In recent years, rights have become a prominent focus of environmental governance. From human rights-based approaches to conservation aiming to redress power relations between duty bearers and rights-holders, to the Rights of Nature invoked by local governments, international organizations and some Indigenous representatives, rights are gaining popularity as an avenue through which environmental governance is conceived and enacted. Part of the appeal of incorporating rights into environmental governance is their embeddedness in discourses, legal structures and normative frameworks centered around an individualistic concept of legal personhood, the protective role of the state, and a formalistic perspective that often obscures underlying power asymmetries. Rights are borne out of specific legal, epistemic and governance traditions and thus are not neutral ground on which to reshape environmental governance. Therein lies a tension which brings into question their transformative potential. This panel presents a cross-disciplinary dialogue on rights and their interactions with the environment in an attempt to unpack this tension. Political ecology provides tools to investigate these dynamics, which can be complemented by insights from other disciplines. We aim to bring political ecology and environmental justice into dialogue with law, policy and practice, to highlight the ways in which different perspectives on rights and justice have implications for environmental governance. We invite presentations from researchers, practitioners and activists that address the following: ● What, and whose, perspectives on rights are recognised in environmental discourses? ● How are rights invoked, by whom, and to what ends? ● How are rights conceived in different fields and by different “rights-holders”? ● How can alternative perspectives on justice and rights inform rights-based practice? ● What lessons can we learn from different disciplinary perspectives?
Myself, @mpetel.bsky.social and Allison Bishop are seeking presentations for our panel on rights in environmental governance at #POLLEN2026 in Barcelona, June 29th - July 3rd 2026. Fancy joining us? Submit your abstract here by 5th December: nomadit.co.uk/conference/p... @pollenetwork.bsky.social
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