RT Journal Article
T1 Indigenous water ontologies, hydro-development and the human/more-than-human right to water: A call for critical engagement with plurilegal water realities
A1 Viaene, Lieselotte
AB 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.
PB MDPI
SN 2073-4441
YR 2021
FD 2021-06-02
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10016/33574
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10016/33574
LA eng
NO This article belongs to the Special Issue The Politics of the Human Right to Water.
NO 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.
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RD 1 sept. 2024