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Live to tell: Rights of Nature in the forthcoming Chilean Constitution

14 March 2022, 3:00 pm–4:00 pm

decolonising law

Professor Amaya Alvez Marín, Universidad de Concepción

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UCL Laws Events

Professor Amaya Alvez Marín, Universidad de Concepción

Convenor: Alonso Gurmendi Dunkelberg

About this talk

Diverse existing legal paradigms have dealt with the interaction of humans and Nature in different ways. We identify three main lenses through which current constitutional systems in Latin America have operated to resolve conflicts. We focus on rivers as emblematic elements of Nature that offer concrete possibilities to operationalize an emerging paradigm that recognizes legal personhood for Nature. The objective is to examine, from a critical interdisciplinary perspective, the existing paradigms, describe their limits and open the debate to alternative jurisdictional venues in favoring the coexistence of humans and natural systems. Through the comparative analysis of three case studies in Chile, Colombia and Ecuador, we outline the challenges and opportunities offered by an emerging legal tradition, ‘The New Latin American Constitutionalism’, and question what would effectively be different with a change of paradigm towards the recognition of Nature’s rights.

About the speaker

Amaya Alvez Marín is a lawyer, academic, human rights activist and defender and current representative of the Region del Biobio in the Chilean Constitutional Convention. She coordinated the Convention’s Regulations Commission that drafted the current Convention Regulation. Amaya was elected through the electoral alliance “Apruebo Dignidad”, integrated by the Frente Amplio parties and independents, in her case, the party “Revolucion Democrática”. She holds a Ph.D. in Law from the York University of Toronto, Ontario, Canadá, and is a full professor at the University of Concepcion, Chile.

She is a researcher at the Center for Water Resources for Agriculture and Mining (CHRIAM; in Spanish), part of an interdisciplinary research group in human rights and democracy of the University of Concepcion. Through her academic and scientific research work she has written a number of papers on Constitutional Law, Human Rights, Water Regulations, Indigenous People's Rights, on both, national and international academic publications.

She also works alongsie with other colleagues in a legal advocacy and human rights promotion organization called “Colectiva – Justicia en Derechos Humanos”, mainly in issues related to environmental and indigenous law.

Her work in promoting Chile’s constitutional change is more than a decade long. She has participated in different civil society initiatives in this regard: “Nueva Constitución para Chile (2013), “Puentes para una nueva constitución” (2016), “Red de Constitucionalistas” (ingoing since 2019), and the electoral campaign to initiate the current constitutional process “Que Chile decida”. (Let Chile Decide).

Read more about Amaya can be consulted in www.amayaalvez.cl

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