The Rights of Nature in South America. Legal Assemblages to Protect the Environment

The unsustainable level of environmental degradation has led academics and activists to look for different ways to protect the environment and to question whether the law provides more efficient ways to do so. The theory of the legal subjectivity of nature based on ecocentrism offers to solve the environmental problem by recognizing the inherent value of nature to endow it with rights. In this article, I analyze the latest legal decisions and rules in South American countries that recognize nature, particularly rivers and water sources, as legal subjects of rights to determine if and to what extent they represent an ecocentric turn and to identify the challenges of this legal trend in the region.