Constitucionalismo ecológico en América Latina: de los derechos ambientales a los derechos de la naturaleza

Abstract

This research articles studies with a qualitative methodology the ecological constitucionalism in Latin America. The land is not silent and the Constitutions must give it a voice: this is the great challenge of Andean ecological constitutionalism, characterized by an original process of innovation and experimentation, found particularly in Ecuador and Bolivia, which marks the genesis of a paradigm of environmental protection alternative to the Western one, and which emblematically outlines the passage from an anthropocentric legal vision to a seductive biocentric approach. The constitutional recognition of legal personality to nature shifts the centre of gravity from environmental fears to the issue of rights themselves, and contributes to the construction of a renewed legal order that can, and must, contemplate the hypothesis of returning the soul taken from the non-human. Now, recognizing rights to entities hitherto excluded from juridical thought, allows for a radical and stimulating revision of the idea of nature and also suggests new ways of relating to Mother Earth which, far from mortifying her vital cycles, structure, functions and evolutionary dynamics, exalt the opportunity to sediment Buen Vivir’s ethical practices, which, moreover, are stimulating to promote equity, social justice and pluralism. A vision that, dismantling the obsolete assumptions of progress and the one-dimensional understanding of development and economic growth, draws possible scenarios of coexistence in which diversity is the rule, and not the exception. Latin America opens new doors, providing new keys, and assuming the creation of a global ecological rule of law, capable of shifting the objectives of sustainable development towards a more holistic dimension, capable of facing challenges, and why not, future risks as well.