Abstract

BONILLA MALDONADO, Daniel. The Rights of Nature and Global Legal Pluralism. rev.estud.soc. [online]. 2025, n.93, pp.131-154.  Epub Aug 27, 2025. ISSN 0123-885X.  https://doi.org/10.7440/res93.2025.09.

This article contributes to the description, analysis, and comparison of the discursive patterns that convey and sustain the rights of nature. It also examines these discursive patterns from the perspective of global legal pluralism. To this end, the text is divided into two parts. In the first part, I describe, analyze, and compare three types of discourse related to the rights of nature. I begin by examining their prototypical models, namely those that emerged in Bolivia, Ecuador, and New Zealand. I then explore discourses that replicate the conceptual structures of these paradigmatic models, such as those found within the international human rights system and in the legal systems of Colombia and India. Finally, I consider discourses that oppose the rights of nature, as seen in the legal systems of much of Western Europe. The second part analyzes the rights of nature through two key perspectives in contemporary comparative law: the political economy of legal knowledge and explanatory theories of legal change. This part is also divided into two sections. In the first, I show how the rights of nature challenge the dominant political economy of legal knowledge; these rights are culturally hybrid as well as epistemologically, politically, and legally heterodox. In the second section, I examine how national legal systems have incorporated the rights of nature into their structures through a cross-fertilization process that involves not only North-South exchanges of legal knowledge but also heterodox South-South and South-North exchanges.

Keywords : comparative law; cross-fertilization; legal pluralism; political economy of legal knowledge; rights of nature.

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