Frogs, coalitions, and mining: Transformative insights for planetary health and earth system law from Ecuador's struggle to enforce Nature's rights

Pachamama, Mother Earth, faces a mass extinction threat. A radical transformation in human systems is essential, guided by equity and justice at local and global scales. This transformation must reconfigure the World-System's power structures, impacting the ecosphere (ecological functions, biodiversity, and resource regimes) and the ethnosphere (ontological, epistemological, and legal pluralism). Together, these shape the Pluriverse—a planet of many worlds. The status quo is unsustainable. Effective solutions must prioritize a just transition that integrates the pluriverse. Alternatives from the so-called Global South offer valuable tools for this shift, such as the Rights of Nature, which views nature as a rights-bearing entity, not merely an object of regulation. The Llurimagua case—a dispute over a mining concession in Ecuador's cloud forest—illustrates this approach, providing a unique opportunity to rethink Earth System Governance and address the Anthropocene Gap (i.e., disconnect with Earth System Law), crucial for tackling planetary health challenges. • The World System drives global structural imbalance, favoring Core nations while extractive burdens fall on the Periphery. • Ecuador’s Rights of Nature embeds humans in ecosystems, opening pluriversal pathways for Earth System Law. • Pluriversality counters the Core’s knowledge hegemony, centering care and coexistence with all life over exploitation. • Mining resistance in Intag Valley, a biodiversity hotspot, shows how local action and global solidarity advance planetary health justice. • In biodiverse Intag Valley, community-led resistance and global solidarity advance justice in alignment with planetary health. • These efforts forge legal paths, harmonizing ecosphere and ethnosphere for just transitions ensuring people and planet thrive.