The Rights of Nature: Global Perspectives – Emily Jones and Majan Irannezhadparizi in Conversation
Monday 17th of June, 11 – 12.30, UTS Law Boardroom
Please join us for this event, hosted by the UTS International Law Research Cluster and the UTS Feminist Law Research Group. After the talk, we invite you to join the speakers for a (self-funded) lunch at a nearby venue. If you wish to come to lunch, please RSVP to jessie.hohmann@uts.edu.au by 1 June.
The rights of nature discourse has developed an evolving movement, with states globally, on all continents, recognising nature as a right holder in the aim of addressing climate change, environmental degradation and the anthropocentric underpinnings of environmental law. While more and more states are adopting rights of nature in their legal systems, their approaches vary, both in terms of the exact models adopted as well as in terms of enforceability and effectiveness.
In this event, Fatemeh Irannezhadparizi (UTS) and Emily Jones (Newcastle Law School, UK) will discuss the potentials and pitfalls of the rights of nature movement. Topics will include the various rights of nature models being adopted by different states, their effectiveness, and the potentials and limitations of bringing the rights of nature to international law, situating such rights within the context of the legacy of international human rights law and drawing on feminist, Marxist and postcolonial analyses accordingly.
Speaker Biographies
Dr Emily Jones is a NUAcT Fellow based in Newcastle Law School, Newcastle University, UK. Emily’s research broadly examines modes of resistance and hope in relation to the theory and practice of public international law, drawing on feminist, queer, posthuman, postcolonial and critical disability studies in that aim. Her work spans several fields of international law, including international environmental law; international human rights law; science, technology and international law; international disarmament law; gender and conflict; the law of the sea; and outer space law, among others. Emily’s monograph, Feminist Theory and International Law: Posthuman Perspectives, was published with Routledge’s GlassHouse series in 2023. Emily is the co-author of The Law of War and Peace: A Gender Analysis, Volume One, (Bloomsbury, 2021) and has co-edited two volumes: the More Posthuman Glossary (Bloomsbury, 2022) and International Law & Posthuman Theory (Routledge, 2024).
Fatemeh (Majan) Irannezhadparizi landed in Australia to join University of Technology Sydney (UTS) academic community as a Visiting Scholar. This opportunity also opened a new door for her to contribute as a tutor teaching public international law at UTS. With a profound passion for both conserving nature and for international law, her academic journey led her to an interdisciplinarity landscape. In international legal debates, she is interested in looking into a variety of fields including environmental conservation, cultural heritage, rights of nature, Indigenous Peoples’ rights, sustainable development, and human rights. Her in-depth passion and knowledge about international environmental law and her expertise in English-Persian legal translation have exposed her to many collaborative opportunities to enrich Persian legal literature on progressive developments in international law related to environmental conservation. Her master’s degree in environmental law culminated in a Persian book Sustainable Development and Indigenous-Local Heritage in International Law (Mizan Legal Foundation, 2016) with a valuable preface by Prof. Janet Blake. She reviewed the volume Locating Nature: Making and Unmaking International Law (International Law Agendas, 2023). Recently, she completed her doctoral mission, during which she explored the opportunities and challenges inherent in cultivating the growing seed of rights of nature in the current realm of international law.