SUBJECTS OF RIGHTS IN COLOMBIA BASED ON JUDICIAL PRONUNCIATIONS. AMAZONAS AND ATRATO RIVER CASE: A LOOK FROM THE NECESSITY OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL Vindication of NATURE

Abstract

This article reviews the scope of recent judicial pronouncements granting rights to strategic ecosystems in Colombia, particularly the well-known cases of Río Atrato (2016) and Amazonas (2018), in light of the Political Constitution of Colombia, whose doctrinal conception is based on international developments such as the Stockholm Declaration, which subsequently gives rise to the ecological constitution and emerges with the human right to a healthy environment, not to the rights of nature or other rights instituted independently of human beings. For this reason, the judicial path to granting rights to nature becomes problematic for several reasons that will be addressed in this project, including: the highlighting of an ingrained juridical tradition that is predominantly anthropocentric, the lack of a formal constitutional foundation to support emerging rights-holders, the ineffectiveness of environmental law, among others, in protecting both strategic and non-strategic ecosystems in Colombia. This scenario presents us with the legal need to reconsider a constitutional doctrine capable of deconstructing the discourse of human rights, in order to give way to new juridical forms that are consistent with the intrinsic value of entities external to human beings (rights of nature), which would survive beyond humanity, or at least equalize their protection to the level of human rights.