Amazon Rainforest – Rights for ecosystem

The Amazon is the largest forest in the world extending into Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana. This rainforest is seen as the lungs of the world; home to some of its greatest terrestrial biodiversity and equivalent in range to the biodiversity that inhabits the Great Barrier Reef.

The Amazon is home to 427 species of mammals, 1,300 species of birds, 378 species of reptiles and more than 400 species of amphibians. Despite its biocultural diversity, it is also one of the regions with the greatest ecological risk in the world according to IEP’s Ecological Threat Report.

According to the Changing Perceptions in a Changing Climate 2021 report, South America is the region with the highest concern about climate change, with more than 63% of its population seeing climate change as a serious threat. Despite its biodiversity, this territory faces the risk of becoming a desert due to increasing deforestation and global climate change. The most recent Ecological Threat Report warns about the imminent risk of water scarcity in the Amazon. 

According to the Ideas for Peace Foundation, the Colombian Amazon faces an environmental crisis as well as a security crisis, as in Colombia environmental defenders face unprecedented risks. Similarly, according to Greenpeace, 33 environmental activists were murdered in 2019 in Brazil.

Positive Peace and acceptance of the rights of the Amazon

Recognition, as a subject of rights, has traditionally been used to refer to the human whose subjective rights are recognized and guaranteed under the scope of a social state of rights. However, the increased negative outcomes brought about by climate change, excessive exploitation of natural resources and wars have made it necessary to broaden this recognition to include ecosystems as the subjects of rights.

IEP’s Positive Peace pillar of the Acceptance of the Rights of Others is not limited to humans, and is fundamental to the Amazon’s conservation. Globally, there have been significant reflections recently on the recognition of ecosystems as subjects of rights.

Two cases of recognition of the Amazon as a subject of rights