With the adoption of a new constitution in 2008 under president Rafael Correa, Ecuador became the first country in the world to enshrine a set of codified Rights of Nature and to inform a more clarified content to those rights. Articles 10 and Chapter 7, Articles 71–74 of the Ecuadorian Constitution recognize the inalienable rights of ecosystems to exist and flourish, give people the authority to petition on the behalf of nature, and requires the government to remedy violations of these rights. Sumac kawsay, in Quechua, meaning "good living", rooted in the cosmovisión (or worldview) of the Quechua peoples of the Andes, describes a way of life that is community-centric, ecologically-balanced and culturally-sensitive. The concept is related to tradition of legal and political scholarship advocating legal standing for the natural environment. The rights approach is a break away from traditional environmental regulatory systems, which regard nature as property. Ecuador's Rights of Nature embodies the indigenous sumak kawsay principles, giving Pachamama constitutional rights to protect and restore its environment.
History and context
President Rafael Correa entered into office in January 2007 with the help of La Revolución Ciudadana (The Citizens' Revolution) promising a new anti-neoliberalist Ecuador. A country that would unify and harmonize the broken relationships between the state, the economy, society, and its vital resources. Being the eighth president in 10 years, Correa called for a Constitutional Assembly to create a new constitution for Ecuador. Ecuador relies heavily on the income gained from exploiting its natural resources. The country's largest export, crude petroleum, represents 29% of Ecuador's GDP, coming in with a total value of $5.63 billion. This has caused the country to suffer from vast deforestation in the Amazon, contaminated water and widespread illness. Ecuador is also home to at least eight tribes of indigenous peoples, most of which reside in the Amazon, that have suffered from the negative environmental consequences of the extraction of oil. After several years of worsening economic and environmental conditions, uprisings from various indigenous communities, who found themselves receiving less support from the state, while simultaneously their land was being increasingly encroached upon by oil companies, brought attention to their concerns. After historically being excluded from the political process, indigenous groups, especially concerned about the worsening environmental devastation of the extraction business and global climate change, started social movements aimed at creating a new approach to development that would protect the environment and harmonize its relationship with people. CONAIE (National Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador), the largest federation of indigenous movements focused on social justice began lobbying for a new constitution that incorporated recognition of the nation's indigenous groups, their language, culture, history, and land rights, and inherently their concepts of sumak kawsay and Pachamama (English: "Mother Nature"). The economy, based on the exportation of the country's raw materials, mainly oil, was also wreaking havoc on the nation's environment, an area with valuable biological and cultural diversity. The global economic crisis of 2008 revealed the vulnerabilities of an extractive economy, and led to a period of political turmoil in the country that made obvious the need for a new more inclusive government that embodied a post-oil, post-neoliberal development paradigm. In late 2006, the election of leftist Rafael Correa, who ran on an anti-neoliberal platform, showed the emergence of a new political era for Ecuador.
Development
Sumak kawsay / Buen vivir
Buen vivir ("good living") emerged as a response to the traditional strategies for development and their negative environmental, social, or economic effects. Sumak kawsay, meaning a full life and signifies living in harmony with other people and nature. Buen Vivir has gained new popularity, spreading throughout parts of South America and evolving as a multicultural concept. The constitution outlines Buen Vivir as a set of rights, one of which is the rights of nature. In line with the assertion of these rights, Buen Vivir changes the relationship between nature and humans to a more bio-pluralistic view, eliminating the separation between nature and society. In Andean communities in Latin America development is expressed through the notion of sumak kawsay, the Quechua word for "buen vivir", has been proposed as an alternative conception of development and has been incorporated into the constitutions of Ecuador. It connotes a harmonious collective development that conceives of the individual within the context of the social and cultural communities and his or her natural environment. Rooted in the indigenous belief system of the Quechua, the concept incorporates western critiques of dominant development models to offer an alternative paradigm based on harmony between human beings including the natural environment.
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