Dear all,
We cordially invite you to the May lecture of the RIFS focal topic year 2023 “Justice in Sustainability” with Riccarda Flemmer: “Rights of Nature and their Transformative Potential for more Sustainable Futures? Struggling for Alternatives to Destructive Anthropocentric Development”
The event will be held online on 22.05.2023 at 15:00-16:30 (CEST).
You will receive the zoom-link to join the event online with the confirmation e-mail after registration.
Abstract: Rights of Nature (RoN) denotes nature’s inherent right to exist and flourish. Inspired by indigenous ontologies, RoN have seen the recognition of rivers, mountains and forests as living beings in Latin America, former British colonies and inspired a fast-growing political movement worldwide. RoN’s transformative promise is a new mind set respecting human as well as non-human living beings as agents and to tackle one of the most pressing issues we are facing today: the emancipatory transformation of destructive and deeply unjust anthropocentric development models. This talk gives an innovative perspective on socio-environmental conflicts by (re)conceptualising them within the framework of ‘ontological politics’. Scaling-up insights on indigenous peoples’ understandings of nature and how these are mobilised in resistance to projects of resource extraction, development or conservation imposed on their territories, the lecture concludes with a research agenda to explore the potential of RoN in Latin America, Europe as well as in global climate activism to yield legal and institutional models for more sustainable and just human–nature relations.
Riccarda Flemmer is Junior-Professor for Political Struggles in the Global South of at the Institute of Political Science, University of Tübingen. She holds a PhD from the University of Hamburg and has worked in several projects on indigenous peoples and consultation rights, e.g. at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) and the trAndeS program of the Freie Univerisität Berlin and Ponitfícia Universidad Católica del Peru. As an academic co-presenter and translator, she accompanies the events of the Kulturbüro Grupo Sal with Kichwa activist Patricia Gualinga from the indigenous Amazonian community of Sarayaku in Ecuador. Her research interests include Indigenous peoples’ rights, environmental justice, and interpretive methodology. She currently works on indigenous ontologies and Rights of Nature (RoN) in Latin America.
Thank you, and with kind regards,
The RIFS Focal Topic Coordination team
