The Ecuadorian constitution approved in 2008 was the first in the world to give nature enforceable rights of its own, and it did so using a religious name. The relevant chapter opens by stating that nature, or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and realised, has the right to integral respect for its existence and for the maintenance and regeneration of its life cycles, and it provides that any person or community may bring an action to enforce those rights.
The legal move is that nature becomes a subject rather than an object. In ordinary environmental law a person harmed by pollution sues for their own damage; here the river itself has standing, and the claimant need show no personal injury.
The religious move is the naming. Pachamama is not a metaphor in Andean practice. She is addressed, fed and apologised to, and importing that name into a constitution places an indigenous religious category inside a legal instrument enforceable in ordinary courts. Supporters treat that as decolonisation of the law. Critics, including some indigenous commentators, argue the reverse: that a state which quotes Pachamama in its constitution while licensing oil and mining on indigenous territory has taken the vocabulary and left the obligation.
The provisions have been used. Ecuador's Constitutional Court has decided cases on their basis, including a 2021 ruling halting mining concessions in the Los Cedros cloud forest, which is the most cited application anywhere of rights of nature. Other jurisdictions have since adopted comparable provisions, and the Ecuadorian text is the reference point for all of them.
The tension between the constitutional language and extractive policy remains the central argument in Ecuadorian public life.