Estrellita and the possibility of nature-based animal rights

In its judgement of 23 January 2022, the Constitutional Court of Ecuador concluded that individual animals are subjects of rights under the constitutional provision that recognises the rights of nature. Building upon a number of earlier cases in which rivers and mangroves had been recognised as rights-holders, it set out a framework for how animal rights should be understood in the Ecuadorian context. Through its conceptualization of the rights of animals as a dimension of nature’s rights, it bridged the tensions between the more systemic approach to environmental protection on the one hand, and the more individualist approach of animal law on the other hand. This article will discuss the Estrellita judgement, taking it as a starting point to investigate the possibility of ‘nature-based animal rights’ as an alternative to the common understanding of animal rights as being grounded in the properties of individual beings. This investigation will then lead to a proposal for systemically integrating animal rights within the broader normative framework of rights of nature, reconciling the tensions between the ecosystem and the individual.