Indigenous water ontologies, hydro-development and the human/more-than-human right to water: A call for critical engagement with plurilegal water realities

Viaene, Lieselotte

Publication:
Indigenous water ontologies, hydro-development and the human/more-than-human right to water: A call for critical engagement with plurilegal water realities

dc.affiliation.dpto	UC3M. Departamento de Ciencias Sociales	es
dc.contributor.author	Viaene, Lieselotte
dc.contributor.funder	European Commission	en
dc.date.accessioned	2021-11-11T10:10:43Z
dc.date.available	2021-11-11T10:10:43Z
dc.date.issued	2021-06-02
dc.description	This article belongs to the Special Issue The Politics of the Human Right to Water.	en
dc.description.abstract	Water conflicts across the world are bringing to the fore fundamental challenges to the anthropocentric boundaries of the human rights paradigm. Engaging with the multi-layered legal ethnographic setting of the Xalalá dam project in Maya Q’eqchi’ territory in Guatemala, I will critically and empirically unpack not only the anthropocentric boundaries of the hegemonic human rights paradigm, but also the ontological differences between indigenous and Euro-Western legal conceptualizations of human-water-life. I argue that it is necessary to pave the way for urgent rethinking of the human right to water and, more broadly, human rights beyond the modern divide of nature-culture. International law and human rights scholars should therefore not be afraid of plurilegal water realities and should start engaging with these ontologically different concepts and practices. Embarking on a bottom-up co-theorizing about human and beyond-the-human water rights will be imperative to avoid recolonization of indigenous knowledges-ontologies by non-indigenous scholarships and public policy.	en
dc.description.sponsorship	The writing of this article was possible thanks to the following funding (chronological order): PhD research project (2006-2010) "Cultural context and transitional justice: the role of non-western legal traditions in dealing with gross human rights violations in post-conflict countries" - Research Fund Flanders (FWO)-Belgium; Municipality Herent, Belgium (2014,2015); Marie Curie Individual Fellowship (2016-2018) GROUNDHR-Challenges of Grounding Universal Human Rights. Indigenous epistemologies of human rights and intercultural dialogue in consultation processes on natural resource exploitation (Grant Agreement 708096) and ERC Starting Grant (2019-2024) RIVERS-Water/human rights beyond the human? Indigenous water ontologies, plurilegal encounters and interlegal translation, (Grant Agreement 804003), under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program.	en
dc.format.extent	22
dc.identifier.bibliographicCitation	Viaene, L. (2021). Indigenous Water Ontologies, Hydro-Development and the Human/More-Than-Human Right to Water: A Call for Critical Engagement with Plurilegal Water Realities. Water, 13(12), 1660.	en
dc.identifier.doi	https://doi.org/10.3390/w13121660
dc.identifier.issn	2073-4441
dc.identifier.publicationfirstpage	1660
dc.identifier.publicationissue	12
dc.identifier.publicationtitle	Water	en
dc.identifier.publicationvolume	13
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/10016/33574
dc.identifier.uxxi	AR/0000028590
dc.language.iso	eng
dc.publisher	MDPI
dc.relation.projectID	info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/GA-804003
dc.rights	© 2021 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license.	en
dc.rights	Atribución 3.0 España	*
dc.rights.accessRights	open access	en
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/	*
dc.subject.eciencia	Antropología	es
dc.subject.eciencia	Sociología	es
dc.subject.other	Legal ethnography	en
dc.subject.other	More-than-human	en
dc.subject.other	Rivers	en
dc.subject.other	Guatemala	en
dc.subject.other	Indigenous Maya Q'eqchi'	en
dc.title	Indigenous water ontologies, hydro-development and the human/more-than-human right to water: A call for critical engagement with plurilegal water realities	en
dc.type	research article	*
dc.type.hasVersion	VoR	*
dspace.entity.type	Publication