Important Updates
A new system of law based on respect for Nature and the…
Issues, News, Resources, Rights of Nature
Human and ecosystem viability come when we figure out how to orient…
News, Rights of Nature
Protecting Water and Life: Frontline Stories from Ohioans fighting corporate and state…
Publications
Sep 15, 2022
YES, the waters have a voice in this project….or at least they should.
Read More | Community Wires, News, News from the Grassroots, Rights of NatureSep 15, 2022
A new system of law based on respect for Nature and the obligations we share as collaborators with life-supporting ecosystems must be institutionalized, recognizing Nature as a unique legal entity and rights holder.
Read More | Issues, News, Resources, Rights of NatureSep 13, 2022
How could Chileans, after rising up in October 2019 to demand a new constitution, then voting by an overwhelming majority to initiate the constituent process, reject the proposed draft? Why would they align with right-wing forces seeking to preserve the Pinochet constitution? This astonishing result surely demands a multi-causal explanation.
Read More | Democratic Rights, Issues, News, News from the Grassroots, Rights of NatureSep 12, 2022
You wouldn’t think, in a rational society, that anyone would have to be told this, but reality doesn’t care what anybody believes is true; it just is. And what isn’t, isn’t.
Read More | Blogs, Issues, News, News from the Grassroots, Rights of NatureSep 7, 2022
Despite the claims of the corporate-minded, rejection of the new constitution by the voters of Chile is not a repute of what the new constitution contained but one that shows the desperation of the powerful elite to hold on to their planetary destroying levels of greed and the lengths they will go to deny the inevitable.
Read More | News from the Grassroots, Rights of NatureSep 7, 2022
We want to begin this next chapter of the Nature Leads Series by unveiling CELF’s beautiful new Rights of Nature artwork and logo designed by two talented artists and organizers from the St. Lawrence River / Kaniatarowanenneh Watershed, Haudenosaunee Territory, in what is known as the New York State.
Read More | News, Rights of NatureSep 1, 2022
As Chilean voters are poised to go to the polls this coming Sunday, September 4, to hopefully become the second country in the world to include recognition of the Rights of Nature (RON) in their national constitution, it is obvious just by reading a few headlines in any given week that more countries need to embrace and follow Chile’s lead.
Read More | News from the Grassroots, Rights of NatureAug 21, 2022
Refuse to be complacent. Refuse to be complicit. Refuse to be irrelevant.
Read More | Blogs, Community Rights, Democratic Rights, News, News from the GrassrootsAug 5, 2022
Do you know what’s not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution? For one thing, government by the people.
Read More | Blogs, Community Rights, Corporate 'Rights', Democratic Rights, News, News from the GrassrootsJul 19, 2022
The Right to Property is Inalienable, Right?
Some rights are defined as inalienable, meaning that they can’t be taken away from you. Heck, you can’t even sell them, trade them, or give them away.
Jul 8, 2022
The Rights of Nature (RoN) promote a new understanding of the human
environment, where natural entities are conceived as subjects with intrinsic value independent of human interests. The implementation of this idea
gained momentum in the United States in 2006. One decade and a half later, the idea has spread all over the world.
Jul 6, 2022
CELDF’s Ben Price wrote this article, featured in Truthout, about a mining corporation’s scam plan, pushed as an environmentally friendly investment opportunity.
Read More | News, News from the Grassroots, Rights of NatureJul 5, 2022
We at CELDF were excited to be able to read the full decision of the Constitutional Court of Ecuador upholding the rights of the Los Cedros Forest over a mining project and we are sharing that decision with you in both English and Spanish. We want to thank the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature… Read more »
Read More | News, Resources, Rights of NatureJul 1, 2022
The Right of Free Speech Includes the Right to Clean Air to Speak With Look, if corporate property can be called a legal person, and if that person has a right to speak freely, but no mouth, and if corporate-cozy judges can make us all pretend for real that spending money is the way corporate… Read more »
Read More | Blogs, Corporate 'Rights', Extraction & Pollution, News, News from the Grassroots, Rights of NatureJun 14, 2022
NYWBA’s Animal Law and WBASNY’s Environmental Law Committees presents a webinar on June 20, 2022 at 6:00 – 7:30 PM (Eastern Time) On May 18, 2022, the New York Court of Appeals heard the habeus corpus petition involving “Happy the Elephant” and considered whether she is a person under the law. Recent legal efforts in… Read more »
Read More | Events, Rights of NatureMay 19, 2022
Our communities deserve more than just the right to Clean Water; our entire ecosystem, our Mother Earth depends on us to end the poisoning. It seems to me we need to recognize the Rights of Nature, and make it illegal to poison Earth and her inhabitants.
Read More | Chemical Trespass, Community Wires, Corporate Agriculture, Issues, Rights of NatureMay 4, 2022
As many are aware, CELDF has stood with the people and ecosystems of Grant Township (Indiana County, PA, population 700) in their courageous efforts to keep a frack waste injection well out of the community.
Read More | Chemical Trespass, Community Rights, Corporate 'Rights', Democratic Rights, Extraction & Pollution, Issues, News, Rights of NatureApr 11, 2022
Episode DescriptionIn 2019, after a decade-long campaign, voters in Toledo Ohio voted to approve the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, effectively giving the lake personhood. It drew an incredible amount of attention. This wasn’t San Francisco hippies or Brooklyn hipsters talking about rights of nature, this was middle-aged moms in the Rust Belt, and that… Read more »
Read More | Multimedia, News, Resources, Rights of NatureMar 22, 2022
Filmed during the weeks after protests began, Santiago Rising meets social movements, protesters, and ordinary people in their struggle for equality and human rights. The film charts the build-up to the historic vote, in October 2020, that saw Chileans vote for a new constitution to replace the one imposed during the brutal Pinochet dictatorship. Santiago Rising emphasizes… Read more »
Read More | Events, Issues, News, News from the GrassrootsMar 22, 2022
Carolyn Harding with Tish O’Dell, a powerful voice for justice in Ohio, the US, and Globally. Tish has been a Community Organizer for CELDF (Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund) since 2012 assisting residents to organize rights-based initiatives in their communities in order to help them “make real” the just and sustainable communities they envision for… Read more »
Read More | Community Rights, Democratic Rights, Issues, News, News from the Grassroots, Publications, ResourcesMar 16, 2022
CELDF’s Tish O’Dell is speaking on Panel #4, “Contamination of Water.” This Panel will take place on Friday, March 25 from 11:40 AM – 12:45 PM.
Terry Lodge, activist attorney with CELDF, is speaking on Panel #2, “Contamination of Land.” This panel will take place on Thursday, March 24 from 11:50 AM – 12:55 PM
American University Washington College of Law’s Program on Environmental and Energy Law and Sustainable Development Law & Policy Brief, in association with the Animal Law Society, Energy Law & Policy Society, Environmental Law Society, and Native American Law Students Association are excited to host this year’s annual Symposium, “Lucrative Losses & Poisonous Profits: An Overview of the Domestic and Global Exploitation of Nature and the Way Forward” over Zoom from 10 AM – 1 PM on March 24 and 25, 2022. Over the course of four panels—activists, professors, legal and policy experts, climate scientists, and professors will discuss the international and domestic contamination and overuse of water and land from modern environmental law, indigenous, and rights of nature perspectives. The panelists will explore the devastating impacts of some of nature’s biggest threats, including pollution, deforestation, and industrial fishing.
Read More | Chemical Trespass, Corporate 'Rights', Events, Extraction & Pollution, News, Rights of Nature, Water PrivitizationMar 15, 2022
New York State Assemblyman Patrick Burke, a 37-year-old Democrat from the Buffalo area, has introduced legislation “that will create a Great Lakes Bill of Rights with the goal of securing legal rights for the entire ecosystem and giving people and nature a role in the decision-making process regarding current and future projects that impact the… Read more »
Read More | News, News from the Grassroots, Rights of NatureMar 10, 2022
“New Normal” Needs a New Constitutional Amendment discussion from the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference PIELC.
Read More | Corporate 'Rights', Democratic Rights, Multimedia, News from the Grassroots, Rights of NatureMar 10, 2022
The Lake Erie Bill of Rights and CELDF are influencing Bower’s work on Rights of Nature.
Read More | News from the Grassroots, Rights of NatureNov 3, 2021
Community Rights at the Oregon Supreme Court: Understanding the Impacts of Denying Direct Democracy
Read More | Chemical Trespass, Community Rights, EventsNov 2, 2021
Would recognizing Rights of Nature affect you, the community and possibly the planet? Instead of looking at nature as mere property and as resources, what if we shifted the lens and the law to recognizing nature as living and therefore entitled to rights to life, to flourish and thrive?
Read More | Events, Rights of NatureNov 1, 2021
Legal Self Defense understands that the U.S. Constitution guarantees neither fairness nor safety, but that de-escalation skills coupled with some targeted legal knowledge can improve your security during interactions with law enforcement.
Read More | Defunding Violence, PublicationsOct 9, 2021
They say that knowledge is power, but it’s not true. Knowledge fuels our actions and our actions are power.
Read More | Community Rights, Democratic Rights, Rights of NatureOct 8, 2021
How Rights of Nature laws are transforming governance to address environmental crises through more ecologically sustainable approaches to development.
Read More | News, Publications, Rights of NatureOct 7, 2021
Members of OHCRN have called on Ohio’s Attorney General, Dave Yost, to open an investigation into the violation of Ohio law and the criminal actions of state officials and industry who were and are well aware that this brine is highly radioactive, yet still approve and allow it to be spread in Ohio communities.
Read More | Chemical Trespass, News from the GrassrootsSep 23, 2021
The Freedom From Chemical Trespass Rights-Based Ordinance asserted residents’ rights to a healthy climate and banned corporate activities that would interfere with those rights, punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 per day.
Read More | Community Rights, Extraction & Pollution, Issues, News from the Grassroots, Water PrivitizationSep 17, 2021
Ohio communities over the past decade have worked hard to protect ecosystems and their communities from various harmful projects. They did the work of asserting democratic rights to alter and reform their government. They collected signatures, argued in court, battled in lopsided campaigns and even won a few only to have the courts overturn their… Read more »
Read More | Blogs, Chemical Trespass, Community Wires, NewsSep 13, 2021
As climate change brings suffering across the globe, in New Hampshire Judge Martin Honigberg has sided with a local corporate actor who seeks financial retribution against the Town of Nottingham for the popular adoption of an ordinance recognizing a right of townspeople to a “climate system capable of sustaining human societies.” On September 1, 2021 the sole corporate actor, Brent Tweed, of G&F Goods, LLC submitted a $40,281.50 bill to the court for attorney fees.
Read More | Community Rights, News, News from the Grassroots, Press ReleasesSep 10, 2021
A new ordinance seeks to place a Climate Bill of Rights on the 2022 ballot, which explicitly challenges North Carolina’s infamous state preemption scheme and privileges afforded private corporations.
Read More | Blogs, Community Wires, Corporate 'Rights', Extraction & Pollution, News, Rights of NatureSep 9, 2021
As we organize to make change while environmental and racial injustice run rampant, and as drought and a poisonous status quo threaten the conditions for life, identifying where to invest time and energy can be as complex as getting to know another human being. Nothing about forming relationships follows a straight line.
Read More | Blogs, Democratic Rights, NewsSep 8, 2021
The Defunding Violence Ordinance has been circulating in activist communities across the country. It continues to be a living document that both informs and is informed by grassroots efforts to defund and depower the institution of policing.
Read More | Blogs, Community Wires, Defunding Violence, NewsAug 29, 2021
On Thursday, September 9 at 6:30 pm, please join us for a workshop by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) “Preemption as a Lethal Weapon: How Corporations and Government are Deliberately Destroying Communities and Nature”.
Read More | Democratic Rights, EventsAug 24, 2021
The General Synod of the United Church of Christ has become the first mainline Protestant body to publicly proclaim that nature has rights.
Read More | Community Wires, News, News from the Grassroots, Rights of Nature, Success StoryAug 10, 2021
Efforts by both female protagonists in ‘The People vs. Agent Orange’ film have been suppressed since the award winning documentary was released.
Read More | Chemical Trespass, News, Press ReleasesAug 5, 2021
Join us for a conversation to share legal self-defense best practices and to critique the role of police in stabilizing an oppressive status quo.
Read More | Defunding Violence, EventsAug 4, 2021
CELDF has been involved in establishing legal Rights for Nature in Western law for over two decades, from the beginning of this movement’s contemporary phase. We recognize that institutionalizing the Rights of Nature requires a cultural paradigm shift that challenges and changes our legal, social, and moral behavior. For life on Earth to survive, and… Read more »
Read More | Issues, Resource Links, Rights of NatureJul 29, 2021
Earth Law Center and the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (GARN) Youth Hub led two sessions on “Youth and the Rights of Nature Movement: shifting the paradigm for all future generations” at the first IUCN Global Youth Summit April 7-9. As a result of the Rights of Nature sessions, a Declaration was drafted.… Read more »
Read More | Community Wires, Issues, News, Resource Links, Rights of NatureJul 26, 2021
Put another way, critical race theory illuminates our historical record despite centuries-long efforts to whitewash it. White nationalists present “alternative facts” conducing to a zero-sum society of white winners and nonwhite losers.
Read More | Blogs, Defunding Violence, NewsJul 10, 2021
Tune in to Legal Talk Networks Lawyer 2 Lawyer podcast featuring CELDF attorney, Lindsey Schromen-Wawrin. Listen as they discuss law and Nature and take a look at what rights we have to access Nature.
Read More | Issues, News, News from the Grassroots, Rights of NatureJul 8, 2021
Petitioners in Reading, Pennsylvania have officially kicked off a campaign to amend the Reading City Charter to outlaw “toxic trespass,” the poisoning of people and the environment within the city. The ballot initiative is in response to unaddressed toxic waste and environmental racism in the post-industrial city.
Read More | Chemical Trespass, News, Press ReleasesJul 4, 2021
This guest submission was originally given as a graduation address on police reform. The author argues, our informed consent is what legitimizes government. And so it’s up to us to command all of our public servants, including cops. We the People must nullify the despotic doctrine so-called qualified immunity. The buck stops with every single citizen from their eighteenth birthday.
Read More | Blogs, Defunding Violence, Democratic Rights, News, UncategorizedJun 27, 2021
Lincoln County voters passed Measure 21-177, banning aerial pesticide spraying in the county in May of 2017. Representatives of the timber industry promptly sued to overturn the ban.
Read More | Chemical Trespass, Community Wires, NewsJun 21, 2021
Under a 2002 law, introducing radioactive elements into Ohio drinking water is a felony offense.
Companies are violating this by spreading oil and gas waste ‘brine’ — proven by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources to contain radioactive concentrations that exceed federal and state standards — in critical watersheds. So are state actors, residents assert.
Jun 16, 2021
Tune in on Monday June 28, 2021 for the national airing of the award-winning film “The People vs. Agent Orange” on PBS’ Independent Lens!
Read More | Chemical Trespass, Events, Issues, News, News from the GrassrootsJun 10, 2021
As global carbon dioxide concentrations hit their highest level in 4 million years, a New Hampshire Judge has rewarded a local corporate actor in Nottingham for opposing a democratically adopted ordinance, the Freedom from Chemical Trespass Ordinance, that recognized a right of townspeople to a “climate system capable of sustaining human societies.”
Read More | Chemical Trespass, News, Press Releases