{"id":6889,"date":"2026-09-17T10:05:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T08:05:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iccal.lat\/?p=6889"},"modified":"2026-09-17T10:31:53","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T08:31:53","slug":"vice-president-of-ecuadors-constitutional-court-presents-on-the-rights-of-nature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iccal.lat\/en\/vice-president-of-ecuadors-constitutional-court-presents-on-the-rights-of-nature\/","title":{"rendered":"Vice President of Ecuador\u2019s Constitutional Court Presents on the Rights of Nature"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On Monday, September 14, 2026, at the traditional <em>Montagsrunde<\/em> hosted by the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (MPIL) in Heidelberg, Justice Karla Andrade Quevedo, Vice President of Ecuador\u2019s Constitutional Court, presented Ecuadorian case law on the rights of nature\u2014a field in which the country has been a pioneer since its 2008 Constitution. Today, its case law is cited worldwide and serves as an important foundation for the development of the environmental <em>ius commune<\/em> in Latin America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Case Law developed on a Case-by-Case Basis<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The 2008 Ecuadorian Constitution was the first in the world to recognize nature as a subject of rights. Building on this framework, the Constitutional Court has developed, on a case-by-case basis, a body of case law covering forests, mangroves, rivers, the sea, and wildlife. Drawing on international law, it has established the principles of prevention and precaution in response to activities that pose potential risks to the balance of ecosystems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The first cases protected defined areas, such as mangroves or forests, as in the famous case of the Los Cedros forest. The turning point came with rivers: upon learning of changes to the flow of the Aquepi River, the Ecuadorian Court shifted legal protection to the river\u2019s life cycle, which, in its view, is violated when the river\u2019s natural structure is impeded, its functions are hindered, and its evolutionary process is disregarded. The object of protection ceased to be a space and became a process. This led to an understanding of nature as a complex entity\u2014an interrelated and indivisible whole in which the impact on one element alters the functioning of the entire system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Another milestone in case law was the protection of animal rights within the framework of the rights of nature, which began with the case of Estrellita, the chorongo monkey who lived for eighteen years in a home and died after being transferred to a zoo. In that case, the Court recognized the rights of wild animals as sentient beings, while cautioning that they should not be equated with humans and establishing specific limits and rules\u2014such as the right to life and physical integrity of wild animals, the right to the free expression of their animal behavior, that is, their instincts and biological processes, and the prohibition against hunting, fishing, capturing, extracting, detaining, trafficking, or trading them, against transferring them to human environments and forcing them to adapt, and against turning them into pets through domestication processes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Between Nature&#8217;s and Human Rights: Inverse Proportionality<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The most challenging aspect of the jurisprudence on the Rights of Nature is its relationship to human rights. The Court has been explicit in stating that the rights of nature are not absolute and that their protection cannot be achieved at the expense of denying human rights and the specific rights of indigenous peoples, which are also protected by the Constitution and the Inter-American Human Rights System. Certain economic activities are permissible if they do not impede the regeneration of the ecosystem, under a criterion of inverse proportionality: the greater the degree to which the rights of nature are not satisfied, the greater the importance of fulfilling the framework of \u201c<em>buen vivir<\/em>.\u201d Water embodies this dual nature, as it is both an element of nature and a fundamental right, which led the Court to prohibit the total and indefinite suspension of service without guaranteeing the minimum vital amount.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The justice concluded by noting that redress and implementation remain a challenge. Restoration must be directed toward nature and not toward people, but making it effective requires the involvement of judges, lawyers, and civil society and necessitates aligning these decisions with economic development needs and a human rights-based approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Monday, September 14, 2026, at the traditional Montagsrunde hosted by the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (MPIL) in Heidelberg, Justice Karla Andrade Quevedo, Vice President of Ecuador\u2019s Constitutional Court, presented Ecuadorian case law on the rights of nature\u2014a field in which the country has been a pioneer since its [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6884,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[563,567],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-external-events","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<title>Vice President of Ecuador\u2019s Constitutional Court Presents on the Rights of Nature | ICCAL<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Vice President of Ecuador&#039;s Constitutional Court presented the country&#039;s groundbreaking case law on the Rights of Nature at the MPIL.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/iccal.lat\/en\/vice-president-of-ecuadors-constitutional-court-presents-on-the-rights-of-nature\/\" 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