Jose Martín Ovando, a guide at Los Cedros , a 4,800-hectare cloud forest reserve in the northwest Ecuadorian Andes, one of the world's most biodiverse areas, suddenly halts in his tracks and crouches down along the steep forest path shrouded in mist. He pulls out a magnifying glass from his small backpack to inspect a clump of deep green moss. Blotted in black with a flash of white at the center, it’s barely bigger than a fingernail. “This place is full of so much biodiversity,” he grins.
“Scientists don’t even know about most of it.” Los Cedros, which includes the critically endangered black-and-chestnut eagle and brown-headed spider monkey, jaguars, endemic frogs, more than 300 species of birds, 600 kinds of moths, and 200 varieties of orchids — is at the forefront of a global movement to recognize the legal rights of the natural world. The movement is rooted in the common Indigenous belief that nature — from the Andean mountains to Amazonian rivers to a single soldier ant—is a system to which human beings belong and with which they must harmoniously coexist. The legal theory argues that these ecosystems and species have intrinsic rights that should be protected like those of humans. LOS CEDROS contains more than 200 identified orchid species, including several endemic varieties still little known to science. “The idea that rocks, rivers, and animals are alive and so should be granted a legal status is a core aspect of Indigenous worldviews,” says César Rodríguez-Garavito, professor of clinical law and director of NYU School of Law’s, an initiative attempting to further nonhuman rights and the larger web of life
NATURE RIGHTS ECODIVERSITY INDIGENOUS BELIEFS LEGAL THEORY LOS CEDROS
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