Failure to care despite legal personhood for the environment

This paper explores two concepts of recent interest to Keebet von Benda-Beckmann, including notions of personhood as expressed in the law and diverse felt obligations of care. As with Keebet, we are interested in how both interrelate with legal pluralism. Both concepts enabled us to build on relational themes that have been gaining traction in social theories, and to ask about the extent to which legal orders differ in their approach to embedded legal personhood. In this relational context, the perception of care as a natural course of action (2021, 3) might or might not be extended to non-human entities and beings. We extend Keebet's exploration of care and legal personhood by comparing two cases where international efforts have been directed towards better environmental care, the argan forests of Morocco and the open ocean as part of the "Blue Economy".