Thursday, 5 September 2024, 4:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. (MESZ)

Are Rights of Nature Coming to the Global North? New Developments

About the Topic and the Speakers

Originating in legal and epistemological systems in the Global South, rights of Nature are now increasingly being introduced into legal systems in the Global North. In 2021, the Magpie River in Canada was granted legal personality; in 2022, the same happened to the Mar Menor, a Spanish lagoon. And in August of this year, the Landgericht Erfurt became the first German court to recognize rights of Nature under the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. A hybrid conference at the Max Planck Institute will address and discuss these new developments. Speakers include María Mercedes Sanchez, former coordinator of the UN Harmony with Nature Program, Yenny Vega Cárdenas, President of the International Observatory on the Rights of Nature and lawyer involved in this subject in Canada, and Teresa Vicente Giménez, Professor of law at the University of Murcia, head of the popular initiative that brought legal personality to the Mar Menor. 
Ralf Michaels, director of the MPI Hamburg, will introduce and moderate the discussion . 

The conference will be held as a hybrid event.

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