Using Biocultural Rights to Rethink Environmental Law Through Human Rights

This chapter looks at the contribution that the framework of biocultural rights can make to re-envisioning human rights and their relationship with nature within the framework of environmental law. Human rights and the rights of nature appear to walk two separate paths. Biocultural rights imagine the possibility of accommodating both nature and Indigenous Peoples and local communities as rights holders within the same legal instrument. Such accommodation allows for the envisioning of non-ecologically blind human rights that may lose their original anthropocentrism and better fit the environmental law realm. However, biocultural rights may be at risk of shifting the burden of nature protection onto Indigenous Peoples and local communities, requiring their holders to be and remain sustainable. This Chapter looks at the challenges that arise from a biocultural rights framework and proposes strategic and theoretical considerations to re-imagine human rights and international environmental law.