Following international support for the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, CELDF is honored to work in solidarity with a new French-speaking network to advance Rights of Nature in Europe.

CELDF officially endorsed a proposal for a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Wetlands, organized by lawyers and scientists with the Society of Wetland Scientists’ Rights of Wetlands and Climate Change and Wetlands initiatives. The group is planning to share the Declaration with the 171 signatory countries of the Convention on Wetlands (Ramsar Convention), and inviting them to work with others to move toward a framework that ensures the rights of wetlands are understood, respected, and upheld.

In 2019, Nottingham residents passed a Freedom from Chemical Trespass Ordinance securing the rights of ecosystems and of townspeople to a “climate system capable of sustaining human societies.” Now New Hampshire courts have sided with corporations who infringe on those rights, revealing a pattern of bias embedded within the New Hampshire judiciary.

Tribal nations, community and environmental groups in Minnesota have fought to stop the Line 3 Enbridge pipeline in Northern Minnesota. The pipeline violates several treaties with the Ojibwe people that establish their right to hunt, fish, and gather along the proposed route. The pipeline would cross 200 bodies of water, including the Mississippi River twice.

A new democratic organizational structure for CELDF will empower collaboration and expansion into new areas of the movement.

To advance political education in the Granite State, the New Hampshire Community Rights Network (NHCRN) has compiled an in-depth pamphlet to explore a transformation of New Hampshire’s form of government.

The January 6, 2021 siege of the Capital by white supremacists groups showcased preferential treatment by law enforcement. The double standards are undeniable. Now, dangerous legislation threatens to stifle peaceful protests and civil disobedience against injustice and oppression.

In 2020, members of the Pennsylvania Community Rights Network engaged in a statewide support campaign for a state constitutional amendment to place the rights of people over the interests of private corporations – empowering communities to heighten state protections for civil, human and ecosystem rights.

As demonstrated in a new CELDF report, across the nation, judges and unelected officials, including boards of elections, have undercut ballot access for initiatives.

The following is an excerpt from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund’s End of Year 2020 newsletter “Moments of Transition

Newsletter: CELDF has supported the efforts of Grant Township, PA as they engage in local lawmaking to successfully resist corporate contamination of water. Despite years of legal attacks by the private corporations, PA regulatory agencies, and the oil and gas industry, local residents of Grant Township have reasserted and continued to defend local lawmaking and protect the natural systems that sustain them.

Virginia joins the growing network of state Community Rights Networks.