Since the early twenty-first century, the idea of the rights of nature has increasingly moved from normative debate into institutional practice across Latin America, raising new questions about sovereignty, resource governance, and the ecological foundations of political authority. In Ecuador, the constitutional recognition of the rights of nature grants nature direct legal standing, while in Bolivia ecological principles are embedded in the constitutional narrative and further articulated through subsequent legislation. Yet where extractive development models remain largely intact, a persistent gap has emerged between constitutional commitments and governance practices, limiting their regulatory impact. Elsewhere, particularly in Colombia and Peru, the rights of nature have taken shape mainly through judicial rulings that grant ecosystems legal standing in specific disputes. Courts have occasionally used these rulings to address administrative failures or governance gaps, but this pathway remains highly dependent on social mobilization and judicial interpretation and has proven difficult to institutionalize more broadly. In several other countries, the rights of nature continue to appear in local conflicts, social movements, and constitutional debates without becoming fully embedded in national institutions.