Högre seminarium i miljörätt: Contesting the National Interest in Mine Permitting Processes: Indigenous Communities, Rights of Nature, and Prior Consent

Scholars have urged the examination of how Nature’s rights may link with other rights-claims to impact political struggles between local communities and central governments over decision-making authority. This article examines the ability of Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities in Ecuador to contest the approval of extractive projects. The article identifies the key dynamics of the mine permitting process that have curtailed the possibilities for communities to intervene in or disrupt this process. First is the presumption of co-existence of Indigenous land uses and mining projects. A second is the removal of conflict from its spatial context. Facilitating this second characteristic is a third: the putative standardization of actors and the means by which the weight of their claims is judged for the national interest. The article contends that the development and alteration of these dynamics in Ecuador illustrates how the conjunction of nature’s rights, human rights, and the precautionary principle has challenged patterns of knowledge creation and use essential to supporting the primacy of the national interest.

Short bio: Seth Epstein is a historian focusing on the U.S. in the 20th century and a researcher at the Centre for Multidisciplinary Research on Religion and Society at Uppsala University. His previous research topics have included religious tolerance in the Jim Crow U.S. South and taxicab regulation in the 1920s and 1930s. He is currently part of a project based at CRS titled Realizing Rights of Nature: Sustaining Development and Democracy. This project focuses on the actions of a growing number of jurisdictions over the past decade and a half to grant rights to nature. It explores the implications for democracy of the recognition of nature as a rights-bearing subject.

A lighter lunch will be served prior to the seminar, at 12.00. R.S.V.P to Melina Malafry at melina.malafry@jur.uu.se. Inform about any dietary restrictions.