Stewarding The Earth
Rethinking Property and the Emergence of Biocultural Rights

The book analyses the emergence of biocultural rights as a sub-set of third-generation group rights in environmental law. It argues that these rights, which advocate people's duty of stewardship over nature, have arisen as a response to the world's ecological crisis. The book uses a multipronged approach, relying upon economic, anthropological, political, and legal theories, to deconstruct the current concepts of private property from the perspective of indigenous peoples and traditional communities.

It further presents evidence that this discursive shift is gaining formal legal recognition by referring to negotiations of multilateral environmental agreements, judicial decisions of regional, and domestic courts, and community initiatives. The book also gives a description of the new biocultural jurisprudence including its application through innovative, community-developed instruments such as biocultural community protocols.

Preface
List of Abbreviations
Introduction

1. Self-Determination as Political Ecology: The Roots of Biocultural Rights
2. Homo Economicus on Trial: Towards an Ethic of Stewardship
3. Fighting Fetishism: Biocultural Readings of Social Hieroglyphs
4. Reification: The Law as a Collective Conspiracy
5. Fighting Reification: Towards a Peoples' History of the Law
6. Rethinking Property: A Biocultural Approach
7. A Jurisprudence of Stewardship: Creating Biocultural Precedents
8. Biocultural Rights in Anglo-American Jurisprudence
9. Biocultural Community Protocols: Towards a Pluralism of Property

Bibliography
Case Index
Index