César Rodríguez Garavito (Bogotá, 1971) is a lawyer and sociologist, and directs the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University (NYU). In recent years, his work has shifted from classical human rights towards what he calls “more-than-human” rights: first nature – animals, rivers, forests, and entire species – and, more recently, the question of whether artificial intelligence should have any legal status. Rodríguez visited Medellín to give the inaugural lecture of the Doctorate in Law at EAFIT University, where he offered a pragmatic and at times uncomfortable reflection on rights and their limits.
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Question. You have been for years one of the most visible defenders of the rights of nature in the region, but you have proposed a different term, “more-than-human” rights. What led you to that reflection?
Answer. The rights of nature have been a fresh current for law and the environmental movement. It is a global current, as shown by almost 700 initiatives on the subject in more than 60 countries. I have worked closely with analysts and activists in several of these efforts and share with them the language of the rights of nature. The term “more-than-human rights” points to the same and seeks to avoid the human-nature dualism. Human beings are embedded in the more-than-human world, in the web of life we share with animals, plants, fungi, and other beings. Since we depend on that broader web, human rights also depend on the protection of more-than-human rights.
Q. What is your assessment of the recognition of the rights of nature so far?
A. It is an idea that has gone from being marginal to being adopted by courts, parliaments, scientific associations, social movements, and artistic collectives around the world. There are fascinating cases, laws, and declarations about the rights of animals, forests, rivers, and other ecosystems, not only in Latin America but also in countries like Spain, New Zealand, Canada, Sri Lanka, England, and many others. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has also endorsed it.
The main challenge is to make them a reality. I am a lawyer but also a sociologist, so I care about practical consequences, as do activists and communities. That is why we are supporting the implementation of landmark rulings such as the one that protected the rights of the Los Cedros forest in Ecuador.
Q. Arguments in favor of animal rights often highlight the similarities between humans and animals, such as sentience and intelligence. What do you think of this idea?
A. I think it has been useful in practice, for example, to protect the rights of animals like primates. Part of my work is dedicated to protecting the rights of whales, with scientists who are proving that they, besides intelligence, have languages and cultures. But I believe that animal rights should not depend on their resemblance to us, but on the intrinsic value of their lives and their ways of understanding and inhabiting the world. As Henry Beston wrote, animals are neither our relatives nor our subordinates: they are other nations that share the planet with us. With them, we should have a kind of international relations that recognize the other precisely for their difference.
Q. That leads directly to a contemporary and controversial question: should artificial intelligence have rights?
A. I strongly oppose it. My main reason is pragmatic. Faced with an idea or a norm, I tend to ask who has more power and who needs protection; I lean towards a theory of rights based on vulnerability. I side with the weaker party. Between humans and animals, animals are the more vulnerable party, and that justifies protecting them. With AI, the equation is reversed: humans are the weaker party facing increasingly intelligent and autonomous models, which can get out of control and endanger both humans and the rest of nature.
Q. But if you yourself have defended that a river can be a subject of rights, doesn’t that leave the door open for someone tomorrow to defend the same for a sufficiently sophisticated artificial intelligence?
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A. Those who propose treating AI models as persons with rights forget that, unlike nature, technology is a human creation. And that AI with rights can lead to catastrophic results. As Yoshua Bengio, one of the inventors of AI, has said, that would leave us without the possibility of controlling and discontinuing it if necessary. This is not science fiction. In Argentina, there is a bill that would authorize “automated societies” composed only of AI systems, which could operate and contract without human supervision. Who would control them? Who would be responsible if they cause harm?
Q. How do you protect humans from potentially dangerous technology without closing the door to innovation?
A. My position is not anti-technology. I am in favor of small models for specific matters: translation, editing, even for listening to animals. There are projects I have participated in that use AI to understand the language of animals and the planet’s biodiversity. But I have many reservations about the kind of general, powerful, and autonomous AI that leading companies are developing. Even many technologists oppose not only AI rights but also that models appear as persons. Chatbots sound like people because their designers decided so, to make us use them more. The same confusion that leads some to treat AI systems as their psychologists, friends, or partners would lead to treating them as persons with rights. We need rules that promote models that keep clear the difference between machines and people. But this must be done now, because in a few years the confusion would be such that we could end up handing over control of our lives, our relationships, and our economic and political systems to synthetic intelligences that would surpass us and that we would no longer be able to understand.
Q. Your current work increasingly requires collaboration between disciplines. How does that translate into practice?
A. It is essential, and it is not just a matter of connecting fascinating data from different fields: at its core, there is a shift in how we see the world and how we study it. I wrote about this for a beautiful exhibition that the Museum of Contemporary Art (MUAC) in Mexico currently has on more-than-human rights. The “more-than-human” turn in the arts, sciences, and law implies understanding that everything is relational: not only that everything is interconnected, but that individuals are, themselves, ecosystems. Unlike indigenous knowledge, modern science made us believe that we are separate from the rest of nature. I don’t see how to seriously study the legal and moral status of human beings without simultaneously standing in the world in which we are embedded.
Q. What are then the most urgent questions facing law and social sciences in this field in the coming years?
A. First, ensuring the application of the rights of nature. Second, deepening theories of rights based on vulnerability. Third, regulating AI to slow it down and treat it as a tool.
Q. After such a critical journey, you insist on ending on a hopeful note. Why?
A. Because I see many people around the world who are seeking, even longing, to rekindle their bond with nature. We live in a difficult moment: the climate crisis worsens, COPs and the Paris Agreement accumulate setbacks, and the activism embodied by figures like Greta Thunberg faces strong backlash. In this context, the rights of nature and other ecocentric ideas mark a turn towards hope, based on wonder, curiosity, and the beauty of life on earth.
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