Los derechos constitucionales de la Naturaleza en Ecuador: casos pendientes de decisión en la Corte Constitucional

Thursday, November 17th, 2022

4 PM Quito/EST, 1 PM PST

Event is free, and registration is not required. In Espanol.

Presented by the Instituto de Altos Estudios Nacionales of Ecuador (IAEN) and the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights.

This event is focused on the pending cases at the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court on the rights of nature. particularly of important focus is the River Dulcepamba (and the deviation of natural riverbed), the River Piatúa (reduction of ecological water flow), and the Forest of Alto Nangaritza (mining in fragile ecosystems). Each is a vital component in the sum of how ecosystems affect creatures, wildlife, and humanity.

Professor Andreas Gutmann, of the University of Bremen, will be moderating from Germany.

Panelists include:

Hugo Echeverria, Ecuador, external attorney for the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights

Viviana Morales, Constitutional Law instructor for IAEN

Agustin Grijalva, a former Judge of the Constitutional Court

This webinar is free and open for everyone. Registration is not required. The link to access the webinar may be found here.

Democratic and Environmental Rights-Including the Soil

with Senior Legal Counsel, Thomas Linzey

Presented by the Soil Not Oil Coalition.

This event is Saturday, September 17th, 2022, at 5:00 PM PST/8:00 PM EST.

CDER’s Thomas Linzey will present a keynote presentation at the Soil Not Oil Coalition Gathering.

This conference is focused on practical solutions to climate change, at which attendees will learn about the root causes and effects of climate instability, as well as solutions that can lead us towards climate stability. The conference is open to all, including students, educators, activists, farmers, scientists, investors, policymakers, health providers, families, urban planners, and everyone else concerned about life on earth.

Thomas Linzey serves as Senior Legal Counsel for the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights.

To register for the conference, including Thomas’s keynote, please click here.

Ticket pricing ranges from $100-$300.

Reflecting on the Rights of Nature

with CDER’s Thomas Linzey and Mari Margil

Presented by the Australian Earth Laws Alliance in partnership with the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights

This event is Thursday, September 8th, 2022 at 10:00 AM AEST (Australian Eastern Standard Time) - which is Wednesday, September 7th at 8:00 PM Eastern/5:00 PM Pacific.

CDER’s Thomas Linzey and Mari Margil are pioneers in the field of environmental law, and in the field of developing laws to protect the Rights of Nature and community rights. They are joining the Australian Earth Laws Alliance as they celebrate Earth Laws Month 2022 to engage in a discussion reflecting on more than 15 years of Rights of Nature activism and legal developments. This webinar is part of a month-long series of webinars, public lectures, workshops, virtual art exhibitions, and more - to explore and celebrate our relationship with the living world.

All are welcome. This virtual event is free. Register for the event here.

Speakers

Thomas Linzey-He serves as Senior Legal Counsel for the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights. He is the co-founder of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, and is widely recognized as the founder of the contemporary “community rights” movement which has resulted in the adoption of hundreds of municipal laws across the United States. He also sits on the Board of Advisors of the New Earth Foundation. Linzey is a graduate of Widener Law School and a three-time recipient of the law school’s public interest law award. He has been a finalist for the Ford Foundation’s Leadership for a Changing World Award, and is a recipient of the Pennsylvania Farmers Union’s Golden Triangle Legislative Award. He is licensed to practice law in Pennsylvania, and is admitted to practice in the U.S. Supreme Court, the Third, Fourth, Eighth, and Tenth Circuit Courts of Appeals, and the U.S. District Court for the Western and Middle Districts of Pennsylvania.

Mari Margil-She serves as the Executive Director of the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights and program manager for CDER’s International Center for the Rights of Nature. Margil previously served as the Associate Director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF). In 2008, she served as a consultant to Ecuador’s national Constituent Assembly, helping to draft the world’s first Rights of Nature constitutional provisions. Margil is widely viewed as one of the leading global voices for the recognition of legally enforceable rights of ecosystems and nature. In her role with CDER, Margil works with national, state, and local governments, tribal nations, and indigenous communities in Australia, Sweden, the Philippines, Nepal, and elsewhere, to advance legal and policy frameworks regarding Rights of Nature. She has served as the primary drafter of a “Himalayas Bill of Rights” (Nepal) and other groundbreaking legislation.

Peat-Fest 2022

Rights of Peatlands

Presentation Airing August 30th at 9 AM Pacific, 12 PM Eastern, and 6 PM Central European Standard Time (CEST).

Global, Virtual Event - Registration Open!

Peat-Fest 2022 is presented by RE-PEAT.

RE-PEAT is a youth-led collective on a mission to change people’s perceptions of peatlands. They work in a collaborative, creative, and holistic fashion, depicting peatlands themselves in novel ways as well as placing a large focus on the broader context of peatlands.

Peatlands, found around the globe, are wetland ecosystems containing rich, organic matter. Under threat from human development, peatlands are major carbon sinks and critically important for curbing climate changes, and provide habitat for a wide range of species and thus critically important for protecting biodiversity.

The Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights (CDER) is thrilled to joined RE-PEAT for Peat-Fest.

This year’s conference theme is the Rights of Peatlands. CDER’s Mari Margil will help open the conference, presenting a session on the growing Rights of Nature movement and strategies for how we can protect the rights of peatlands.

Peatlands are truly ecosystems for our times - requiring impactful tools for ensuring viable ecosystems in the short term, and potentially contributing to transforming our relationship with our natural surroundings going forward. Rights of Nature has the potential to transform our relationship with the natural world by expanding legal systems for the non-human world to provide us with the opportunity to hold corporations and governments accountable.

Peat-Fest 2022 Speakers:

The full lineup of speakers will be available soon and includes:

Mari Margil, Center for Democratic and Environmental and Rights

Radha D’Souza, Professor at University of Westminister Law School

Alistair McIntosh, Scottish writer and environmental activist

Khairani Barokka, writer, poet and artist

Register for the event here.

A New Ecological Constitution for Chile

Conversation on the constitutional process and its effect on international environmental constitutionalism

Wednesday, June 29, 2022 **This event will be in Spanish.

10:00-11:30 AM CDMX, Quito and Bogotá

11:00-12:20 AM Santiago

Moderated by Cristina Lux, lawyer for Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense (AIDA).

Chile is on the verge of voting on a new Constitution. In environmental terms, the text proposes to change the way we relate to our environment and nature. This new Constitution could be the first Ecological Constitution of the country. On July 5, the Constitutional Convention must propose the text of the new Constitution to the country, which must be voted on September 4 in a national plebiscite.

In this virtual seminar, we will talk with experts who have been involved in the process since its inception. We will also analyze this process from a comparative perspective, and based on the contemporary guidelines of international environmental law. CDER will participate in panel 2, along with FIMA and a representative of the Chilean Constitutional Convention. CDER will share the Ecuadorian experience in recognizing and implementing the rights of nature in its national constitution.

First Panel

New Constitution in Chile: A democratic process in complex times

Claudia Heiss, Political Scientist, Head of the Political Science Program at the Institute of Public Affairs of the University of Chile

Martin Corvera, Director of Projects and Innovation of the Smart Citizenship Foundation

Josefina Correa, Lawyer and political communicator

Second Panel

An Ecological Constitution for Chile

Carolina Palma, Political Scientist, Advocacy Coordinator of the NGO FIMA

Luis Jimenez Caceres, Lawyer, Constituent representative of the Aymara people

Hugo Echeverria, External Attorney, Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights

Please register for this event HERE.

Workshop: Practical Grassroots Campaign Strategy for the Rights of Nature

CDER Executive Director Mari Margil to lead a workshop at Univ. of British Columbia, Allard School of Law

On Friday, May 6, 2022, Mari Margil will be in Vancouver, Canada, to lead an in-person rights of nature training workshop in partnership with the Centre for Law and the Environment (CLE) and the Sustainability Hub at the University of British Columbia, on the traditional ancestral and unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nation.

The workshop is the capstone of a series of webinars on legal recognition for non-human relatives hosted by the CLE, featuring a mix of Indigenous and non-Indigenous speakers. The workshop will provide a full day of hands-on training in grassroots campaign strategy for participants who want to take action to advance legal recognition for non-human relations in their own communities.

Participants will receive training materials they can take home. They will explore past successes and failures, campaign goals and tactics, legal options for recognizing non-human relations, interactions between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, and other issues. They will also have the opportunity to brainstorm and receive feedback on their own efforts to enact or strengthen laws to respect and protect non-human relations.

Registration is open to anyone with an interest in the subject. Spaces are limited. Cost is CAD$100 for private sector participants, PWYC for everyone else. A small number of travel subsidies are available for Indigenous and civil society participants.

The workshop will be preceded the day before (May 5) with some special, optional, outdoor activities organized by the UBC Sustainability Hub to explore Indigenous ways of knowing and relating to nature. This side event is free of charge and will require separate registration.