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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. [1] [2] [3] [4]
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. [5] As of 2022, nature's rights laws exist in 39 countries, [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] including in Canada, [11] at least seven Tribal Nations in the U.S. and Canada, and over 60 cities and counties throughout the United States. [7] [12] [13] [14] The total number of initiatives was 409 as of June 2021. [15] [7] [5] [9] The EcoJurisprudence Monitor lists over 500 as of early 2024.
Legal standing for natural systems in New Zealand arose alongside new attention paid to long-ignored treaty agreements with the Indigenous Maori. [20] 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. [21] [16] The national Te Awa Tupua Act was enacted in March 2017 to further formalize this status. [17] [12]
In 2013, the Te Urewera Forest treaty agreement similarly recognized the legal personhood of the Forest, [22] [17] 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". [18] [19]
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. [23] [24]
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. [25] [26] [27] 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." [28] 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", [28] and echoing Christopher Stone, Article 72 adds that “Nature has the right to be completely restored... independent of the obligation... to compensate people”. [28] [29] [3]
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. [30] [31] [32]
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”. [34] 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". [33] [16] [34]
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. [35] [36]
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. [37] [38]
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." [39] [40] [41]
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. [42] [43] [16] The court quickly followed with similar judgments for the glaciers associated with the rivers, including the Gangotri and Yamunotri, and other natural systems. [44] [45] 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". [46]
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". [47] While a step forward, this enforcement piece has not yet risen to the level of a specific enforcement mechanism. [48]
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. [49] [14] [50]
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." [51] 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". [51]
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. [12] [52] [53] 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." [54] [55] [56]
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", [57] recognizing the "fundamental and inalienable rights" [57] of "natural communities and ecosystems" [57] in the city to "exist and flourish". [57] 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". [57] It specifically defined "natural communities and ecosystems" to include "groundwater aquifers, atmospheric systems, marine waters, and native species". [57] [58] 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. [58]
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. [59] [60] [61] 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. [62] [63] In his January 2022 monthly newsletter, Jim Hightower identified the Florida initiative as, "the epicenter of today’s Rights of Nature political movement". [64]
During a special election in February, 2019, voters in Toledo, Ohio passed the "Lake Erie Bill of Rights" [65] (LEBOR). [66] The law was struck down by the Supreme Court of Ohio in 2020. [67] BP North America spent almost $300,000 fighting the bill through a front group. [68] [66]
In 2015 the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin passed a resolution amending their constitution to include the rights of nature. [69] [70] By 2020 a working group was determining how to integrate the resolution into their constitution, laws, regulations, and processes. [71]
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. [72] [73]
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. [74] [75] 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. [76] 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. [77] A model could be the 2010 UDRME, an informal, but widely-supported nature's rights agreement based on the UDHR. [78]
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. [79] 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. [80] 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". [81] [82]
Environmental laws are laws that protect the environment. Environmental law is the collection of laws, regulations, agreements and common law that governs how humans interact with their environment. This includes environmental regulations; laws governing management of natural resources, such as forests, minerals, or fisheries; and related topics such as environmental impact assessments. Environmental law is seen as the body of laws concerned with the protection of living things from the harm that human activity may immediately or eventually cause to them or their species, either directly or to the media and the habits on which they depend.
The environmental movement is a social movement that aims to protect the natural world from harmful environmental practices in order to create sustainable living. Environmentalists advocate the just and sustainable management of resources and stewardship of the environment through changes in public policy and individual behavior. In its recognition of humanity as a participant in ecosystems, the movement is centered on ecology, health, as well as human rights.
The Alien Tort Statute, also called the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA), is a section in the United States Code that gives federal courts jurisdiction over lawsuits filed by foreign nationals for torts committed in violation of international law. It was first introduced by the Judiciary Act of 1789 and is one of the oldest federal laws still in effect in the U.S.
The chief instrument through which judicial activism has flourished in India is public interest litigation (PIL) or social action litigation (SAL). It refers to litigation undertaken to secure public interest and demonstrates the availability of justice to socially-disadvantaged parties and was introduced by Justice P. N. Bhagwati and Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer. It is a relaxation on the traditional rule of locus standi. Before 1980s the judiciary and the Supreme Court of India entertained litigation only from parties affected directly or indirectly by the defendant. It heard and decided cases only under its original and appellate jurisdictions. However, the Supreme Court began permitting cases on the grounds of public interest litigation, which means that even people who are not directly involved in the case may bring matters of public interest to the court. It is the court's privilege to entertain the application for the PIL.
The Atrato River is a river of northwestern Colombia. It rises in the slopes of the Western Cordillera and flows almost due north to the Gulf of Urabá, where it forms a large, swampy delta. Its course crosses the Chocó Department, forming that department's border with neighboring Antioquia in two places. Its total length is about 650 km (400 mi), and it is navigable as far as Quibdó, the capital of the department.
The human right to water and sanitation (HRWS) is a principle stating that clean drinking water and sanitation are a universal human right because of their high importance in sustaining every person's life. It was recognized as a human right by the United Nations General Assembly on 28 July 2010. The HRWS has been recognized in international law through human rights treaties, declarations and other standards. Some commentators have based an argument for the existence of a universal human right to water on grounds independent of the 2010 General Assembly resolution, such as Article 11.1 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR); among those commentators, those who accept the existence of international ius cogens and consider it to include the Covenant's provisions hold that such a right is a universally binding principle of international law. Other treaties that explicitly recognize the HRWS include the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).
Dhananjaya Yeshwant Chandrachud is an Indian jurist, who is the 50th and Current Chief Justice of India serving since November 2022. He was appointed a judge of the Supreme Court of India in May 2016. He has also previously served as the chief justice of the Allahabad High Court from 2013 to 2016 and as a judge of the Bombay High Court from 2000 to 2013. He is also a former executive chairperson (ex officio) of the National Legal Services Authority.
The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is a legally non-binding resolution passed by the United Nations in 2007. It delineates and defines the individual and collective rights of indigenous peoples, including their ownership rights to cultural and ceremonial expression, identity, language, employment, health, education, and other issues. Their ownership also extends to the protection of their intellectual and cultural property. The declaration "emphasizes the rights of Indigenous peoples to maintain and strengthen their own institutions, cultures and traditions, and to pursue their development in keeping with their own needs and aspirations." It "prohibits discrimination against indigenous peoples," and it "promotes their full and effective participation in all matters that concern them and their right to remain distinct and to pursue their own visions of economic and social development".
The primacy of European Union law is a legal principle establishing precedence of European Union law over conflicting national laws of EU member states.
Indigenous rights are those rights that exist in recognition of the specific condition of the Indigenous peoples. This includes not only the most basic human rights of physical survival and integrity, but also the rights over their land, language, religion, and other elements of cultural heritage that are a part of their existence and identity as a people. This can be used as an expression for advocacy of social organizations, or form a part of the national law in establishing the relation between a government and the right of self-determination among its Indigenous people, or in international law as a protection against violation of Indigenous rights by actions of governments or groups of private interests.
Abortion in Colombia is freely available on request up to the 24th week of pregnancy, due to a ruling by the Constitutional Court on February 21, 2022. Later in pregnancy, it is only allowed in cases of risk of death to the pregnant woman, fetal malformation, or rape, according to a Constitutional Court ruling in 2006.
The Law of the Rights of Mother Earth is a Bolivian law, that was passed by Bolivia's Plurinational Legislative Assembly in December 2010. This 10 article law is derived from the first part of a longer draft bill, drafted and released by the Pact of Unity by November 2010.
With the adoption of a new constitution in 2008 under president Rafael Correa, Ecuador became the first country in the world to enshrine a set of codified Rights of Nature and to inform a more clarified content to those rights. Articles 10 and 71–74 of the Ecuadorian Constitution recognize the inalienable rights of ecosystems to exist and flourish, give people the authority to petition on the behalf of nature, and requires the government to remedy violations of these rights.
Monica Feria Tinta is a British/Peruvian barrister, a specialist in public international law, at the Bar of England & Wales. She practises from Twenty Essex, London.
Future generations are cohorts of hypothetical people not yet born. Future generations are contrasted with current and past generations and evoked in order to encourage thinking about intergenerational equity. The moral patienthood of future generations has been argued for extensively among philosophers, and is thought of as an important, neglected cause by the effective altruism community. The term is often used in describing the conservation or preservation of cultural heritage or natural heritage.
Rights of nature or Earth rights is a legal and jurisprudential theory that describes inherent rights as associated with ecosystems and species, similar to the concept of fundamental human rights. The rights of nature concept challenges twentieth-century laws as generally grounded in a flawed frame of nature as "resource" to be owned, used, and degraded. Proponents argue that laws grounded in rights of nature direct humanity to act appropriately and in a way consistent with modern, system-based science, which demonstrates that humans and the natural world are fundamentally interconnected.
Environmental personhood or juridic personhood is a legal concept which designates certain environmental entities the status of a legal person. This assigns to these entities, the rights, protections, privileges, responsibilities and legal liability of a legal personality. Because environmental entities such as rivers and plants can not represent themselves in court, a "guardian" can act on the entity's behalf to protect it. Environmental personhood emerged from the evolution of legal focus in pursuit of the protection of nature. Over time, focus has evolved from human interests in exploiting nature, to protecting nature for future human generations, to conceptions that allow for nature to be protected as intrinsically valuable. This concept can be used as a vehicle for recognising Indigenous peoples' relationships to natural entities, such as rivers. Environmental personhood, which assigns nature certain rights, concurrently provides a means to individuals or groups such as Indigenous peoples to fulfill their human rights.
Climate change litigation, also known as climate litigation, is an emerging body of environmental law using legal practice to set case law precedent to further climate change mitigation efforts from public institutions, such as governments and companies. In the face of slow climate change politics delaying climate change mitigation, activists and lawyers have increased efforts to use national and international judiciary systems to advance the effort. Climate litigation typically engages in one of five types of legal claims: Constitutional law, administrative law, private law (challenging corporations or other organizations for negligence, nuisance, etc., fraud or consumer protection, or human rights.
The Global Pact for the Environment project was launched in 2017 by a network of experts known as the "International Group of Experts for the Pact" (IGEP). The group is made up of more than a hundred legal experts in environmental law and is chaired by former COP21 President Laurent Fabius.
The right to a healthy environment or the right to a sustainable and healthy environment is a human right advocated by human rights organizations and environmental organizations to protect the ecological systems that provide human health. The right was acknowledged by the United Nations Human Rights Council during its 48th session in October 2021 in HRC/RES/48/13 and subsequently by the United Nations General Assembly on July 28, 2022 in A/RES/76/300. The right is often the basis for human rights defense by environmental defenders, such as land defenders, water protectors and indigenous rights activists.
A Rights of Nature Workgroup has been meeting to determine the best course moving forward with incorporating the rights of nature into the Ho-Chunk Nation's constitution, laws, regulations, and processes.