Reversing gender degradation by protecting the environment: A critical appraisal of environmental constitutionalism in Latin America

The aim of this paper is to highlight the interdependence of constitutional, gender and environmental degradation. It argues that gender and environmental degradation are based on a similar exploitative framework which takes advantage of vulnerable categories in our societies, namely natural resources and women. The Latin American context provides a unique experience in terms of combining the ecological fight against extractivism and the one against gender discrimination. At the constitutional level, the need for profound cultural renovation finds a possible answer in environmentally-conscious constitutions. Moving from the premise that environmental degradation and gender degradation are consequences of the same faulty system, the paper proposes to examine environmental constitutionalism as a possible way to combine women’s fights, indigenous peoples’ cosmovision and ecocentric environmentalism. Through the idea of “belonging to” and “caring for”, indigenous peoples’ cosmovision provides an alternative to the capitalistic, exploitative system. Their fight for the recognition of rights to nature, collective rights over land, to self-government and previous consent is especially close to feminist battles for equality. The need for a constitutional transformation provides a fertile ground to explore these new paradigms and their efficacy in reversing the pattern of subordination and discrimination.