The Elemental Convenats. Cosmovision and the Material Foundation of International Human Rights Law
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This chapter argues that human rights can, and must, be reconceived along ecosystemic lines. It proposes an unexpected instrument: the theory of the four elements, read alongside the cosmovisions of indigenous peoples. Without collapsing their differences, these traditions offer what international human rights law still lacks: a grammar of interdependence that expresses in legal terms how life depends on relations among water, air, earth and fire that no one owns. The question is timely on the sixtieth anniversary of the adoption of the 1966 Covenants and the fiftieth anniversary of their entry into force. The Covenants universalized the individual and recognized peoples’ control over natural resources, but largely cast the non-human world as a resource or background. The chapter reads recent legal developments within a common frame while keeping positive law, doctrinal systematization and lex ferenda distinct. It clarifies the different meanings of the ‘rights of nature’ and proposes five modules for reviewing measures that relieve one ecological burden by shifting another onto a different milieu or community. The elements create no new right. They require public power to identify, justify and answer for the burdens its decisions displace.
Author: Ludovic Hennebel
Institution: Aix-Marseille Université
Language: English
Topic: Environmental law and policy
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7225415635