conflicts Over Natural “Resources”: The Rights of Nature as a Pathway for Consensus Building and Relational Planning and Resolution

About the talk:

Our current institutions and legal systems view Nature as a natural “resource” at the service of humans. This thinking creates adversarial conflicts over natural resources forcing our legal systems to declare “winners or losers” whenever there is contestation over them. However, the recognition and provision of rights to natural entities across the globe (such as forests, glaciers, rivers, lakes and even pollinators) may turn this around. This recognition signals a re-evaluation of our relationship with nature. It enables decision-makers to reimagine environmental management under a new holistic paradigm, bringing back to the fore holistic approaches to decision-making practiced by Indigenous Peoples for centuries. Such a re-evaluation uses hope as a tool to see our relationship with nature and with each other as relational and not adversarial.

In this seminar, we will discuss the progress that is taking place on the ground across Colombia, Aotearoa New Zealand, Spain, and Australia. Rivers, lakes, and forests in these regions are gaining recognition as living entities and are being granted rights. We will close the session reflecting on how current experiences on the ground can meet at the Earth Assembly, an international forum envisioned in the last Interactive Dialogue of the UNGA on Harmony with Nature, as a next step to engage the Rights of Nature community from the bottom-up.

About the speakers:

Lidia Cano-Pecharroman is a Ph.D. Candidate at Massachusetts Institute for Technology’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning specializing on Environmental Policy Planning for extreme climate events. She is also an attorney and policy analyst with a focus on natural resources management, conflict prevention and climate policy. Cano has advised and collaborated with governments and international organizations across all continents, as well as with organizations including Climate, Law and Policy, UC Berkeley Center for the Law Energy and Environment, Columbia University, Radon Law Offices, and London School of Economics. She is an Expert for the UN Harmony with Nature network and a Fulbright, La Caixa, and Martin Fellow.

Erin Matariki Carr (Tūhoe, Ngāti Awa, Pākehā) is from Aotearoa New Zealand. Matariki is a lawyer, scholar, and facilitator working within a movement to transform the New Zealand constitution from one that is anthropocentric, to one that is kin-centric and reciprocal with the land and her living systems. Her work experience features Te Urewera legal personhood, Indigenous governance systems and community conscientization work. Matariki is co-lead of RIVER, a facilitator for Tūmanako Consultants and works as a Research Fellow for the Aotearoa Centre for Indigenous Peoples and the Law at the University of Auckland Law School.

Gabriela Eslava-Bejarano is a development and sustainability practitioner and lawyer from Colombia, with experience in research, consulting, human rights strategic litigation, and environmental and social policymaking. Bejarano led the first climate change and future generations’ litigation case in Latin America that resulted in the declaration of the Colombian Amazon rainforest as a subject of rights by the Supreme Court of Colombia.

Dr. Erin O’Donnell is a Senior Lecturer and Australian Research Council research fellow at University of Melbourne Law School. She is a water law and policy expert, recognized internationally for her research into the legal rights for rivers. Since 2018, O’Donnell has been a member of the Birrarung Council, the voice of the Yarra River in Melbourne.

About the Herbert C. Kelman Seminar Series:

The Herbert C. Kelman Seminar on International Conflict Analysis and Resolution series is sponsored by the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School and The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. The seminar considers ways to strengthen the capacity to prevent, resolve, and transform ethnonational conflicts.

 For more information on the Kelman Seminar Series, contact Donna Hicks at dhicks@wcfia.harvard.edu.