A Sociological Approach to the Rights and Dignity of Nature: Towards a Shared Rights Framework

Abstract

This article offers a sociological analysis of the global Rights of Nature movement, positioning dignity, repair, and socio-ecological justice at its heart. While Rights of Nature has gained traction across environmental law, Indigenous politics, and ecological science, Sociology has largely overlooked its implications, despite the deeply social origins and unequal consequences of ecological harm. To address this, the article integrates Cultural Sociology with decolonial scholarship and Indigenous relational philosophies, situating Lauren Berlant’s concepts of slow death and cruel optimism alongside the Andean philosophy of Buen Vivir . It reframes ecological degradation as an ongoing violation of dignity affecting both human communities and ecosystems. Recognising nature as a rights-bearing subject challenges foundational assumptions about the human-nature binary in rights discourse, presenting an opportunity to broaden sociological research, society–environment knowledge, and socio-political activism. The article makes three core contributions: first, it establishes the Rights of Nature as a necessary object of sociological analysis, showing that existing anthropocentric frameworks are insufficient for understanding contemporary ecological crisis; second, it demonstrates that sociological concepts, particularly those concerning representation, inequality, coloniality, and governance, provide essential tools for analysing and strengthening Rights of Nature frameworks; and third, it develops an original socio-(eco)logical rights framework grounded in dignity and reparations, including a socio-ecological forensics toolkit that enables the diagnosis of harm and the articulation of reparative pathways across human and more-than-human worlds. Together, these contributions reposition Sociology as central to understanding and advancing socio-ecological justice in the context of the global ecological crisis.