The legal and jurisprudential protection of the rights of nature

Abstract

The research addresses the legal advances at the provincial and district level in southern Peru, Department of Puno, that recognize the rights of the Yaku Unu Mama, Mother Water manifested through rivers and their water tributaries. As well as the attribution of legal status to the Marañón River by the Court of Nature I, Loreto Department, and the implications of the precautionary principle in the care and prevention of the second largest River in Peru.

From the Western view, the environment is considered a source of consumption to which we must grant legal protection to continue with the subsistence of society, rewarding to the best extent possible the care necessary to achieve sustainable development.

However, there is a marked tendency at the level of the Region to recognize rights to nature with the purpose of incorporating them in the constitutional text. Nature as a subject of rights obeys a paradigm that assumes as a fundamental principle respect for nature as a living entity, independent and indispensable for life. This vision is characterized by the relevance that the spiritual dimension acquires, inherent to cultures. Ancestral respects to nature, which translates into the sumak kawsay principle, assimilated as the “good life”, this implies considering the human being as an additional living being on the planet (not as its center) and therefore, the coexistence, it must be guaranteed that its coexistence with other natural elements is harmonious and respectful.