Call for Papers - jelp on Rights of Nature

[Rosalind]

Please see the following Call for Papers - deadline June 15th.  Apologies for cross-posting.

Roz.

Call for Papers

Placing Rights of Nature: Interventions and Critical Perspectives

justice, ecology, law & place (JELP) 

Special Issue, 2026

 

Guest Editorial Team

• Rosalind Warner, College Professor Political Science, Okanagan College
• Darcy Lindberg, Assistant Professor, University of Victoria, Faculty of Law
• Wanekia (Kia) Dunn, SJD Candidate, University of Toronto Law School

With Deborah Curran & Dayna Nadine Scott (JELP co-editors)

About the JELP. We are a community of scholars, including students, professors, practitioners, and activists, writing on justice, law, ecology, and places that are in some way relevant to Canada. In particular, we encourage analysis, dialogue, and debate on issues at the interaction of these themes.s at the interaction of these themes. 

Call for Papers

Justice, Ecology, Law & Place (JELP) invites submissions for a forthcoming special issue on the Rights of Nature. This issue seeks to gather critical, creative, and place-rooted engagements with Rights of Nature discourse, policy, and practice, as they diffuse and unfold across diverse Indigenous and settler legal landscapes.

Rights of Nature frameworks are gaining visibility in law and advocacy across the globe. From declarations recognizing rivers as legal persons to grassroots movements for ecological governance, these initiatives raise profound questions about sovereignty, jurisdiction, cosmology, and legal innovation. At the same time, Rights of Nature models imported from international contexts risk reproducing colonial logics or obscuring Indigenous legal orders that have long recognized relational responsibilities to land, water, and more-than-human kin.

The editors invite contributions that critically examine the potentials, limits, politics, and tensions of Rights of Nature as they are enacted, resisted, or reimagined in specific places with connections to Canada/Turtle Island. We especially welcome scholarship and community-based work that foregrounds Indigenous legal traditions, land-based practices, and non-state interventions, as well as interdisciplinary approaches that bridge legal theory, ecology, political economy, and culture.

Suggested Topics

Submissions may address (but are not limited to):

• Case studies on Rights of Nature in practice (e.g. laws, declarations and resolutions in federal, provincial/territorial, municipal and/or Indigenous jurisdictions);
• Conflicts and convergences between Indigenous legal orders and Rights of Nature in settler colonial contexts;
• Indigenous-led Rights of Nature movements or projects;
• Reconciling relations and laws with ecological and planetary limits;
• Complex questions of representation;
• Implications of incorporating Rights of Nature into settler legal frameworks or constitutions;
• Compatibilities and tensions between Environmental Justice and the Rights of Nature;
• Litigating and negotiating for Rights of Nature;
• Trends in the uptake of Rights of Nature ideas and possible backsliding with rising authoritarianism, amongst others.

 

Who Should Submit

The editors welcome submissions from scholars, legal practitioners and activists, including those working outside traditional academic institutions. We encourage collaborative, co-authored, and intergenerational work, particularly that which centers Indigenous voices and local knowledges.

Submission Information

• Abstracts (250–300 words) due:  June 15, 2026
• Invitations to submit full manuscripts sent by: July 6, 2026
• Full papers (4,000–8,000 words) due: November 2, 2026
• Please include a brief bio (100 words max) with your abstract submission.

Submissions should be sent to <envlaw...@uvic.ca>] with the subject line: Rights of Nature CFP.

All submissions will undergo editorial and peer review. For more about the journal’s mission and guidelines, visit https://jelpjournal.ca/submissions/.