ABSTRACT
The idea of an ecological turn in lawmaking, posits that the law should take plants seriously as life forms deserving of protection in their own right, and not merely because of their usefulness to people or their exchange value in human markets. This chapter seeks to scrutinise whether enacted Ecuadorian regimes could regulate human-plant relationships according to rationalities alternative to intellectual property. Although intellectual property laws represent the dominant legal means for ordering human-plant interactions, other types of regimes are also relevant to an analysis of how the law treats vegetal life. Frameworks that regulate the control and circulation of seeds are particularly important mechanisms to set the terms for anthropocentric uses of plants, especially for alimentary and agricultural purposes. An example of how Ecuadorian lawmakers have experimented with strategies to govern human-plant interactions that deviated from conventional intellectual property norms involved institutionalising the concept of food sovereignty.
