Rights of Nature vs. Rights of Roads: Legal Strategies and Challenges to Stopping Expanding Road Networks in the Amazon Borderlands

Keywords: Deforestation, Environmental Justice, Indigenous Rights, Amicus Curiae, Roads
Abstract Type: Poster Abstract

Abstract

Indigenous environmental defenders in the remote borderlands shared by Brazil and Peru
have been forced to resort to legal action to try to prevent road expansion into their lands, rivers, and forests. In an effort to comprehensively document the pace, impact, and lack of environmental or social planning regarding road expansion, these defenders have asked their non-governmental, governmental, and other allies for legal analysis of the Trocha UC-105 road. This research analyzes the legal process of Ucayali’s Superior Justice Court to receive and respond to the legal demands against the Trocha UC-105 road. One of the challenges faced by the Peruvian legal system is understanding the socio-environmental impacts of the proposed Nueva Italia – Breu (Trocha UC-105) road project in the Amazon borderlands shared by Ucayali, Peru and Acre, Brazil. The road would penetrate areas of high biodiversity and indigenous territories, including regions inhabited by Indigenous peoples in initial contact and/or voluntary isolation, posing a threat to ecosystem services and the collective rights supporting these communities. ABSAT’s research demonstrates that highway construction would increase access for illegal activities, such as logging, land trafficking, and illicit agriculture, thus accelerating deforestation and compromising the ecological and social integrity of the region. ABSAT and other allies lean on the principles of environmental justice and the rights of nature drawing on international legal precedents that recognize ecosystems as rights-bearing entities.Can the legal system of Ucayali, Peru provide rights and protections to the Indigenous peoples and places in the remote borderlands of Amazonia.