In 2008 Ecuador became the first country in history to grant constitutional rights to nature. Rivers, forests, and ecosystems were no longer treated solely as resources to be managed, but as living entities with rights of their own.
For some it was a legal innovation. For others it was the return of a worldview that had survived for centuries outside the institutions of the modern state.
The question is how an Indigenous understanding of the world was translated into the language of courts, laws, and public policy — and what that experiment might teach policy makers and lawyers?
To explore these questions, I spoke with Julio Prieto, an Ecuadorian environmental lawyer who helped shape some of the country’s most influential debates on the Rights of Nature. Our conversation ranged from Indigenous cosmologies and constitutional law to climate governance, development, and the limits of universal solutions in a world of radically different ways of seeing nature.
This interview was conducted during a research visit in Ecuador in November 2025, carried out as part of the research field work for a Ph.D. dissertation in philosophy and social communication.
Ecuador became the first country in the world to grant constitutional rights to nature. But before that could happen, very different ideas about nature had to find a common language. Who were the main voices in that conversation?
The debate over the Rights of Nature in Ecuador brought together three very different ways of understanding the world.
First, there are Indigenous peoples, who see themselves not as owners of nature but as part of it. Nature is not separate from society; it is the larger living system to which humans belong. Caring for nature, in this view, means caring for the community itself.
Second, there are environmentalists, many of them based in Ecuador’s cities. Their perspective is shaped by climate change and modern ecological science. They see the environment as something that must be protected through conservation, regulation, and public policy.
And finally, there is the dominant Western worldview, which tends to see nature primarily as a resource. Nature can be used, managed, and even protected — but ultimately for human purposes.
When Ecuador drafted its Constitution in 2008, these different perspectives collided in a rare national conversation. Indigenous organizations played a decisive role, but what ultimately made the Rights of Nature possible was an alliance between Indigenous movements and environmentalists.
I see the constitutional recognition of the Rights of Nature as an act of translation.
These rights already existed in practice within Indigenous communities, even if they were never expressed in legal language. The legal system itself is a Western invention, built on written norms, categories, and definitions. Indigenous peoples do not experience nature as a legal object that needs to be named or administered — it is simply the way life is lived.
What Ecuador achieved was not the translation of a word, but the translation of a worldview.
The Constitution transformed a lived relationship with nature into a language that courts, governments, and legal institutions could understand. In doing so, it recognized something revolutionary: that humans are part of nature, and that nature itself possesses the right to exist, regenerate, and maintain its vital cycles.
How can one worldview be translated into another? How can deeply Amazonian abstract concepts be articulated into the literal language of law?
This process is known in legal studies as vernacularization. But in Ecuador, it happened in reverse. Traditionally, universal human rights are formulated in global, Western contexts and then imposed on countries through a top-down process, forcing each society to adapt them locally. In Ecuador, the knowledge moved in the opposite direction. It came from below — from the Global South, from ancestral practices, from diverse worldviews rooted in the past. We can call this process criollización.
It may sound highly theoretical, but it helps explain how ancient knowledge was transformed into constitutional law. Ecuador did not invent the rights of nature. It translated a lived reality into a language that the Western legal world could understand.
Do you see the Ecuadorian case as an example of setting a new agenda of introducing local perspectives into global debates?
There is an ancient Amazonian prophecy known as the story of the Eagle and the Condor, shared in different versions across Indigenous cultures of the Americas.
Long ago the eagle and the condor were friends. They flew together in the same sky. Over time, however, their paths diverged. The eagle came to symbolize the industrial world: masculine, dominant, rational, and driven by control. The condor, by contrast, represents nature: feminine, intuitive, relational, and deeply connected to life itself. Eventually, the eagle broke away from the condor. They fought, and they separated.
According to the prophecy, this split coincided with the arrival of Europeans in the Americas in the late 15th century. For the next 500 years, the path of the eagle dominated the world, nearly pushing the condor — and the worldview it represents — into extinction. But the prophecy does not end there. It says that after those 500 years, beginning around 1990, the eagle and the condor would have the chance to meet again, to fly together once more. If they were able to reconcile, to recognize each other, humanity could enter a new era of consciousness. The prophecy speaks only of potential; it is up to people to make that reconciliation possible.
I believe the Rights of Nature represent that meeting point. Rights of Nature are the common ground where the Occidental, anthropocentric worldview of the eagle could encounter the biocentric (or even ecocentric) Indigenous worldview of the condor. In that sense, Ecuador’s constitution is not just a legal innovation but a prophecy manifestation: an opportunity to allow both birds to share the same sky again.
What makes it possible to translate Indigenous worldviews into the modern legal language of the constitution? Is it possible to translate concepts that are not present in another language?
Western legal systems, universities, and international institutions are accustomed to translating other societies into their own language. Human rights, for example, emerged in a particular historical and cultural context, yet they have been adapted and interpreted across the world. What happened in Ecuador was the reverse.
For centuries, we learned to think about nature through Western concepts and translated those ideas into environmental law. But environmental law and the Rights of Nature are not the same thing. Environmental law is ultimately anthropocentric. It protects air, water, and ecosystems because they are necessary for human well-being. Air quality, water quality, land use — all these standards are designed primarily around human needs.
The Rights of Nature begin from a different premise. Nature is not simply something that serves humanity; it possesses value and rights of its own.
Translating that worldview into constitutional law required building bridges between Indigenous knowledge, environmental law, ecology, and biology. We needed a language that courts and policymakers could understand. That is why the Constitution speaks of vital cycles, regeneration, and ecological processes. Much of that language comes from biology and ecology.
In a sense, the Rights of Nature are an exercise in translation. They express an Indigenous understanding of the world through concepts that can operate within a modern legal system.
I believe this helps explain why humanity has struggled to respond effectively to climate change. We continue trying to solve a planetary crisis using legal and political tools designed for a very different relationship with nature.
Imagine a mining company wants to destroy a hill. No one lives nearby. There are no rivers, no immediate impacts on human health. Under conventional environmental law, there may be no violation. But what if that hill is the only habitat of a species found nowhere else on Earth?
Under the Rights of Nature, that species — and the ecosystem that sustains it — has a right to exist. The question is no longer whether nature is useful to humans. The question is whether it has a right to continue being itself.
In the Ecuadorian constitution, there is a procedure for public debate and consultation with Indigenous peoples before land is used for mining.
Yes, that procedure is called consulta previa, libre e informada — free, prior, and informed consultation. And that is not an invention of Ecuador. It comes from ILO [International Labour Organisation] Convention 169. This is a legal obligation for all countries: They must consult Indigenous peoples.
Consultation is supposed to be free and informed. That means you have to explain to people what the project is, what it will do, and what its impacts will be, in a way they can understand.
But the process is often abused. Authorities create the appearance that consultation has taken place, but if you go back to the communities afterward and ask them, they say they did not understand anything. There is a lack of translation from scientific, western perspective into local realities.
Sometimes Indigenous people do not even speak Spanish, they ask them to alone understand maps, numbers, chemical data, or technical language.
What’s the role of international organizations when it comes to translating these concepts and worldviews? How do you assess efficiency of United Nations agencies in this matter? Are external facilitators really needed in this debate?
I don’t think the main challenge is a lack of goodwill. The challenge is translation.
Many international organizations, including United Nations agencies, still approach environmental issues through concepts that remain fundamentally anthropocentric. They speak about natural resources, sustainable management, and development. Indigenous communities often begin from a different premise altogether: that humans are part of nature rather than its managers.
As a result, both sides may use similar words while meaning very different things.
This is why I often say that cooperation itself needs to be decolonized. Too often, international institutions arrive with predefined priorities, predefined solutions, and predefined indicators of success. The conversation begins with the assumption that expertise already exists elsewhere and simply needs to be transferred.
But meaningful cooperation should work in the opposite direction. It should begin with local realities, local knowledge, and local priorities. The role of international organizations should not be to prescribe solutions, but to create the conditions for genuine dialogue.
When that happens, cooperation can be extremely valuable. When it does not, consultation risks becoming a formality rather than a conversation.
Some European cooperation agencies have become more sensitive to this challenge. The most productive partnerships are usually those that allow communities to define their own objectives and then provide support for achieving them, rather than imposing external models of development.
Ultimately, the question is not whether international organizations are needed. The question is whether they are willing to listen before they speak.
We’ve discussed translation, competing worldviews, and the power of narratives. How are mining companies trying to shape that conversation today?
They are trying to convince people that mining is progress — and that progress is impossible without mining.
We have heard this story before. Decades ago, the same promises were made about oil. Today, mining has become the new development narrative. For the past several years, companies have invested heavily in campaigns designed to persuade Ecuadorians that mining is the country’s only path out of poverty.
One of their most effective arguments concerns illegal mining. Illegal mining is a serious problem in Ecuador. It is linked to criminal organizations, violence, labor exploitation, and environmental destruction. Mining companies present themselves as the solution, arguing that large-scale industrial mining can replace illegal operations with something safer, more transparent, and more regulated.
But this is also a narrative strategy. They use the fear generated by illegal mining to legitimize a broader expansion of extractive industries.
Ultimately, the debate is not only about mining. It is about the meaning of development itself.
Every day, people are told that prosperity, modernization, and economic progress depend on extracting more resources. Those messages dominate television, advertising, and political discourse because they are backed by enormous financial power.
The challenge for environmental movements is not simply to oppose mining projects. It is to offer a different story about what development means and what kind of future we want to build.
That, in the end, is the real struggle.