If it was only a question of faith. A critique of the sense and usefulness of the recognition of rights to nature in the Constitution of Ecuador

Abstract

Ecuadorian Constitution of 2008 recognizes rights to nature, for the first time in the constitutional tradition. That is made within a Consti-tution which is intended to overcome possessive individualism, extractivist economy, aggressive capitalism and a socially irresponsible liberalism. Pres-ent paper aims to relativize this pretension, starting from the assumption that the culture of rights belongs to a constitutional pattern which put us back in the hegemonic western social model. Furthermore, I try to show that the recognition of rights to nature do not offer responses particularly useful or innovative. Finally, I try to go back on the way covered by the authors of the Ecuadorian Constitution to offer an alternative to constitutionalism of rights —constitutionalism of responsibilities— as a foundation to actu-ally overcome self-gratification, consumerism and predation on resources, fundamental causes of environmental degradation. These problems and at-titudes are deeply embedded in our hegemonic constitutional culture, based in possessive individualism, which is the basis of liberal contractualism, the culture of rights and the process of capitalist accumulation. For this reason a rights-centered approach does not seem appropriate.