Climate protection is perhaps the greatest challenge of our time. In addition to individual rethinking, it requires global and progressive, but at the same time balanced, solutions. In a series of sensational rulings, Colombia's High Courts have granted natural features such as the Atrato River and the Colombian Amazon legal personality.
The German legal tradition is no stranger to the recognition of rights in favour of entities other than natural persons, for example legal persons. However, whether jurisprudence recognizing subjective rights to nature would mean added value for environmental and climate protection in Germany appears to be questionable. Colombia's High Courts responded to specific challenges in the region: to protect the environment and climate, and to safeguard indigenous and Afro-Colombian minorities whose traditional lifestyle is closely connected to nature, and who want to defend their natural resources. The arguments of the Jurisprudence cannot easily be transferred to other cases, regions or cultures.
Read the article on natural rights for nature here as a PDF.
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About this series
The series informs in a concentrated form about important positions of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung on current topics. The individual issues present key findings and recommendations, offer brief analyses, explain the Foundation's further plans and name KAS contact persons.
