Abstract

OLAYA LOPEZ, Diego Felipe. The Colombian Amazon as a Subject of Rights. An Environmental Justice Case. Rev. IUS [online]. 2022, vol.16, n.49, pp.223-251.  Epub June 06, 2022. ISSN 1870-2147.  https://doi.org/10.35487/rius.v16i49.2022.719.

This paper exposes the arguments developed within the ruling issued by the Civil Cassation Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice of Colombia, in which the Colombian Amazon is recognized as a subject of rights based on the principles of precaution, intergenerational equity and solidarity. Despite the multiple commitments made by the Colombian State in the protection of the Amazon (such as reducing deforestation in the area to zero by 2020), reality shows, according to various reports provided in the course of the process, a worrying scenario that questions the effectiveness of the measures deployed by the authorities to protect the Amazon from the depredation of multiple anthropic factors. The Court decides that the protection/ defense / guardianship actions, equivalent to the Mexican Amparo trial, is appropriate in the specific case and, under a progressive vision of the applicable Law, recognizes the rights that the Amazon has per se for constituting itself as a living and complex entity. Consequently, a new paradigm of environmental justice is inaugurated that presents various challenges, such as overcoming the anthropocentric focus of rights and the acceptance of non-human persons as subjects of rights.

Keywords : Amazon; subject of rights; protection action; biocentrism; deforestation; supreme court of justice; Colombia.

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