Join us for an evening of exciting impulses from Prof. Teresa Vicente, who is largely responsible for the recognition of the first Rights of Nature case in Europe: Since 2022, the Mar Menor saltwater lagoon has had its own rights and is recognised as a legal entity.  In 2020, Teresa launched the campaign that led to this and was able to collect 500,000 handwritten signatures for a bill that was then passed by the Spanish Senate. Teresa is a professor of philosophy of law in Murcia and received the ‘Green Nobel Prize’, Goldmann Prize for her commitment in 2024 (https://www.goldmanprize.org/recipient/teresa-vicente/). Teresa Vicente's campaign represents a revolutionary European precedent for the paradigm shift in political practice - the understanding of recognising nature as a subject.

The two hosts Alberto Acosta, former president of the Ecuadorian Constituent Assembly, and ex-diplomat Sandra Weiß will lead through the evening, Grupo Sal will accompany the programme with music and Johannes Keitel with his video art.

The multimedia event will be held in German and Spanish.

Admission is free and everyone is warmly invited!

We would like to thank the Global Encounters platform, the Chair of ‘Political Struggles in the Global South’ of JP Dr Riccarda Flemmer and the Chair of Ethics, Theory, and History of the Life Sciences (MNF) of Prof Dr Thomas Potthast as well as the German Postcode Lottery, the Weltethos Institute, FAIRStrickt, Terre des Femme, Club Voltaire, xäls and the ESG Tübingen for their kind support.

Funded as part of the Excellence Strategy of the federal and state governments.

1:00 p.m. READING: NATURE HAS RIGHTS (with the author Elisabeth Weydt)

When animals, forests and rivers go to court - for a radical rethink in the coexistence of humans and nature. We are on the brink of ecological collapse and time to change direction is running out. Paradoxically, a helpful remedy here could be a very protracted one: Changing our legal systems and worldviews: declaring nature a legal subject. Ecuador is the first and so far only country to have enshrined this idea in its constitution. Accordingly, nature is not only worth protecting here because it serves mankind, but simply because it exists. Taken to its logical conclusion, this idea can turn everything around: Our economy, our transport, our lives. Many initiatives around the world are working on its realisation, including in Germany. Journalist Elisabeth Weydt has been researching raw material extraction and land rights in Ecuador and other countries. In impressive stories, analyses, and portraits, she reports on the people who are translating this idea into reality and on the web of economic entanglements that make this difficult. 

5:30 p.m. PANEL DISCUSSION: PEOPLE AND MOUNTAINS IN HARMONY? - CHANGE IN THE ANDEAN ALTIPLANO 

Panel discussion on the thematic focus with Leonardo Barbuy La Torre (director), Rodrigo Otero Heraud (director), Alberto Acosta (Ecuadorian economist, politician), Fernando Dias Costa (musician) and Elisabeth Weydt (journalist, freelance reporter and author). Moderated by Riccarda Flemmer (Junior Professor of Political Science).

Find the full Cine Latino program here.

Lawyers of nature 
Theater performance in cooperation with the University of Tübingen at LTT

Do trees have rights? - When Christopher D. Stone posed this question 50 years ago, it sounded almost naive, or at least innocent. But in view of the current ecological threats, the rights of nature could prove to be a decisive lever for putting a stop to disastrous developments such as the climate crisis and the extinction of species. For this reason, more and more states are declaring individual actors of nature to be legal subjects. In 2022, for example, the Rivière Magpie in Canada and the Mar Menor saltwater lagoon in Spain were granted the status of legal entities. Are we at the beginning of a huge cultural transformation movement?

In Lawyers of Nature, conférencieuse Carrie Getman de Agudo, accompanied by music legend Kevin Mooney, embarks on a tour d'horizon to examine the changing relationship between nature and law. The planned visit soon develops into a wild journey that leads not only into the past and present but also into the future. With the traditional concept of an object-like nature, the historical continuum that leads from the dark zones of the mythical ages into the light-flooded world of omniscient rationality also collapses.

Frank Raddatz: writer, director and artistic director of the Theatre of the Anthropocene, which is based on Humboldt's idea that only an intact bond between man and nature, woven from knowledge and experience, empathy and emotion, can form the basis of a sustainable civilization.
In cooperation with the University of Tübingen, Riccarda Flemmer Professorship "Political Struggles in the Global South" and funded as part of the Excellence Strategy of the German federal and state governments.

Get your tickets here! Admission price: 12 euros, reduced 7 euros

May lecture of the RIFS focal topic year 2023 “Justice in Sustainability” with Riccarda Flemmer: “Rights of Nature and their Transformative Potential for more Sustainable Futures? Struggling for Alternatives to Destructive Anthropocentric Development”

Join us online on 22.05.2023 at 15:00-16:30 (CEST).

please register here: https://eveeno.com/riccardaflemmer

Abstract: Rights of Nature (RoN) denotes nature’s inherent right to exist and flourish. Inspired by indigenous ontologies, RoN have seen the recognition of rivers, mountains and forests as living beings in Latin America, former British colonies and inspired a fast-growing political movement worldwide. RoN’s transformative promise is a new mind set respecting human as well as non-human living beings as agents and to tackle one of the most pressing issues we are facing today: the emancipatory transformation of destructive and deeply unjust anthropocentric development models. This talk gives an innovative perspective on socio-environmental conflicts by (re)conceptualising them within the framework of ‘ontological politics’. Scaling-up insights on indigenous peoples’ understandings of nature and how these are mobilised in resistance to projects of resource extraction, development or conservation imposed on their territories, the lecture concludes with a research agenda to explore the potential of RoN in Latin America, Europe as well as in global climate activism to yield legal and institutional models for more sustainable and just human–nature relations.