ID: 1864
Presenting Author: Camila Ferri Luciano
Session: 590 - Territorial Security in Communities Impacted by Industrial Activities
Status: pending
Brazil recognized a Wave as a legal subject. How Rights of Nature, community governance, and narrative change advance territorial security and ocean-river stewardship after a mining disaster.
In 2024, Linhares (ES), Brazil, passed the world’s first law recognizing a wave—at the Doce River mouth (Watu, to the Krenak)—as a subject of rights. Building on community-led recovery after the 2015 Fundão dam disaster, the initiative was spearheaded by the surfing community, which spent years disconnected from the wave. By integrating biocultural values, traditional knowledge, and scientific approaches, the law is a new form of relational governance rooted in the rights of Nature. This presentation shares a practice-based case study that combines literature review and semi-structured interviews to analyze how Rights of Nature translates ancestral and local ontologies into enforceable norms; what institutional design features (e.g., a multi-stakeholder Guardians’ Committee) enable implementation; and how narrative choices, naming the Wave as kin rather than asset, counter misinformation and mobilize broader Ocean ethics. We discuss early outcomes: governance arrangements created, the preparation of a juridically oriented technical dossier (affective and scientific mapping), and challenges ahead (legal literacy, coordination across river basin and coastal regimes). By situating this case within impact assessment debates on territorial security, we argue that this approach strengthens legitimacy, bridges knowledge systems, and offers replicable pathways for marine-coastal stewardship. Ultimately, to keep the Wave breaking, the river must remain alive, reminding us of the interdependence of ecosystems and the need for relational responsibilities across land, river, and sea.
An International Relations undergraduate and MAPAS researcher, she has studied the Rights of Nature since college and has been a volunteer for the UN Harmony with Nature Programme.
Coauthor 1: Marina Leão