Rights of nature law is the codification and other implementations of the legal and jurisprudential theory of the rights of nature. This legal school of thought describes inherent rights as associated with ecosystems and species, similar to the concept of fundamental human rights.
The early 2000s saw a significant expansion of rights of nature law, in the form of constitutional provisions, treaty agreements, national and subnational statutes, local laws, and court decisions. As of 2022, nature's rights laws exist at the local to national levels in 39 countries,[1] including in Canada, at least seven Tribal Nations in the U.S. and Canada, and over 60 cities and counties throughout the United States. The total number of initiatives was 409 as of June 2021.[2] The EcoJurisprudence Monitor lists over 500 as of early 2024.https://ecojurisprudence.org/
Legal standing for natural systems in New Zealand arose alongside new attention paid to long-ignored treaty agreements with the Indigenous Maori. In August 2012, a treaty agreement signed with the Maori iwi recognized the Whanganui River and tributaries as a legal entity, an "indivisible and living whole" with its own standing. The national Te Awa Tupua Act was enacted in March 2017 to further formalize this status.
In 2013, the Te Urewera Forest treaty agreement similarly recognized the legal personhood of the Forest, with the Te Urewera Act signed into law in 2014 to formalize this status. In 2017 a treaty settlement with the Maori was signed that recognized Mount Taranaki as "a legal personality, in its own right".
Each of these developments advanced the indigenous principle that the ecosystems are living, spiritual beings with intrinsic value, incapable of being owned in an absolute sense.
See also: Rights of nature in Ecuador. In 2008, the people of Ecuador amended their Constitution to recognize the inherent rights of nature, or Pachamama. The new text arose in large part as a result of cosmologies of the indigenous rights movement and actions to protect the Amazon, consistent with the concept of sumak kawsay ("buen vivir" in Spanish, "good living" in English), or encapsulating a life in harmony with nature with humans as part of the ecosystem. Among other provisions, Article 71 states that "Nature or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain itself and regenerate its own vital cycles, structure, functions and its evolutionary processes." The Article adds enforcement language as well, stating that "Any person... may demand the observance of the rights of the natural environment before public bodies", and echoing Christopher Stone, Article 72 adds that “Nature has the right to be completely restored... independent of the obligation... to compensate people”.
In 2019, the High Court of Bangladesh ruled on a case addressing pollution of and illegal development along the Turag River, an upper tributary of the Buriganga.
Among its findings, the high court recognized the river as a living entity with legal rights, and it further held that the same would apply to all rivers in Bangladesh. The court ordered the National River Protection Commission to serve as the guardian for the Turag and other rivers.
Colombia has not adopted statutes or constitutional provisions addressing nature's rights (as of 2019). However, this has not prevented Colombian courts from finding nature's rights as inherent. In a 2016 case, the Colombia Constitutional Court ordered cleanup of the polluted Atrato River, stating that nature is a "true subject of rights that must be recognized by states and exercised... for example, by the communities that inhabit it or have a special relationship with it”. The court added that humans are “only one more event within a long evolutionary chain [and] in no way... owner of other species, biodiversity or natural resources, or the fate of the planet".
In 2018, the Colombia Supreme Court took up a climate change case by a group of children and young adults that also raised fundamental rights issues. In addition to making legal findings related to human rights, the court found that the Colombian Amazon is a "'subject of rights', entitled to protection, conservation, maintenance and restoration". It recognized the special role of Amazon deforestation in creating greenhouse gas emissions in Colombia, and as a remedy ordered the nation and its administrative agencies to ensure a halt to all deforestation by 2020. The court further allocated enforcement power to the plaintiffs and affected communities, requiring the agencies to report to the communities and empowering them to inform the court if the agencies were not meeting their deforestation targets.
A significant body of case law has been expanding in Ecuador to implement the nation's constitutional provisions regarding the rights of nature. Examples include lawsuits in the areas of biodigestor pollution, impaired flow in the Vilcabamba River, and hydropower.
As in Colombia, as of 2019 no statutes or constitutional provisions in India specifically identified rights of nature. Nevertheless, the India Supreme Court in 2012 set the stage for cases to come before it on rights of nature, finding that "Environmental justice could be achieved only if we drift away from the principle of anthropocentric to ecocentric... humans are part of nature and non-human has intrinsic value."
The Uttarakhand High Court applied the principle of ecocentric law in 2017, recognizing the legal personhood of the Ganga and Yamuna rivers and ecosystems, and calling them "living human entities" and juridical and moral persons. The court quickly followed with similar judgments for the glaciers associated with the rivers, including the Gangotri and Yamunotri, and other natural systems. While the India Supreme Court stayed the Ganga and Yamuna judgment at the request of local authorities, those authorities supported the proposed legal status in concept, but were seeking "implementation guidance".
Following adoption of nature's rights language in its 2009 Constitution, in 2010 Bolivia's Legislature passed the Law of the Rights of Mother Earth, Act No. 071. Bolivia followed this broad outline of nature's rights with the 2012 Law of Mother Earth and Integral Development for Living Well, Act. No. 300, which provided some implementation details consistent with nature's rights. It states in part that the "violation of the rights of Mother Earth, as part of comprehensive development for Living Well, is a violation of public law and the collective and individual rights". While a step forward, this enforcement piece has not yet risen to the level of a specific enforcement mechanism.
State, regional, and local laws and local constitutional provisions have been arising in Mexico, including adoption in the constitutions of the Mexican states of Colima and Guerrero, and that of Mexico City.
Part 1, Section 4 of Uganda's 2019 National Environment Act addresses the Rights of Nature, stating in part that "Nature has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution." Advocates who had sought inclusion of such language observed that "Ugandans' right to a healthy environment cannot be realised unless the health of Nature herself is protected," and that the language adoption reflected "recent gains for the growing African movement for Earth Jurisprudence".
At the local level dozens of ordinances with rights of nature provisions have been passed as of 2019 throughout the United States, and in tribal lands located within the U.S. boundaries. Most were passed in reaction to a specific threat to local well-being, such as threats posed by hydrofracking, groundwater extraction, gravel mining, and fossil fuel extraction. For example, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania passed an anti-fracking law that included the following provision to buttress protections: "Natural communities and ecosystems... possess inalienable and fundamental rights to exist and flourish." The ordinance continues that "Residents... shall possess legal standing to enforce those rights."
Residents in Santa Monica, California proactively sought to recognize nature's rights in local law after the U.S. Supreme Court's expansion of corporate rights in Citizens United v. FEC. In 2013 the Santa Monica City Council adopted a "Sustainability Rights Ordinance", recognizing the "fundamental and inalienable rights" of "natural communities and ecosystems" in the city to "exist and flourish". The ordinance emphasized that "[c]orporate entities... do not enjoy special privileges or powers under the law that subordinate the community's rights to their private interests". It specifically defined "natural communities and ecosystems" to include "groundwater aquifers, atmospheric systems, marine waters, and native species". Santa Monica updated its Sustainable City Plan in 2014 to reinforce its codified commitment to nature's rights. In 2018, the city council adopted a Sustainable Groundwater Management Ordinance that specifically referenced the inherent rights of the local aquifer to flourish.
In November, 2020, voters in Orange County, Florida passed a charter amendment for the "right to clean water" by a margin of 89% that protects waterways in the county from pollution and enables citizens to bring lawsuits to defend against such pollution, becoming the largest community in the country to enact such a rights of nature initiative.[3] [4] [5] It has prompted the Florida Right To Clean Water direct initiative to incorporate the principle into the state constitution, which is gathering petition signatures to have an amendment put onto the 2024 ballot for consideration by all Florida voters.[6] [7] In his January 2022 monthly newsletter, Jim Hightower identified the Florida initiative as, "the epicenter of today’s Rights of Nature political movement".[8]
During a special election in February, 2019, voters in Toledo, Ohio passed the "Lake Erie Bill of Rights"[9] (LEBOR).[10] The law was struck down by the Supreme Court of Ohio in 2020.[11] BP North America spent almost $300,000 fighting the bill through a front group.[12]
In 2015 the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin passed a resolution amending their constitution to include the rights of nature.[13] [14] By 2020 a working group was determining how to integrate the resolution into their constitution, laws, regulations, and processes.[15]
In 2017, the Ponca Nation enacted a rights of nature law which is a resolution that gives the Ponca Tribal Court the power to punish crimes against nature with prison and fines.[16] [17]
Advancements during the early twenty-first century in international "soft law" (quasi-legal instruments generally without legally binding force) have precipitated broader discussions about the potential for integrating nature's rights into legal systems. The United Nations has held nine "Harmony with Nature" General Assembly Dialogues as of 2019 on Earth-centered governance systems and philosophies, including discussions of rights of nature specifically. The companion United Nations Harmony with Nature initiative compiles rights of nature laws globally and offers a U.N. "Knowledge Network" of Earth Jurisprudence practitioners across disciplines. These U.N. Dialogues and the Harmony with Nature initiative may provide a foundation for development of a United Nations-adopted Universal Declaration of the Rights of Nature which, like the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, could form the foundation for rights-based laws worldwide. A model could be the 2010 UDRME, an informal, but widely-supported nature's rights agreement based on the UDHR.
In 2012, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN, the only international observer organization to the U.N. General Assembly with expertise in the environment) adopted a resolution specifically calling for a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Nature. The IUCN reaffirmed its commitment to nature's rights at its next meeting in 2016, where the body voted to build rights of nature implementation into the upcoming, four-year IUCN Workplan. The IUCN's subgroup of legal experts, the World Commission on Environmental Law, later issued an "IUCN World Declaration on the Environmental Rule of Law" recognizing that "Nature has the inherent right to exist, thrive, and evolve".