Written by: Jun.-Prof. Dr. Riccarda Flemmer With collaboration from: Lilian Eichorst - Research Assistant Zahid Zamudio - Research Assistant Micha Bröckling - Doctoral Student and Research Assistant Moderated by: Alberto Acosta and Sandra Weiss Presentation by: Prof. Teresa Vicente Musical Performance: Grupo Sal Artistic Visuals: Johannes Keitel The Derniere of the Pluriversum tour 2024 On October 16, 2024, Pluriversum 2024 drew a full audience at the University of Tübingen’s Pfleghofsaal, inviting attendees into a profound experience of dialogue, music, and visual art that celebrated the global Rights of Nature movement and its arrival in Europe. The multimedia event explored how communities worldwide are adopting new frameworks to recognize nature as a legal entity, emphasizing the importance of these rights as a response to the mounting climate crisis. Moderator Alberto Acosta, former President of the Ecuadorian Constitutional Assembly 2007 and 2008 which recognised the Rights of Nature, along with journalist, translator, and ex-diplomat Sandra Weiss gave stage to Special guest Professor Teresa Vicente, lawyer, professor and activist from the University of Murcia in Spain who received the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize, the “Green Nobel Prize”, in 2024. Prof. Vicente was the leading campaigner in the fight to bestow legal personhood rights to the Murcian lagoon ‘Mar Menor’ in 2022 as Europe’s first successful “Rights of Nature” case. Visual artist Johannes Keitel created a collage of images from street art, activism and nature in his video-mapping projections that enriched the event weaving together performances, portraits, videos, photos, graphics, and quotes into a dynamic and immersive visual pluriverse. The Sextett Grupo Sal carried the audience through the evening blending the academic and activist interventions with Latin American and African music of famous composers, such Cape Verdean Cesária Évora, and their own creations providing an emotional and powerful soundtrack. Spain’s Mar Menor: A Historic Victory for the Rights of Nature Prof. Vicente shared the compelling story of Spain’s Mar Menor, the first natural entity in Europe to gain legal rights, thanks to the tireless efforts of local citizens and activists. Situated in the Murcia region, Mar Menor is Europe’s largest saltwater lagoon and a precious ecosystem that faced severe degradation due to intensive agriculture, mining, livestock activities, and infrastructural expansion. In October 2019, the lagoon was devastated when large masses of dead fish surfaced, a tragic wake-up call that spurred action among Murcia’s citizens. Prof. Vicente highlighted how this disaster galvanized a massive social movement. Citizens launched a campaign that collected over 640,000 signatures, a remarkable feat that led to the adoption of a groundbreaking legislative initiative in September 2022. This law grants legal rights to Mar Menor, empowering residents to defend it in court and oversee its well-being through a representative commission, including activists, citizens, and local authorities. “At the heart of our planet is its ecosystem, not humanity.” (Prof. Teresa Vicente, translated by Zahid Zamudio) This historic achievement was not only a first for Spain but for all of Europe, setting a precedent for recognizing natural entities as rights-bearing subjects. As Prof. Vicente described, the success of Mar Menor exemplifies a transformative model where nature’s rights are directly linked to democratic participation. This law enables any citizen to raise legal concerns on behalf of Mar Menor, placing environmental stewardship at the centre of community and legislative processes. Prof. Vicente’s reflections illustrated a growing awareness that human and ecological well-being are inseparably linked, advocating for similar initiatives across Europe and beyond. Artistic Reflections and Global Solidarity The musical performances by Grupo Sal interspersed the discussions with a blend of Latin American and African rhythms, bringing the evening’s themes to life through song. The artistic element continued with Johannes Keitel’s video projections, which visually narrated the pluriversal concept. Images, quotes, and scenes from diverse ecosystems and cultural symbols illustrated a vision of interconnected worldviews, drawing participants into the pluriversal message. This event reinforced that respecting nature’s rights is not merely a legal shift but a moral imperative that will shape a just and sustainable future. In the closing words of Alberto Acosta on the potentials of Rights of Nature as a movement towards systemic overhaul in our thinking about human-nature relations. Rights of Nature is not about isolated systems. We must rather think about Nature as a whole. And that requires a major shift, a civilizational shift. Therefore, it is not only a legal issue, but also an economic, cultural, social, and political issue. What we need is a democracy that conforms to ecology. In this context, the Rights of Nature help because we accept that we are nature, not just part of nature. (Alberto Acosta, paraphrase by Zahid Zamudio) The event concluded with discussions among Acosta, Weiss, and Vicente, joined by a lively audience, followed by a final musical performance from Grupo Sal, with frontman Fernando Dias Costa’s smooth baritone bringing participants to their feet. The event left attendees inspired, capturing the sense of global solidarity that the Rights of Nature movement fosters.
I would like to thank the Global Encounters platform, the Chair of ‘Political Struggles in the Global South’ and the Chair of Ethics, History and Theory of the Life Sciences (MNF) of Prof. Dr. Thomas Potthast as well as the German Postcode Lottery, the Weltethos Institut, FAIRStrickt, Terre des Femme, Club Voltaire, xäls and the ESG Tübingen for their kind support. Funded as part of the Excellence Strategy of the German Federal and State Governments.
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Retrospective of the Forest Events in July 2024 in the Schönbuch ForestWritten by Jun.-Prof. Dr. Riccarda Flemmer With colaboration from: Lillian Eichorst - Research Assitant Zahid H. Zamudio Neme - Research Assitant Micha Bröckling- Doctoral Student & Research Assistant See also: https://www.jakobjautz.de/projekte/traces-1 The question "How can we as humans understand and be in connection with non-human living beings in our planetary ecosystem?" brought us together as a political scientist and a performance artist and dancer Jakob Jautz. Following this question, we blended a scientific lecture and performance art at various stations in and with the Kirnbachtal, Schönbuch Forest outside Tübingen. With the forest at the centre of the performance, we created a walk along several “stations” to encourage the participants to engage with the different ways of experiencing and knowing the connections between people and the more-than-human natural world. The creative process of planning the events was a rich experience in reflecting on how forms of academic, rational, emotional and embodied knowledge come into play when thinking, feeling and imagining connections between humans and more-than-human life. Adapting our university and theatre “indoor routines” to a space where trees, branches, moss, rocks as well as sun, rain, wind (and: mosquitoes!) set the stage, determine illumination and temperature, the way we dress and move. Jakob created traces over several years as a blend of land art, dance, circus performance - and tree climbing. He talked to biologists and foresters to learn about the least invasive ways to perform in forests, obtained a tree climbing licence, rethought what it means to dance and perform in and with the forest, tried out ways of moving and dressing, and read - fiction and non-fiction - and above all spent a lot of time in the forest. All these preparations appear in traces: The protective gear needed to climb trees and the reflection on how people dress up to be protected from nature. A poetic and intimate dance of climbing with closed eyes, after ten days of getting to know the tree. Skulls found in the different woods, reminding us of the passing of life. Reading a branch as a book and quotes from the famous work of the anthropologist Eduardo Kohn "How forests think" written skin of a birch. The stations I designed were a combination of academic lectures, storytelling and interactive sensory experiences with the forest. I based my interventions on an international database of Rights of Nature cases, UN documents, academic literature from political science, law, anthropology and sustainability studies as well as activist statements, campaign materials and interviews. However, all of this work is informed by the ways in which the Amazon rainforest has sensitised me to the deeply entangled and ever-changing coexistence of human and non-human beings. To adapt the lecture to the forest, I switched from a beamer presentation to printed posters, from slides filled with references to graphics and artwork from campaigns for Rights of Nature cases. Beginning with some insights into the conceptual and empirical foundations of Rights of Nature and their potential to prioritise and reform climate policy according to more holistic approaches to more-than-human ecosystems. Through inspiring cases from around the globe, I highlighted how the Rights of Natur movement seeks to spark a global socio-ecological transformation that recognises and protects the rights of ecosystems. Drawing on the Ecuadorian legal cases in favour of the Intag Valley against mining and oil extraction, the rediscovery of ten harlequin longnose frogs catapulted the species back from extinction and cemented the claim to protect the valley's biodiversity. Our visitors searched for 2,8cm stones to get a sense of how small you have to be to win a court case. One of the main aims of our collaboration was to emphasise connections to our physically proximate human and non-human life as well as our entanglement on a global scale. The forest’s climate, a clearing, trees, the smell and sound of leaves and birds, with elements of performance art and science talk, were intended to create a space for collective and creative reflection on our planetary future. For both of us, these forest events were and still are about inspiration and hope. We want to move away from a language steeped in the rhetoric of war and catastrophe towards constructive narratives, without "kitschifying" nature or falling into a reactionary "back to nature" rhetoric. Instead, hope needs space to accommodate grief over the current situation, the loss of species, people, and ecosystems, as much as the fascination and appreciation of the richness of the connections that exist on this planet. We belief on a personal and professional level that hope is an essential first step in imagining and shaping our future. Let us begin by believing that it is possible. Photos by Eftychia Stefanou and Christoph Stoll
Written by: Jun.-Prof. Dr. Riccarda Flemmer With collaboration from: Verena Gresz - Doctoral Student and Research Fellow Micha Bröckling - Research Assistant Lina Weber - Research Assistant The ongoing climate catastrophe and biodiversity loss have led to renewed attention to alternative conceptions of human-nature relationships. Politically, the notion of rights of nature has been at the forefront of rethinking humanity’s connection with nature. Starting in Latin America, more and more natural entities have been awarded legal personhood to protect them against anthropocentric exploitation. These cases challenge established patterns of conceptualising nature and humans as separate entities in law and leave us wondering: How can a dialogue between humans and nature be established? How can individual and collective interests of humans and non-humans be mediated?
The Workshop To approach these questions, the ensemble of the Theatre of the Anthropocene engaged in a dialogue with students of the Arts-Based Research (ABR) seminar taught by Jun-Prof Dr Riccarda Flemmer and Verena Gresz this winter semester at the University of Tübingen. Together with other researchers at the University, we engaged in a cross-disciplinary workshop to discuss the potential and pitfalls of alliances between science and art. The exchange brought to the fore how scientific data can inform artistic practices about the issues of our time, such as the climate crisis and the protection from environmental destruction. Further, it also demonstrated how creative - and in this case performative - engagement with academic topics is capable of opening up a range of new perspectives for learning, teaching, and co-generating knowledge through more diverse, pluralistic, and - after all - fun didactics. Theatre Performance In “Lawyers of Nature”, the cross-disciplinary dialogue moved from the seminar room to the stage. The evening's host, Carrie Getman de Agudo, together with Kevin Mooney, guided the audience on an arboreal trip through the past, present, and future of the rights of nature. Every stop on this tour offered a novel and unique perspective on the guiding question of how to connect nature, human, and the law: a 1988 lawyer made the case for awarding Northsea seals legal personhood to sue the German state, a furious philosopher, Karl Christian Friedrich Krause, argued for his foresight in predicting the detrimental effects of anthropocentrism, and a futuristic mediator tried to find common ground between the different interests of the Spree river, politicians, and the locals. The fast pace of the play and its humorous tone gripped the audience's attention, provoked reflection and laughter alike, and made the evening a deeply memorable experience. The performance took place in cooperation with the University of Tübingen, Riccarda Flemmer Professorship "Political Struggles in the Global South". It was funded as part of the Excellence Strategy of the German federal and state governments. Written by: Jun.-Prof.Dr. Riccarda Flemmer With colaboration from: Micha Bröckling- Research Assistant Lina Weber-Research Assitant The Event
On 19 October 2023, we co-organised the book launch of the German edition of "Pluriverse - A Post-development Dictionary" which brought together political and academic voices from the Global South and North with musical performances and artistic video projections. This interplay between music, projections and political impulses allowed the pluriversal message to be experienced through all senses. The launch was embedded into Grupo Sal’s Tour Program "PLURIVERSUM- DISCOURSES FOR A JUST WORLD" which created an immersive event. The sextet with singer Fernando Dias Costa carried the audience through the event with Latin American rhythm, poetry, and playful musicality. The event was moderated by Alberto Acosta, former President of the Ecuadorian Constitutional Assembly, together with journalist and ex-diplomat Sandra Weiss who led through the event with the virtual presence of guest activists from all over the world. Video-mapping projections from artist Johannes Keitel transformed the stage into a visual pluriverse. The projections included - always thematically contextualizing - performances, portraits, videos, photos, graphics, and quotes. The Book In "PLURIVERSUM - Ein Lexikon des Guten Lebens für alle" (link to free PDF and for book orders), more than 120 authors present diverse economic, socio-political, cultural and ecological concepts, worldviews, and practices from around the world. "Post-Development" questions the prevailing Western development model and presents alternatives that protect and respect life on Earth: A Pluriverse of Many Possible Worlds, encompassing a variety of system critiques and ways of living. This encyclopedia aims to re-politicise the ongoing debate on socio-ecological transformation by highlighting its multi-layered nature. The first English edition was published in India and has already been translated into French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish, with other languages to follow. For the first time, the German edition makes this diversity of alternative lifestyles accessible to German-speaking readers as well. The book is an encyclopedia with short articles on key concepts. It can be used for teaching and research, to educate activists, academics and practitioners, to inspire the curious to take action - and can inspire those in power to new ideas. This book was made possible by the commitment and unpaid collaboration of many as initiators, translators, proofreaders and proofreaders. Furthermore, thanks to a dedicated fundraising campaign to finance a large part of the production costs, this book can be distributed at a reasonable price. [Reupload] Written by: Jun.-Prof.Dr. Riccarda Flemmer Project: "The Transformative Potential of Rights of Nature?"/ “El potencial transformador de los derechos de la naturaleza? With colaboration from: Micha Bröckling- Research Assistant Mariana Contreras Leal- Research Assistant Lina Weber-Research Assitant The Knowledge Dialogues between Latin America and Europe in the summer term 2023 aim to bring together activists, indigenous peoples, practitioners, and scientists in a critical dialogue between the advocates and adversaries of Rights of Nature (RoN). The events will shed light on different topic areas, such as constitutional reforms, forest protection, global political transformation, and moral implications reflecting on the potentials and pitfalls of RoN for sustainable transformations. The series of dialogues is organized by Junior-Pprofessor Dr. Riccarda Flemmer and seeks to create a space for dialogue, mutual learning, and conjoint knowledge-production between the Global North and South.
Biocentric vs. Anthropocentric law-making In the third knowledge dialogue focus was set on the rights of forests. On 6th July 2023, Riccarda Flemmer opened the event by presenting the “International Rights of Nature Tribunal” as a civil forum where e.g. the rights of Amazonia have been claimed with the goal to put pressure on governments and prosecute violations of the RoN violations. She also outlined the cases listed by the Eco Jurisprudence Monitor about forests. The 17 listed cases are diverse in terms of their geographical location (1 Benin, 1 Canada, 8 Ecuador, 1 India, 1 New Zealand, 1 US, and 3 International) as well as in their biocentric or anthropocentric argumentations. Historically, claims for the legal standing of forests can be traced back to legal writings by US lawyer Christopher Stone’s “Should Trees have standing” and the dissent of Supreme Court Justice Douglas to the ruling Sierra Club v. Morton concerning parts of the Sequoia National Forest in 1972. Beginning in the 2010s, several forests were recognized then as “legal subjects”, e.g. the Te Urewera forest in Aotearoa/New Zealand 2017. In Latin America, the Colombian Supreme Court of Justice in a 2018 case declared the Colombian Amazonia a “legal entity subject to rights” in response to a climate litigation case articulated by young Columbians for their right to have a future. In Europe, the EU decided in the 2020 Resolution on Reversing Deforestation (P9_TA(2020)0285) about the protection of forests in order to restore their biodiversity and articulated that “ancient and primary forests should be considered and protected as global commons and that their ecosystems should be granted a legal status.” Worldwide the highest number of forest rights cases are located in Ecuador. On the one hand, these comprise indigenous claims for the national and international recognition of kawsak sacha (living forest in Kichwa) as a living and conscious entity with rights and intrinsic value. On the other hand, Ecuadorian courts recently ruled in favor of forests and stopped mining projects, for example in the “Los Cedros” case 2021. Los Cedros - How could a forest stop a mine? Elisa Levy from the OMASNE “Observatorio Minero, Ambiental y Social del Norte de Ecuador” (Observatory for mining, environment and social of Northern Ecuador) connected the case of Los Cedros in Ecuador with forests worldwide. She explained that it is necessary to protect forests because they are essential for the planet’s climate and for providing humans with ecosystem services (ESS). For instance, forests serve as water source and guarantee stable rain for the farmers in the Northern regions of Ecuador, who do not have irrigation systems. She summarized, ‘The bigger the forest, the better the ecosystem services it can provide’. Despite Ecuador’s adoption of RoN in their 2008 constitution, there have been guaranteed several mining concessions in or around the country’s highly biodiverse forests. One of the recent campaigns of OMASNE together with communities, scientists and other allies is the Los Cedros case. After five years of sustained protest and litigation, Los Cedros was finally recognized by the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court to have legal subjecthood including the right to exist with all its species and the right to maintain its cycles of life, structures, functions, and evolutionary process in 2021. Although the case set an important precedent, the Court does not always decide in favor of RoN in new cases. Practices of forest-making – what can we learn from Amazonian women and kawsak sacha, the living forest? Dr. Andrea Sempertegui, Assistant Professor in Politics at Whitman College presented parts of her research on Amazonian women’s practice of forest-making in Ecuador. In October 2013, women from different Amazonian indigenous peoples conducted the “March for life” walking from the lowland rainforest to the country’s capital Quito in the Andes in order to fight for the continuity of their way of life according to the principles of sumak kawsay (good living) and kawsak sacha (living forest). The living forest should be understood as a form of relationship which is not about conservation, but about interrelatedness between humans and non-human beings and highlights the acts of working for the continuation of the existence of nature. It is based on an egalitarian relationship. In this march and in the following protest activities, practices of engaging with the forest, e.g. chants and rituals, were performed in political arenas outside of the communities creating space to make coexistence with the forest known. She warned that despite officially having recognized RoN in its constitution, people and especially indigenous women need to fight for the recognition of understandings of living with nature. Though, it is important to highlight that all communities have their own terms and framings. They actively decided to combine their struggles using the Kichwa terms not to describe one single way of life but a plurality. Culture is nature, Science Theater Frank Raddatz, director of the "Theatre of the Anthropocene" in Berlin, bridged the gap between theoretical considerations and artistic practice in dealing with RoN and forests. In his plays, he said, everything is different from what we are used to know. A scientist is on the stage to be an actor talking about climate change; trees, rivers, and mountains are brought to life, and the whole audience plays along - to give just a small idea of how a performance can look like. Culture, he says, has a central part in our existence as human beings, and since we humans must see ourselves as part of nature again, culture thus is also something natural. Furthermore, a relation should be built between "hard science" and art. The conditions under which we exist in the age of the Anthropocene can only be understood, if we assume that we can only perceive and grasp nature through our culturally shaped filter. As the Theater of the Anthropocene exemplifies, we need to think in teams and to enter into dialogue between different disciplines. This kind of interactive theater creates a new sensibility, Frank argues, that enables us to imagine the future or alternative futures, in plural. Principles over law? Anarchist perspectives on RoN Ende Gelände Tübingen gave a talk about anarchist perspectives on rights for forests and RoN in general. In their view, responsibility is needed instead of leadership and democracy needs to be understood more radically - as a negotiation of living together without concentrated power but with shared responsibilities. Arguing for responsibility instead of rules, they highlighted that principles would be more important than laws, and that legal proceedings would always be infused and ultimately corrupted by state interests. They emphasized their main concern is that legislation takes something out of democracy and makes it less accessible and certainly less direct. The fear is that RoN might again only focus on human interests and that including nature into a law only operates as another way of making nature controllable to exploit it for the benefits of a particular elite. However, they support the idea of a forest owning itself and to expropriate nature from private owners. Despite the possible subjecthood, which nature could achieve by legal standing, RoN still operates within the given law system that is based on power hierarchies and exclusion. Plenary discussion In the plenary, the question emerged, how forest-making could be defined and how specifically those practices make the forest come alive while others do not. Andrea explained that “making alive” still entails a subject-object divide between humans and nature. She argued that we need to change our perception towards “doing something” to enable relations and make those tangible. For the anarchist perspective, Ende Gelände was asked, considering their criticism of RoN and legal systems, how their utopia would look and what relationships with forests would this utopia include. The activists explained that they would see RoN based on a biocentric understanding where humans and non-human beings have rights and value. Furthermore, according to their understanding, a system change is necessary because in the current commercial ways of using the earth, there is no space to even think about a future. With the audience, the question was discussed, how to change asymmetric and unjust human-nature relationships. While some emphasized the need to change our way of thinking in order to act differently, others urged that the material reality of economic injustices is the basis for current environmental destruction and climate change, therefore, this would need to change first . Synergies of knowledge The speakers agreed that it should be up to those who live in and around a forest to speak for it and make political decisions. The close relation with the forest and sometimes the dependence of human livelihoods would provide experiences on how the future of living with the forest should look. The idea of kawsak sacha would be a helpful tool to understand that forests are living entities and that humans need to know about as well as to acknowledge the flows in ecosystems, lifecycles, and regenerative systems. Humans and forests are connected, we can feel the relation with and the life of the forest if we let ourselves do so. Science can also play a role in knowing more about these relations. This, it will be essential to steer aways from the Global North’s human-centered law and policy making moving towards more respectful human-nature relations . Further questions to be discussed:
For more information about the series: "Knowledge Dialogues between Latin America and Europe about Rights of Nature" click here. Dialogues between Latin America and Europe about Rights of Nature 2° Mountains-Montañas-Apus-Berge4/7/2023 Written by: Jun.-Prof.Dr. Riccarda Flemmer |
Collaborations and ResourcesInternational Database on Eco-Jurisprudence, including Rights of Nature: https://ecojurisprudence.org/
Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature: https://www.garn.org/ More-Than-Human Rights (MOTH) NYU: https://mothrights.org/ |