Episode 12 - Doctor Makere Stewart Harawira speaks on Environmental Personhood
What - The "environmental personhood", or legal personhood, movement is a result of successive governments around the world failing to adequately protect the environment, as well as to the growing recognition of Indigenous Peoples' rights and Indigenous legal concepts (Lowrie, 2021; Westerman, 2019).
The movement acknowledges that environmental personhood exceeds the value to humanity. It is not that the people have a right to clean air, but that the air has a right to be clean (Parish, 2021). Rivers have become a central focus in the Rights of Nature movement.
Who - In episode 12 we hear from Makere Stewart-Harawira, a Professor in Indigenous, Environmental, and Global Studies in the College of Social Sciences and Humanities, Faculty of Education, University of Alberta.
Her research focus: is climate change, freshwater governance, Indigenous knowledge systems, ethics and values in relation to integrative approaches to ecosystem and human-more-than- human wellbeing, multi species justice and planetary stewardship.
Dr. Stewart-Harawira is an Expert Member on a number of Commissions for the International Union for the Conservation including the Commission on Ecosystem Management, joint Specialist Group on Indigenous Peoples, Customary & Environmental Laws and Human Rights and is a National Board Member for Keepers of the Water, Canada.
Music -
by Scott Buckley – released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au