Rights of Nature: A Vehicle for State Authority in the Anthropocene?

'Rights of Nature' emerged as a counter movement to the commodification of nature in the Anthropocene. The conversion of nature into a tradeable commodity through the imposition of a monetary value on it divorces it from the subjective use-values historically attached to it (Gallagher & DiNovelli-Lang, 2014).

The Rights of Nature provide an alternative framework to this commodification that recognises the entanglement of human society with the environment (Aisher & Damodaran, 2016).It is a legal philosophy that extends legal rights to ecosystems and their elements just as humans have rights. While the Rights of Nature is a rubric with the capacity to recognise a multiplicity of knowledge and value systems, as the promulgator and enforcer of law, the state and its prevailing ideology emerge as the final arbiters of these rights.

This article investigates the paradigm of Rights of Nature as a vehicle of state authority through the specific example of the designation of the Rivers Ganga and Yamuna as 'juristic persons' or legal entities in their own right in a verdict by the Uttarakhand High Court in India, particularly the recognition of chairpersons of the Namami Gange project (a flagship project launched by the Government of India in 2014 to clean the River Ganga) as ‘guardians’ of the rivers.

Increasing state authority will be analysed through 1) the confrontation between indigenous rights and state developmental projects like Namami Gange and 2) the intensification of state control through the purported protection of the dominant Hindu ideology that considers the River Ganga holy.

By investing the power to take action against those encroaching on or polluting the rivers in a state-run entity like Namami Gange, the court has made the Rights of Nature a pathway for the state to monopolise the management of natural resources as it sees fit.