Extractivism and the Rights of Nature

Join Nicholas Carby Denning, Assistant Professor in International Studies on the Isabel Hamilton Benham Professorship in International Affairs, for an endowed lecture. This talk analyzes the implications of recent “Rights of Nature” rulings by Ecuador’s Constitutional Court on large-scale mining, indigenous sovereignty, environmentalism, biodiversity conservation, and international jurisprudence. Carby Denning situates the “Rights of Nature” in relation to recent Latin American critiques of “Extractivism,” the theory that contemporary modes of resource extraction are rooted in the 500-year history of colonialism. Drawing upon ethnographic research from his forthcoming book, Ecuadorian Visions of Post-Oil Futurity, Carby Denning argues that while the story of a small petro-state in the Global South becoming the first nation in the world to enshrine the Rights of Nature in its 2008 constitution might initially seem paradoxical, this radical proposal to address climate change and biodiversity loss was informed by the struggles of people defending the livability of their territory and ecosystems from extractive industries. Contending that the Rights of Nature has the potential to undermine what Carby Denning terms the “resource logic” of extractivism, he concludes that Rights of Nature practitioners and jurists must attend to historical legacies of colonial injustice to ensure that the application of Rights of Nature law not replicate historical modes of racialized and gendered oppression.