Naturens Rättigheter : Och hur de kan motiveras utifrån ett minoritetsperspektiv

In March of 2017, New Zealand passed the Te Awa Tupua Act, a law that established the river Whanganui as a legal entity, with the same rights and obligations as a person. This commitment from the New Zealand government gave rise to the possibilities of protecting the ecosystem surrounding the river, but also strengthen the rights of the indigenous people, the Māori's, which consider Whanganui a part of their ancestry and heritage. The aim of this research is to study the ethical argumentation that motivates the recognition of the Whanganui River as a legal entity and connect that with the theoretical approach presented by Mikael Stenmark in Miljöetik och Miljövård: Miljöfrågornas Värderingsmässiga Dimension. The study will also seek to observe how the argumentation is influenced by a minority perspective, more specifically the Māori, and the oppression of their people since the colonization of New Zealand. The theoretical foundations for this study is the environmental ethics framework presented by Stenmark, which can be summed up in three main approaches: anthropocentrism, ecocentrism and biocentrism. A content-oriented ideational analysis lays the groundwork for mapping what moral positions and perceptions that motivates the recognition of the Whanganui River as a legal entity. In addititon, the study has transcribed videos with indigenous people which has been categorized and structured according to the theoretical framework. The analysis concludes that the colonial intergenerational oppression on the Māori's and the observed negative impact on the river corresponds with the well-being of the Māori people. This observed correlation, combined with a modified holistic ecocentrism, is the foundation to which a selected group of Māori's justify and motivate the Te Awa Tupua Act. This essay also problematize that environmental ethics is characterized by a context that need to be supplemented with an updated and multifaceted view of our nature and indigenous people, which draws attention to more positions that in history have not been given enough space in academic context.