scholarly journals Personifying Indigenous Rights in Nature? Treaty Settlement and Co-Management in Te Urewera

2021 ◽  
pp. 29-60
Author(s):  
Brad Coombes
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Rights

Partnerships Generate Co-Benefits in Agricultural Stream Restoration (Canterbury, New Zealand)

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine M. Febria ◽  
Maggie Bayfield ◽  
Kathryn E. Collins ◽  
Hayley S. Devlin ◽  
Brandon C. Goeller ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Indigenous Rights ◽  
Freshwater Ecosystem ◽  
Reduced Pressure ◽  
Ecosystem Integrity ◽  
Riparian Management ◽  
Scale Change ◽  
Large Scale Change

In Aotearoa New Zealand, agricultural land-use intensification and decline in freshwater ecosystem integrity pose complex challenges for science and society. Despite riparian management programmes across the country, there is frustration over a lack in widespread uptake, upfront financial costs, possible loss in income, obstructive legislation and delays in ecological recovery. Thus, social, economic and institutional barriers exist when implementing and assessing agricultural freshwater restoration. Partnerships are essential to overcome such barriers by identifying and promoting co-benefits that result in amplifying individual efforts among stakeholder groups into coordinated, large-scale change. Here, we describe how initial progress by a sole farming family at the Silverstream in the Canterbury region, South Island, New Zealand, was used as a catalyst for change by the Canterbury Waterway Rehabilitation Experiment, a university-led restoration research project. Partners included farmers, researchers, government, industry, treaty partners (Indigenous rights-holders) and practitioners. Local capacity and capability was strengthened with practitioner groups, schools and the wider community. With partnerships in place, co-benefits included lowered costs involved with large-scale actions (e.g., earth moving), reduced pressure on individual farmers to undertake large-scale change (e.g., increased participation and engagement), while also legitimising the social contracts for farmers, scientists, government and industry to engage in farming and freshwater management. We describe contributions and benefits generated from the project and describe iterative actions that together built trust, leveraged and aligned opportunities. These actions were scaled from a single farm to multiple catchments nationally.

Indigenous Rights of Standing Rock: Federal Courts and Beyond

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla Fredericks ◽  
Rebecca Adamson ◽  
Nick Pelosi ◽  
Jesse Heibel
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Rights ◽  
Federal Courts

Contributory Fault under International Law: A Gateway for Human Rights in ISDS?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farouk El-Hosseny ◽  
Patrick Devine
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Multinational Enterprises ◽  
Indigenous Rights ◽  
Business And Human Rights ◽  
Investment Treaty ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
The Government ◽  
Bear Creek ◽  
Shed Light

Abstract The intersection between foreign investment and human rights is gaining attention, as is evident from an increasing number of investment treaty awards analysing legal issues relating to human rights. In the recent International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) arbitration of Bear Creek v Peru, Philippe Sands QC posited, in a dissenting opinion, that the investor’s contribution to events—ie protests against its allegedly adverse environmental impact and disregard of indigenous rights, namely resulting from its ‘inability to obtain a “social licence”’—which led to the unlawful expropriation of its investment, was ‘significant and material’. He further noted that the investor’s ‘responsibilities are no less than those of the government’ and found that damages should thus be reduced. Last year, the Netherlands adopted a new model bilateral investment treaty (BIT), which allows tribunals to ‘take into account non-compliance by the investor with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises’ when assessing damages. These recent developments shed light on how states and tribunals, as part of their decision-making process, can take into account human rights in practice, and crucially in respect of damages analyses. By first dissecting the concept of contributory fault, then shedding light on the intersection of investment treaty law and human rights, as elucidated in recent jurisprudence, this article questions whether there now exists a gateway for human rights obligations (soft or hard) in the investment treaty arbitration realm through the concept of contributory fault.

scholarly journals The Potential Impact of Indigenous Rights on the International Law of Nationality

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 115 ◽  
pp. 135-139
Author(s):  
Kirsty Gover
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Indigenous Rights ◽  
Supreme Court Of Canada ◽  
Constitutional Rights ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Potential Impact ◽  
Human Rights Norms ◽  
Domestic Law ◽  
Court Of Appeal

International law has long recognized that the power of a state to identify its nationals is a central attribute of sovereignty and firmly within the purview of domestic law. Yet these boundaries may be shifting, in part due to the effect of international human rights norms. In 2011, citizenship scholar Peter Spiro asked, “[w]ill international law colonize th[is] last bastion of sovereign discretion?” Ten years later, this essay reframes the question, asking whether the international law of Indigenous Peoples’ rights will “decolonize” the discretion, by encouraging its exercise in ways that respect and enable Indigenous connections to their traditional land. It considers this possibility in light of two recent cases decided by courts in Australia and Canada, both of which ascribe a distinctive legal status to non-citizen Indigenous persons: Love v. Commonwealth, Thoms v Commonwealth (“Love-Thoms,” Australian High Court) and R. v. Desautel (“Desautel,” British Columbia Court of Appeal, currently on appeal before the Supreme Court of Canada). In each case, the court in question recognized that some Indigenous non-citizens have constitutional rights to remain within the state's territory (and perhaps also a correlative right to enter it), by virtue of their pre-contact ancestral ties to land within the state's borders.

scholarly journals Indigenous Rights Amidst Global Turmoil

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 385-391
Author(s):  
Thijs Etty ◽  
Veerle Heyvaert ◽  
Cinnamon Carlarne ◽  
Bruce Huber ◽  
Jacqueline Peel ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Rights

scholarly journals Indigenous Rights and Trade Obligations: How Does CUSMA’s Indigenous General Exception Apply to Canada?

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-47
Author(s):  
J. ANTHONY VANDUZER ◽  
MELANIE MALLET
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Free Trade Agreement ◽  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
Indigenous Rights ◽  
Trade Agreement ◽  
Legal Obligations ◽  
United States Mexico ◽  
Trade And Investment ◽  
Ongoing Concern ◽  
Party State

Abstract Canadian commitments under trade and investment treaties have been an ongoing concern for Indigenous peoples. The Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) is the first Canadian treaty to include a general exception for measures that a party state “deems necessary to fulfill its legal obligations to [I]ndigenous peoples.” This exception is likely to afford Canada broad, but not unlimited, discretion to determine what its legal obligations to Indigenous peoples require. There is a residual risk that Canada’s reliance on the exception could be challenged through the CUSMA dispute settlement process. A CUSMA panel would not have the expertise necessary to decide inevitably complex questions related to what Canada’s legal obligations to Indigenous peoples require. While state-to-state cases under the North American Free Trade Agreement have been rare, a CUSMA panel adjudication regarding the Indigenous general exception risks damaging consequences for Canada’s relationship with Indigenous peoples.

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