RIVERS: Water/human rights beyond the human?. Indigenous water ontologies, plurilegal encounters and interlegal translation Projects uri icon

researchers

  • VIAENE, LIESELOTTE   Principal Researcher  
  • MONTALVAN ZAMBRANO, DIGNO JOSE   Researcher  
  • RICA IZQUIERDO, MARTA   Researcher  
  • BACCA BENAVIDES, PAULO ILICH   Researcher  
  • QUILCUE VIVAS, KELLY JHOANA   Researcher  
  • KUCUKUSTEL BANK, SELCEN   Researcher  
  • ALBUQUERQUE REGINA DE MATTOS VIEIRA, MARINA   Researcher  
  • PARGUEL, CAMILLE   Researcher  
  • GARCIA NIETO, ANA PAULA   Researcher  
  • MAY CASTILLO, MANUEL   Researcher  

type

  • European Research Project

reference

  • GA-804003

date/time interval

  • May 1, 2019 - April 30, 2025

abstract

  • RIVERS’s main challenge is to produce ground-breaking knowledge, from an empirical, interdisciplinary and dialoguing perspective, about the contentions and challenges intrinsic to reconceptualising human rights with different ways of understanding and relating to water. Worldwide, indigenous peoples are mobilising against the neoliberalisation of nature, demonstrating radically different ways of knowing, being and living. At the same time, in 2010 the UN acknowledged water as a human right, while in 2017 New Zealand, India and Colombia established ground-breaking legal precedents by granting rivers human rights. RIVERS’s overarching research question is: To what extent can international human rights law come to grips with plurilegal water realities? This project engages with one of the most pressing questions of this century: the relationship between humans and nature. RIVERS tackles two intertwined core objectives: 1) analysing different ways of knowing and relating to water and life among indigenous peoples and their understanding of its (potential) violation by extractive projects; 2) discussing the contributions, challenges and pitfalls of interlegal translation of differing water natures in plurilegal encounters at domestic and international levels. RIVERS will develop a multi-sited analysis and empirical case-studies in three contexts: Colombia, Nepal and the UN human rights protection system. Through the lens of legal pluralism, this will foreground competing political and legal water realities that interrogate dominant understandings of the modern world. RIVERS will address two interrelated research challenges: 1) indigenous visions/practices: beyond water as a natural resource and human right; 2) the UN human rights system: towards counter-hegemonic water knowledge production. This project will pioneer new ways of thinking about water beyond the modern divides of nature/culture, providing clues about future paths towards reconceptualising human

keywords

  • human rights; legal anthropology; human right to water; indigenous peoples; legal pluralism; extractivism; natural resources; ontological turn; decolonial theories