Rights of Nature Constitutional Amendment Introduced in Sweden’s Parliament

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:
Stacey Schmader
Administrative Director
Info@celdf.org
717-498-0054

MERCERSBURG, PA: Last week, Rebecka Le Moine, a member of Sweden’s Parliament, introduced a motion to amend Sweden’s constitution to enshrine the Rights of Nature. This is the first time such a measure has been introduced in a European national government.

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund’s International Center for the Rights of Nature worked closely with Le Moine, Rights of Nature Sweden, and Lodyn to develop the draft amendment.

The proposed amendment to Sweden’s Instrument of Government would secure the Rights of Nature to “existera, blomstra, regenerera och utvecklas” – “exist, flourish, regenerate and evolve” – and provide the people and government of Sweden the ability to defend and enforce these rights on behalf of Nature. In addition, the amendment builds on the “precautionary principle” – found within European Union law – by stating that “lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for denying or suspending the enforcement or defense” of the Rights of Nature.

Member of Parliament Le Moine explained that, “For twenty years, we have been working with the national environmental goals in Sweden. After all this time, we are barely reaching two of them.”

“The underlying value in our society is that we are the dominators of this world, and Nature is just a resource for us to use,” Le Moine continued. “Economic growth has been the real goal, not a healthy environment. I’m tired of this era, where our arrogant worldview has driven us far beyond the planetary boundaries. Now, when we’re in the beginning of an ecological and climate collapse, I hope we can re-think our relationship with Nature. And for me, it starts with admitting that Nature has rights.”

A CELDF representative stated, “We need to quickly make a fundamental shift in our relationship with the natural world. Advancing the Rights of Nature in Sweden’s constitution is an important step forward. We congratulate Parliamentarian Le Moine on taking this politically brave, and necessary, step.”

About CELDF — Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund

CELDF has been a pioneer in advancing legal Rights of Nature, working with the first places in the world to secure the Rights of Nature in law.  CELDF is building a movement for Community Rights and the Rights of Nature to advance democratic, economic, social, and environmental rights – building upward from the grassroots to the state, federal, and international level. It is a U.S.-based non-governmental organization.

Rights of Nature Constitutional Amendment Introduced in Sweden’s Parliament

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:
Stacey Schmader
Administrative Director
Info@celdf.org
717-498-0054

MERCERSBURG, PA: Last week, Rebecka Le Moine, a member of Sweden’s Parliament, introduced a motion to amend Sweden’s constitution to enshrine the Rights of Nature. This is the first time such a measure has been introduced in a European national government.

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund’s International Center for the Rights of Nature worked closely with Le Moine, Rights of Nature Sweden, and Lodyn to develop the draft amendment.

The proposed amendment to Sweden’s Instrument of Government would secure the Rights of Nature to “existera, blomstra, regenerera och utvecklas” – “exist, flourish, regenerate and evolve” – and provide the people and government of Sweden the ability to defend and enforce these rights on behalf of Nature. In addition, the amendment builds on the “precautionary principle” – found within European Union law – by stating that “lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for denying or suspending the enforcement or defense” of the Rights of Nature.

Member of Parliament Le Moine explained that, “For twenty years, we have been working with the national environmental goals in Sweden. After all this time, we are barely reaching two of them.”

“The underlying value in our society is that we are the dominators of this world, and Nature is just a resource for us to use,” Le Moine continued. “Economic growth has been the real goal, not a healthy environment. I’m tired of this era, where our arrogant worldview has driven us far beyond the planetary boundaries. Now, when we’re in the beginning of an ecological and climate collapse, I hope we can re-think our relationship with Nature. And for me, it starts with admitting that Nature has rights.”

A CELDF representative stated, “We need to quickly make a fundamental shift in our relationship with the natural world. Advancing the Rights of Nature in Sweden’s constitution is an important step forward. We congratulate Parliamentarian Le Moine on taking this politically brave, and necessary, step.”

About CELDF — Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund

CELDF has been a pioneer in advancing legal Rights of Nature, working with the first places in the world to secure the Rights of Nature in law.  CELDF is building a movement for Community Rights and the Rights of Nature to advance democratic, economic, social, and environmental rights – building upward from the grassroots to the state, federal, and international level. It is a U.S.-based non-governmental organization.

After being removed from the ballot by the County Board of Elections and the Ohio Supreme Court, Williams County petitioners move to join an existing federal civil rights lawsuit.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:

Tish ODell
Community Environmental legal Defense Fund, Ohio Community Organizer
CELDF.org
tish@celdf.org
440-552-6774

Sherry Fleming
Williams County Alliance
wmscoa@yahoo.com
419-636-1864

BRYAN, OH: In 2019, all branches of Ohio government have taken actions to undermine the growing grassroots Community Rights and Rights of Nature movements.

On September 3, the Ohio Supreme Court rolled back thousands of hours of civic engagement and signature gathering that took place in Williams County, on technical grounds. Williams County residents had gathered sufficient signatures to place a county charter on the November 2019 ballot that would prevent corporate privatization of the Michindoh Aquifer, recognize rights of the aquifer, rights of local residents to clean water, and elevate those rights above the “rights” of corporations. Petitioners appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court after its local board of elections removed the proposal from the ballot.

Petitioners are now seeking to join an ongoing federal civil rights lawsuit that argues a systematic denial of local ballot measures in Ohio violates residents’ constitutional rights of freedom of speech, right of assembly, right to petition the government for redress of grievances, right to vote, right of due process, and right of local community self-government.

The peoples arguments were not heard by the Ohio Supreme Court. The local board of elections should never have been able to remove this from the ballot. The Supreme Court instead decided on a ridiculous technicality, claiming that Petitioners should have gone through the appellate court rather than directly to the state supreme court,” said Tish ODell. So often, our movement, and others, are told to change the law.’ What this case shows, in part, is that when the people try to use their inalienable and constitutional right to do just that, the system tries to shut us down. The courts back up the status quo.

Since 2015, the Court, local boards of elections, and the secretary of state have removed 14 proposed Ohio Community Rights and Rights of Nature ballot initiatives from the ballot. All proposals gathered sufficient signatures. Williams County residents are now attempting to join a federal lawsuit brought by these petitioners. 

The federal lawsuit is a way for us to articulate the violations of rights that are happening in this state. But we know we will have to continue fighting outside the courthouse to advance this movement. The courts are not on our side. They refuse to uphold the principles of democracy,” says Sherry Fleming, a petitioner with Williams County Alliance, the group behind the initiative.

Link to federal lawsuit: https://celdf.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Federal-lawsuit-OH-020119.pdf 

Link to Ohio Supreme Court case: http://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/Clerk/ecms/#/caseinfo/2019/1108

About CELDF — Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) is building a movement for Community Rights and the Rights of Nature to advance democratic, economic, social, and environmental rights – building upward from the grassroots to the state, federal, and international level.

Editor’s Note: CELDF is pleased to present a guest blog from our partner Susan Shaw, a solicitor and founder of Living Law, in Scotland. We have been engaging with groups in the U.K. for a number of years on advancing Rights of Nature frameworks, including holding a series of workshops, meetings, and public events in January 2019 in Northern Ireland with partner Friends of the Earth U.K.

The time has come for the U.K. to join with others and recognize the strategic potential of a Rights of Nature approach in our national laws.

The tragic events we have witnessed from the Amazon must act as an epiphany for the entire international community: restoring harmony and balance between people and Nature is not an ‘optional nice to do.’ It’s a matter of international peace and security, and humanity’s own survival. The science tells us that time is not on our side. We risk crossing further tipping points in the Earth-system. Every member of the international community must step up, show leadership, and finish the job it started with the Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment in 1972, almost 50 years ago.

The Rights of Nature movement, which is rapidly gaining traction across the world, offers an important pathway forward in law to help guide the required paradigm shift, in a managed way. This premise may seem radical but is a natural (and necessary) departure from approaches that still view Nature as property to be exploited endlessly. Far from being a new concept, Rights of Nature are embedded in indigenous cultures and practices across the world, recognizing the reality that all life is deeply connected and interdependent.

 A Sixth Mass Extinction

For the first time ever, we recently saw the rapid decline in biodiversity placed front-and-centre on the G7 Agenda in Biarritz and our leaders commit to a new ‘Biodiversity Charter.’ This follows the release of the IPBES Report earlier this year that confirmed from the world’s top scientists that we have entered a sixth mass extinction and that 1,000,000 species will likely disappear unless we fundamentally change our course. We are in the midst of an ecological crisis – biodiversity loss is recognized as being an equivalent threat to that of climate change. Chemical pollution, ocean acidification, the nitrogen cycle, and other phenomena present additional challenges, as we come face-to-face with the inescapable reality of how far outside of equilibrium we are living with the natural world.

Planetary Boundaries are said to be linked such that crossing one threshold in the Earth-system may increase the risks of crossing other thresholds, and undermining the overall resilience of Nature to absorb our unsustainable actions. We have known for many years that we face “inter-locking” (not separate) crises. And therefore, so too must our responses be guided urgently by this realization. There is a pressing need for holistic legal and governance solutions; not approaches which simply drive further environmental ‘problem-shifting’ (addressing one environmental problem, only to replace it with another equally problematic or unsustainable practice).

No Harm Obligation

We are simultaneously facing a renewed wave of misrepresentations, and outdated notions, of national sovereignty. These are equally present in the U.K.’s approaches to post-Brexit trade negotiations. We must be clear at this time that as a basic principle of international law, states have an obligation of “no-harm” in relation to activities that have transboundary dimensions. They also have obligations, deriving from human rights law, to protect us, their citizens. These facts must remain at the forefront of our thinking as we move forward. It is, simply put, not a sovereign right to do harm to others.

While acknowledging that law alone cannot realize the required changes in humanity’s behavior, history shows us the pivotal and catalyst role it offers, when used thoughtfully and diligently, to guide realignment. Just as we ended slavery, it’s now time to end the enslavement of Nature (and thereby, also people) that our existing environmental laws promote. Several countries have begun to embrace the Rights of Nature revolution – by recognizing that Nature, including ecosystems, populations, and species are guaranteed the rights to exist, flourish, regenerate, evolve and restore.

Embracing Legal Rights of Nature

From Bolivia to Bangladesh, Colombia, Ecuador, India, and New Zealand, all these countries have now already embraced forms of recognitions of legal rights for Nature in their national laws (as analyzed, amongst others, in a detailed report published by my firm last year). Opportunity exists for states to create legal recognitions of Nature while taking into account their own specific national circumstances. Through collaboration and shared learning with international experts and indigenous leaders, those at the forefront of the Nature Rights movement identified and proposed key guidelines for the recognition and enforcement of legal rights of the natural world (the “Rights of Nature Principles”) which can help guide the development of robust Nature Rights laws.

Using Critique to Advance a Paradigm Shift

For sure, this legal movement is not without any criticism. Yet, while some of these criticisms may, at first blush, seem merited – such as the difficulty to enforce Nature’s rights in the context of rivers which traverse more than one legal jurisdiction – they are not insurmountable with a little thought and collaboration in the development process. If anything, when many such criticisms undergo hard analysis they often underscore and add weight to why the optic shift is needed. What is important is that these issues are duly debated, and context-specific solutions identified. Equally, we must work to dispel common myths and fears.

Foremost amongst these, “Legal personhood – that is, the ability to bear rights and duties before the law – is often erroneously being conflated as giving nature the same rights as humans. This is patently not the case and is intended, some may say deliberately, to dismiss the Rights of Nature movement and make it seem absurd. Nowhere is there any suggestion for trees to vote!

Moreover, it must be emphasized that the concept of entities that cannot physically represent themselves being afforded recognitions in our legal system to ensure actions are guided by due ethical pre-requisites is not at all new – whether in the treatment of children, or the rights of corporate entities before the law. The imbalance in the current legal system here in Scotland was brought into sharp focus last year by the Ineos fracking case – where the corporation claimed erroneously that its rights to protection of property had been deprived by a moratorium on fracking. Had Nature’s rights been embedded in our legal system, this particular debate would not have likely even been arguable.

The Failure of World-Leading Environmental Laws

In the U.K. specifically, the most frequently encountered objection to Rights of Nature is that we already have world-leading environmental laws. Prior to Brexit, it is true that the U.K. was thought of as having highly sophisticated environmental laws. Yet, we also know they are failing to stem the rapid decline of Nature. Something is not working. And this is when hard analysis takes us to the heart of matters: many laws today – which are guided predominantly by environmental ‘targets’ – are still often designed with the aim of enabling governments to defend judicial review challenges. We should be clear too, that this is precisely what the U.K. Government’s proposals in its forthcoming Environmental Principles and Governance Bill are intended to do, as currently drafted. (Following the recent move to prorogue the U.K. Parliament, we will now have to await the next Queen’s speech to know even its fate).

The reality is that our existing environmental laws are “saving some trees, while losing the forest.” Developers and their agents have become, from experience, increasingly skilled at gaming environmental law. People and planet are frequently absent in debates that incentivize, indeed reward, extraction and conflict over harmony.

One example: I have recently been instructed to represent members of a local community group in the Lathro area of Kinross that has been battling for several years for existing environmental laws to be upheld and given, in their submission, proper regard. Notwithstanding that the overall area in question is bestowed with some of the highest-level protections and designations under EU and national law – the area, Loch Leven, is a Site for Special Scientific Interest, a National Nature Reserve, a Special Protected Area and a Ramsar site – the community have faced what can only be characterized as a war of attrition with developers. At every step, a battle to undertake proper Environmental Impact Assessment; to obtain independent studies of the impact of proposals on key biodiversity and species; to recognize flooding risks and concerns; and unable to stop the unplanned removal of mature oak trees (so far, without prosecution). This case illustrates how breaches of environmental laws may frequently still be approached as simply a cost of doing business.

Just like Lake Erie in the United States, the loch in this local community, the largest lowland loch in Scotland, is suffering another significant blue-green algae bloom, with many people seemingly unaware of the associated health risks posed. Nature has rendered another invoice for our unsustainable ways.

Reimagining Environmental Law

No one is suggesting that Rights of Nature are the only available tool to align our laws with rapidly advancing scientific understandings. What this movement does offer is an opportunity and an optic through which to re-imagine and guide existing environmental law towards the balance and harmony with Nature we urgently need. For sure this will not be without opposition, but we are running out of road to kick the can down. We can only expect to have the authority of holding others – the Bolsonaros of our world – to account, if we do as we ask of other members of the international community, in order to steer humanity from impending ecological disaster. The risks of failure must, after the recent events in the Amazon, now be patent to us all.

Susan Shaw is a public interest solicitor in Scotland and the founder of Living Law. She specializes in environmental and human rights issues across international, EU and national law. She is also an active member of the IUCN’s World Commission on Environmental Law and an Expert Member of the UN Harmony with Nature initiative.

Editor’s Note: CELDF is pleased to present a guest blog from our partner Susan Shaw, a solicitor and founder of Living Law, in Scotland. We have been engaging with groups in the U.K. for a number of years on advancing Rights of Nature frameworks, including holding a series of workshops, meetings, and public events in January 2019 in Northern Ireland with partner Friends of the Earth U.K.

The time has come for the U.K. to join with others and recognize the strategic potential of a Rights of Nature approach in our national laws.

The tragic events we have witnessed from the Amazon must act as an epiphany for the entire international community: restoring harmony and balance between people and Nature is not an ‘optional nice to do.’ It’s a matter of international peace and security, and humanity’s own survival. The science tells us that time is not on our side. We risk crossing further tipping points in the Earth-system. Every member of the international community must step up, show leadership, and finish the job it started with the Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment in 1972, almost 50 years ago.

The Rights of Nature movement, which is rapidly gaining traction across the world, offers an important pathway forward in law to help guide the required paradigm shift, in a managed way. This premise may seem radical but is a natural (and necessary) departure from approaches that still view Nature as property to be exploited endlessly. Far from being a new concept, Rights of Nature are embedded in indigenous cultures and practices across the world, recognizing the reality that all life is deeply connected and interdependent.

 A Sixth Mass Extinction

For the first time ever, we recently saw the rapid decline in biodiversity placed front-and-centre on the G7 Agenda in Biarritz and our leaders commit to a new ‘Biodiversity Charter.’ This follows the release of the IPBES Report earlier this year that confirmed from the world’s top scientists that we have entered a sixth mass extinction and that 1,000,000 species will likely disappear unless we fundamentally change our course. We are in the midst of an ecological crisis – biodiversity loss is recognized as being an equivalent threat to that of climate change. Chemical pollution, ocean acidification, the nitrogen cycle, and other phenomena present additional challenges, as we come face-to-face with the inescapable reality of how far outside of equilibrium we are living with the natural world.

Planetary Boundaries are said to be linked such that crossing one threshold in the Earth-system may increase the risks of crossing other thresholds, and undermining the overall resilience of Nature to absorb our unsustainable actions. We have known for many years that we face “inter-locking” (not separate) crises. And therefore, so too must our responses be guided urgently by this realization. There is a pressing need for holistic legal and governance solutions; not approaches which simply drive further environmental ‘problem-shifting’ (addressing one environmental problem, only to replace it with another equally problematic or unsustainable practice).

No Harm Obligation

We are simultaneously facing a renewed wave of misrepresentations, and outdated notions, of national sovereignty. These are equally present in the U.K.’s approaches to post-Brexit trade negotiations. We must be clear at this time that as a basic principle of international law, states have an obligation of “no-harm” in relation to activities that have transboundary dimensions. They also have obligations, deriving from human rights law, to protect us, their citizens. These facts must remain at the forefront of our thinking as we move forward. It is, simply put, not a sovereign right to do harm to others.

While acknowledging that law alone cannot realize the required changes in humanity’s behavior, history shows us the pivotal and catalyst role it offers, when used thoughtfully and diligently, to guide realignment. Just as we ended slavery, it’s now time to end the enslavement of Nature (and thereby, also people) that our existing environmental laws promote. Several countries have begun to embrace the Rights of Nature revolution – by recognizing that Nature, including ecosystems, populations, and species are guaranteed the rights to exist, flourish, regenerate, evolve and restore.

Embracing Legal Rights of Nature

From Bolivia to Bangladesh, Colombia, Ecuador, India, and New Zealand, all these countries have now already embraced forms of recognitions of legal rights for Nature in their national laws (as analyzed, amongst others, in a detailed report published by my firm last year). Opportunity exists for states to create legal recognitions of Nature while taking into account their own specific national circumstances. Through collaboration and shared learning with international experts and indigenous leaders, those at the forefront of the Nature Rights movement identified and proposed key guidelines for the recognition and enforcement of legal rights of the natural world (the “Rights of Nature Principles”) which can help guide the development of robust Nature Rights laws.

Using Critique to Advance a Paradigm Shift

For sure, this legal movement is not without any criticism. Yet, while some of these criticisms may, at first blush, seem merited – such as the difficulty to enforce Nature’s rights in the context of rivers which traverse more than one legal jurisdiction – they are not insurmountable with a little thought and collaboration in the development process. If anything, when many such criticisms undergo hard analysis they often underscore and add weight to why the optic shift is needed. What is important is that these issues are duly debated, and context-specific solutions identified. Equally, we must work to dispel common myths and fears.

Foremost amongst these, “Legal personhood – that is, the ability to bear rights and duties before the law – is often erroneously being conflated as giving nature the same rights as humans. This is patently not the case and is intended, some may say deliberately, to dismiss the Rights of Nature movement and make it seem absurd. Nowhere is there any suggestion for trees to vote!

Moreover, it must be emphasized that the concept of entities that cannot physically represent themselves being afforded recognitions in our legal system to ensure actions are guided by due ethical pre-requisites is not at all new – whether in the treatment of children, or the rights of corporate entities before the law. The imbalance in the current legal system here in Scotland was brought into sharp focus last year by the Ineos fracking case – where the corporation claimed erroneously that its rights to protection of property had been deprived by a moratorium on fracking. Had Nature’s rights been embedded in our legal system, this particular debate would not have likely even been arguable.

The Failure of World-Leading Environmental Laws

In the U.K. specifically, the most frequently encountered objection to Rights of Nature is that we already have world-leading environmental laws. Prior to Brexit, it is true that the U.K. was thought of as having highly sophisticated environmental laws. Yet, we also know they are failing to stem the rapid decline of Nature. Something is not working. And this is when hard analysis takes us to the heart of matters: many laws today – which are guided predominantly by environmental ‘targets’ – are still often designed with the aim of enabling governments to defend judicial review challenges. We should be clear too, that this is precisely what the U.K. Government’s proposals in its forthcoming Environmental Principles and Governance Bill are intended to do, as currently drafted. (Following the recent move to prorogue the U.K. Parliament, we will now have to await the next Queen’s speech to know even its fate).

The reality is that our existing environmental laws are “saving some trees, while losing the forest.” Developers and their agents have become, from experience, increasingly skilled at gaming environmental law. People and planet are frequently absent in debates that incentivize, indeed reward, extraction and conflict over harmony.

One example: I have recently been instructed to represent members of a local community group in the Lathro area of Kinross that has been battling for several years for existing environmental laws to be upheld and given, in their submission, proper regard. Notwithstanding that the overall area in question is bestowed with some of the highest-level protections and designations under EU and national law – the area, Loch Leven, is a Site for Special Scientific Interest, a National Nature Reserve, a Special Protected Area and a Ramsar site – the community have faced what can only be characterized as a war of attrition with developers. At every step, a battle to undertake proper Environmental Impact Assessment; to obtain independent studies of the impact of proposals on key biodiversity and species; to recognize flooding risks and concerns; and unable to stop the unplanned removal of mature oak trees (so far, without prosecution). This case illustrates how breaches of environmental laws may frequently still be approached as simply a cost of doing business.

Just like Lake Erie in the United States, the loch in this local community, the largest lowland loch in Scotland, is suffering another significant blue-green algae bloom, with many people seemingly unaware of the associated health risks posed. Nature has rendered another invoice for our unsustainable ways.

Reimagining Environmental Law

No one is suggesting that Rights of Nature are the only available tool to align our laws with rapidly advancing scientific understandings. What this movement does offer is an opportunity and an optic through which to re-imagine and guide existing environmental law towards the balance and harmony with Nature we urgently need. For sure this will not be without opposition, but we are running out of road to kick the can down. We can only expect to have the authority of holding others – the Bolsonaros of our world – to account, if we do as we ask of other members of the international community, in order to steer humanity from impending ecological disaster. The risks of failure must, after the recent events in the Amazon, now be patent to us all.

Susan Shaw is a public interest solicitor in Scotland and the founder of Living Law. She specializes in environmental and human rights issues across international, EU and national law. She is also an active member of the IUCN’s World Commission on Environmental Law and an Expert Member of the UN Harmony with Nature initiative.

Editor’s Note: CELDF is pleased to present a guest blog from our partner Susan Shaw, a solicitor and founder of Living Law, in Scotland. We have been engaging with groups in the U.K. for a number of years on advancing Rights of Nature frameworks, including holding a series of workshops, meetings, and public events in January 2019 in Northern Ireland with partner Friends of the Earth U.K.

The time has come for the U.K. to join with others and recognize the strategic potential of a Rights of Nature approach in our national laws.

The tragic events we have witnessed from the Amazon must act as an epiphany for the entire international community: restoring harmony and balance between people and Nature is not an ‘optional nice to do.’ It’s a matter of international peace and security, and humanity’s own survival. The science tells us that time is not on our side. We risk crossing further tipping points in the Earth-system. Every member of the international community must step up, show leadership, and finish the job it started with the Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment in 1972, almost 50 years ago.

The Rights of Nature movement, which is rapidly gaining traction across the world, offers an important pathway forward in law to help guide the required paradigm shift, in a managed way. This premise may seem radical but is a natural (and necessary) departure from approaches that still view Nature as property to be exploited endlessly. Far from being a new concept, Rights of Nature are embedded in indigenous cultures and practices across the world, recognizing the reality that all life is deeply connected and interdependent.

 A Sixth Mass Extinction

For the first time ever, we recently saw the rapid decline in biodiversity placed front-and-centre on the G7 Agenda in Biarritz and our leaders commit to a new ‘Biodiversity Charter.’ This follows the release of the IPBES Report earlier this year that confirmed from the world’s top scientists that we have entered a sixth mass extinction and that 1,000,000 species will likely disappear unless we fundamentally change our course. We are in the midst of an ecological crisis – biodiversity loss is recognized as being an equivalent threat to that of climate change. Chemical pollution, ocean acidification, the nitrogen cycle, and other phenomena present additional challenges, as we come face-to-face with the inescapable reality of how far outside of equilibrium we are living with the natural world.

Planetary Boundaries are said to be linked such that crossing one threshold in the Earth-system may increase the risks of crossing other thresholds, and undermining the overall resilience of Nature to absorb our unsustainable actions. We have known for many years that we face “inter-locking” (not separate) crises. And therefore, so too must our responses be guided urgently by this realization. There is a pressing need for holistic legal and governance solutions; not approaches which simply drive further environmental ‘problem-shifting’ (addressing one environmental problem, only to replace it with another equally problematic or unsustainable practice).

No Harm Obligation

We are simultaneously facing a renewed wave of misrepresentations, and outdated notions, of national sovereignty. These are equally present in the U.K.’s approaches to post-Brexit trade negotiations. We must be clear at this time that as a basic principle of international law, states have an obligation of “no-harm” in relation to activities that have transboundary dimensions. They also have obligations, deriving from human rights law, to protect us, their citizens. These facts must remain at the forefront of our thinking as we move forward. It is, simply put, not a sovereign right to do harm to others.

While acknowledging that law alone cannot realize the required changes in humanity’s behavior, history shows us the pivotal and catalyst role it offers, when used thoughtfully and diligently, to guide realignment. Just as we ended slavery, it’s now time to end the enslavement of Nature (and thereby, also people) that our existing environmental laws promote. Several countries have begun to embrace the Rights of Nature revolution – by recognizing that Nature, including ecosystems, populations, and species are guaranteed the rights to exist, flourish, regenerate, evolve and restore.

Embracing Legal Rights of Nature

From Bolivia to Bangladesh, Colombia, Ecuador, India, and New Zealand, all these countries have now already embraced forms of recognitions of legal rights for Nature in their national laws (as analyzed, amongst others, in a detailed report published by my firm last year). Opportunity exists for states to create legal recognitions of Nature while taking into account their own specific national circumstances. Through collaboration and shared learning with international experts and indigenous leaders, those at the forefront of the Nature Rights movement identified and proposed key guidelines for the recognition and enforcement of legal rights of the natural world (the “Rights of Nature Principles”) which can help guide the development of robust Nature Rights laws.

Using Critique to Advance a Paradigm Shift

For sure, this legal movement is not without any criticism. Yet, while some of these criticisms may, at first blush, seem merited – such as the difficulty to enforce Nature’s rights in the context of rivers which traverse more than one legal jurisdiction – they are not insurmountable with a little thought and collaboration in the development process. If anything, when many such criticisms undergo hard analysis they often underscore and add weight to why the optic shift is needed. What is important is that these issues are duly debated, and context-specific solutions identified. Equally, we must work to dispel common myths and fears.

Foremost amongst these, “Legal personhood – that is, the ability to bear rights and duties before the law – is often erroneously being conflated as giving nature the same rights as humans. This is patently not the case and is intended, some may say deliberately, to dismiss the Rights of Nature movement and make it seem absurd. Nowhere is there any suggestion for trees to vote!

Moreover, it must be emphasized that the concept of entities that cannot physically represent themselves being afforded recognitions in our legal system to ensure actions are guided by due ethical pre-requisites is not at all new – whether in the treatment of children, or the rights of corporate entities before the law. The imbalance in the current legal system here in Scotland was brought into sharp focus last year by the Ineos fracking case – where the corporation claimed erroneously that its rights to protection of property had been deprived by a moratorium on fracking. Had Nature’s rights been embedded in our legal system, this particular debate would not have likely even been arguable.

The Failure of World-Leading Environmental Laws

In the U.K. specifically, the most frequently encountered objection to Rights of Nature is that we already have world-leading environmental laws. Prior to Brexit, it is true that the U.K. was thought of as having highly sophisticated environmental laws. Yet, we also know they are failing to stem the rapid decline of Nature. Something is not working. And this is when hard analysis takes us to the heart of matters: many laws today – which are guided predominantly by environmental ‘targets’ – are still often designed with the aim of enabling governments to defend judicial review challenges. We should be clear too, that this is precisely what the U.K. Government’s proposals in its forthcoming Environmental Principles and Governance Bill are intended to do, as currently drafted. (Following the recent move to prorogue the U.K. Parliament, we will now have to await the next Queen’s speech to know even its fate).

The reality is that our existing environmental laws are “saving some trees, while losing the forest.” Developers and their agents have become, from experience, increasingly skilled at gaming environmental law. People and planet are frequently absent in debates that incentivize, indeed reward, extraction and conflict over harmony.

One example: I have recently been instructed to represent members of a local community group in the Lathro area of Kinross that has been battling for several years for existing environmental laws to be upheld and given, in their submission, proper regard. Notwithstanding that the overall area in question is bestowed with some of the highest-level protections and designations under EU and national law – the area, Loch Leven, is a Site for Special Scientific Interest, a National Nature Reserve, a Special Protected Area and a Ramsar site – the community have faced what can only be characterized as a war of attrition with developers. At every step, a battle to undertake proper Environmental Impact Assessment; to obtain independent studies of the impact of proposals on key biodiversity and species; to recognize flooding risks and concerns; and unable to stop the unplanned removal of mature oak trees (so far, without prosecution). This case illustrates how breaches of environmental laws may frequently still be approached as simply a cost of doing business.

Just like Lake Erie in the United States, the loch in this local community, the largest lowland loch in Scotland, is suffering another significant blue-green algae bloom, with many people seemingly unaware of the associated health risks posed. Nature has rendered another invoice for our unsustainable ways.

Reimagining Environmental Law

No one is suggesting that Rights of Nature are the only available tool to align our laws with rapidly advancing scientific understandings. What this movement does offer is an opportunity and an optic through which to re-imagine and guide existing environmental law towards the balance and harmony with Nature we urgently need. For sure this will not be without opposition, but we are running out of road to kick the can down. We can only expect to have the authority of holding others – the Bolsonaros of our world – to account, if we do as we ask of other members of the international community, in order to steer humanity from impending ecological disaster. The risks of failure must, after the recent events in the Amazon, now be patent to us all.

Susan Shaw is a public interest solicitor in Scotland and the founder of Living Law. She specializes in environmental and human rights issues across international, EU and national law. She is also an active member of the IUCN’s World Commission on Environmental Law and an Expert Member of the UN Harmony with Nature initiative.

Editor’s Note: CELDF is pleased to present a guest blog from our partner Susan Shaw, a solicitor and founder of Living Law, in Scotland. We have been engaging with groups in the U.K. for a number of years on advancing Rights of Nature frameworks, including holding a series of workshops, meetings, and public events in January 2019 in Northern Ireland with partner Friends of the Earth U.K.

The time has come for the U.K. to join with others and recognize the strategic potential of a Rights of Nature approach in our national laws.

The tragic events we have witnessed from the Amazon must act as an epiphany for the entire international community: restoring harmony and balance between people and Nature is not an ‘optional nice to do.’ It’s a matter of international peace and security, and humanity’s own survival. The science tells us that time is not on our side. We risk crossing further tipping points in the Earth-system. Every member of the international community must step up, show leadership, and finish the job it started with the Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment in 1972, almost 50 years ago.

The Rights of Nature movement, which is rapidly gaining traction across the world, offers an important pathway forward in law to help guide the required paradigm shift, in a managed way. This premise may seem radical but is a natural (and necessary) departure from approaches that still view Nature as property to be exploited endlessly. Far from being a new concept, Rights of Nature are embedded in indigenous cultures and practices across the world, recognizing the reality that all life is deeply connected and interdependent.

 A Sixth Mass Extinction

For the first time ever, we recently saw the rapid decline in biodiversity placed front-and-centre on the G7 Agenda in Biarritz and our leaders commit to a new ‘Biodiversity Charter.’ This follows the release of the IPBES Report earlier this year that confirmed from the world’s top scientists that we have entered a sixth mass extinction and that 1,000,000 species will likely disappear unless we fundamentally change our course. We are in the midst of an ecological crisis – biodiversity loss is recognized as being an equivalent threat to that of climate change. Chemical pollution, ocean acidification, the nitrogen cycle, and other phenomena present additional challenges, as we come face-to-face with the inescapable reality of how far outside of equilibrium we are living with the natural world.

Planetary Boundaries are said to be linked such that crossing one threshold in the Earth-system may increase the risks of crossing other thresholds, and undermining the overall resilience of Nature to absorb our unsustainable actions. We have known for many years that we face “inter-locking” (not separate) crises. And therefore, so too must our responses be guided urgently by this realization. There is a pressing need for holistic legal and governance solutions; not approaches which simply drive further environmental ‘problem-shifting’ (addressing one environmental problem, only to replace it with another equally problematic or unsustainable practice).

No Harm Obligation

We are simultaneously facing a renewed wave of misrepresentations, and outdated notions, of national sovereignty. These are equally present in the U.K.’s approaches to post-Brexit trade negotiations. We must be clear at this time that as a basic principle of international law, states have an obligation of “no-harm” in relation to activities that have transboundary dimensions. They also have obligations, deriving from human rights law, to protect us, their citizens. These facts must remain at the forefront of our thinking as we move forward. It is, simply put, not a sovereign right to do harm to others.

While acknowledging that law alone cannot realize the required changes in humanity’s behavior, history shows us the pivotal and catalyst role it offers, when used thoughtfully and diligently, to guide realignment. Just as we ended slavery, it’s now time to end the enslavement of Nature (and thereby, also people) that our existing environmental laws promote. Several countries have begun to embrace the Rights of Nature revolution – by recognizing that Nature, including ecosystems, populations, and species are guaranteed the rights to exist, flourish, regenerate, evolve and restore.

Embracing Legal Rights of Nature

From Bolivia to Bangladesh, Colombia, Ecuador, India, and New Zealand, all these countries have now already embraced forms of recognitions of legal rights for Nature in their national laws (as analyzed, amongst others, in a detailed report published by my firm last year). Opportunity exists for states to create legal recognitions of Nature while taking into account their own specific national circumstances. Through collaboration and shared learning with international experts and indigenous leaders, those at the forefront of the Nature Rights movement identified and proposed key guidelines for the recognition and enforcement of legal rights of the natural world (the “Rights of Nature Principles”) which can help guide the development of robust Nature Rights laws.

Using Critique to Advance a Paradigm Shift

For sure, this legal movement is not without any criticism. Yet, while some of these criticisms may, at first blush, seem merited – such as the difficulty to enforce Nature’s rights in the context of rivers which traverse more than one legal jurisdiction – they are not insurmountable with a little thought and collaboration in the development process. If anything, when many such criticisms undergo hard analysis they often underscore and add weight to why the optic shift is needed. What is important is that these issues are duly debated, and context-specific solutions identified. Equally, we must work to dispel common myths and fears.

Foremost amongst these, “Legal personhood – that is, the ability to bear rights and duties before the law – is often erroneously being conflated as giving nature the same rights as humans. This is patently not the case and is intended, some may say deliberately, to dismiss the Rights of Nature movement and make it seem absurd. Nowhere is there any suggestion for trees to vote!

Moreover, it must be emphasized that the concept of entities that cannot physically represent themselves being afforded recognitions in our legal system to ensure actions are guided by due ethical pre-requisites is not at all new – whether in the treatment of children, or the rights of corporate entities before the law. The imbalance in the current legal system here in Scotland was brought into sharp focus last year by the Ineos fracking case – where the corporation claimed erroneously that its rights to protection of property had been deprived by a moratorium on fracking. Had Nature’s rights been embedded in our legal system, this particular debate would not have likely even been arguable.

The Failure of World-Leading Environmental Laws

In the U.K. specifically, the most frequently encountered objection to Rights of Nature is that we already have world-leading environmental laws. Prior to Brexit, it is true that the U.K. was thought of as having highly sophisticated environmental laws. Yet, we also know they are failing to stem the rapid decline of Nature. Something is not working. And this is when hard analysis takes us to the heart of matters: many laws today – which are guided predominantly by environmental ‘targets’ – are still often designed with the aim of enabling governments to defend judicial review challenges. We should be clear too, that this is precisely what the U.K. Government’s proposals in its forthcoming Environmental Principles and Governance Bill are intended to do, as currently drafted. (Following the recent move to prorogue the U.K. Parliament, we will now have to await the next Queen’s speech to know even its fate).

The reality is that our existing environmental laws are “saving some trees, while losing the forest.” Developers and their agents have become, from experience, increasingly skilled at gaming environmental law. People and planet are frequently absent in debates that incentivize, indeed reward, extraction and conflict over harmony.

One example: I have recently been instructed to represent members of a local community group in the Lathro area of Kinross that has been battling for several years for existing environmental laws to be upheld and given, in their submission, proper regard. Notwithstanding that the overall area in question is bestowed with some of the highest-level protections and designations under EU and national law – the area, Loch Leven, is a Site for Special Scientific Interest, a National Nature Reserve, a Special Protected Area and a Ramsar site – the community have faced what can only be characterized as a war of attrition with developers. At every step, a battle to undertake proper Environmental Impact Assessment; to obtain independent studies of the impact of proposals on key biodiversity and species; to recognize flooding risks and concerns; and unable to stop the unplanned removal of mature oak trees (so far, without prosecution). This case illustrates how breaches of environmental laws may frequently still be approached as simply a cost of doing business.

Just like Lake Erie in the United States, the loch in this local community, the largest lowland loch in Scotland, is suffering another significant blue-green algae bloom, with many people seemingly unaware of the associated health risks posed. Nature has rendered another invoice for our unsustainable ways.

Reimagining Environmental Law

No one is suggesting that Rights of Nature are the only available tool to align our laws with rapidly advancing scientific understandings. What this movement does offer is an opportunity and an optic through which to re-imagine and guide existing environmental law towards the balance and harmony with Nature we urgently need. For sure this will not be without opposition, but we are running out of road to kick the can down. We can only expect to have the authority of holding others – the Bolsonaros of our world – to account, if we do as we ask of other members of the international community, in order to steer humanity from impending ecological disaster. The risks of failure must, after the recent events in the Amazon, now be patent to us all.

Susan Shaw is a public interest solicitor in Scotland and the founder of Living Law. She specializes in environmental and human rights issues across international, EU and national law. She is also an active member of the IUCN’s World Commission on Environmental Law and an Expert Member of the UN Harmony with Nature initiative.

Editor’s Note: CELDF is pleased to present a guest blog from our partner Susan Shaw, a solicitor and founder of Living Law, in Scotland. We have been engaging with groups in the U.K. for a number of years on advancing Rights of Nature frameworks, including holding a series of workshops, meetings, and public events in January 2019 in Northern Ireland with partner Friends of the Earth U.K.

The time has come for the U.K. to join with others and recognize the strategic potential of a Rights of Nature approach in our national laws.

The tragic events we have witnessed from the Amazon must act as an epiphany for the entire international community: restoring harmony and balance between people and Nature is not an ‘optional nice to do.’ It’s a matter of international peace and security, and humanity’s own survival. The science tells us that time is not on our side. We risk crossing further tipping points in the Earth-system. Every member of the international community must step up, show leadership, and finish the job it started with the Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment in 1972, almost 50 years ago.

The Rights of Nature movement, which is rapidly gaining traction across the world, offers an important pathway forward in law to help guide the required paradigm shift, in a managed way. This premise may seem radical but is a natural (and necessary) departure from approaches that still view Nature as property to be exploited endlessly. Far from being a new concept, Rights of Nature are embedded in indigenous cultures and practices across the world, recognizing the reality that all life is deeply connected and interdependent.

 A Sixth Mass Extinction

For the first time ever, we recently saw the rapid decline in biodiversity placed front-and-centre on the G7 Agenda in Biarritz and our leaders commit to a new ‘Biodiversity Charter.’ This follows the release of the IPBES Report earlier this year that confirmed from the world’s top scientists that we have entered a sixth mass extinction and that 1,000,000 species will likely disappear unless we fundamentally change our course. We are in the midst of an ecological crisis – biodiversity loss is recognized as being an equivalent threat to that of climate change. Chemical pollution, ocean acidification, the nitrogen cycle, and other phenomena present additional challenges, as we come face-to-face with the inescapable reality of how far outside of equilibrium we are living with the natural world.

Planetary Boundaries are said to be linked such that crossing one threshold in the Earth-system may increase the risks of crossing other thresholds, and undermining the overall resilience of Nature to absorb our unsustainable actions. We have known for many years that we face “inter-locking” (not separate) crises. And therefore, so too must our responses be guided urgently by this realization. There is a pressing need for holistic legal and governance solutions; not approaches which simply drive further environmental ‘problem-shifting’ (addressing one environmental problem, only to replace it with another equally problematic or unsustainable practice).

No Harm Obligation

We are simultaneously facing a renewed wave of misrepresentations, and outdated notions, of national sovereignty. These are equally present in the U.K.’s approaches to post-Brexit trade negotiations. We must be clear at this time that as a basic principle of international law, states have an obligation of “no-harm” in relation to activities that have transboundary dimensions. They also have obligations, deriving from human rights law, to protect us, their citizens. These facts must remain at the forefront of our thinking as we move forward. It is, simply put, not a sovereign right to do harm to others.

While acknowledging that law alone cannot realize the required changes in humanity’s behavior, history shows us the pivotal and catalyst role it offers, when used thoughtfully and diligently, to guide realignment. Just as we ended slavery, it’s now time to end the enslavement of Nature (and thereby, also people) that our existing environmental laws promote. Several countries have begun to embrace the Rights of Nature revolution – by recognizing that Nature, including ecosystems, populations, and species are guaranteed the rights to exist, flourish, regenerate, evolve and restore.

Embracing Legal Rights of Nature

From Bolivia to Bangladesh, Colombia, Ecuador, India, and New Zealand, all these countries have now already embraced forms of recognitions of legal rights for Nature in their national laws (as analyzed, amongst others, in a detailed report published by my firm last year). Opportunity exists for states to create legal recognitions of Nature while taking into account their own specific national circumstances. Through collaboration and shared learning with international experts and indigenous leaders, those at the forefront of the Nature Rights movement identified and proposed key guidelines for the recognition and enforcement of legal rights of the natural world (the “Rights of Nature Principles”) which can help guide the development of robust Nature Rights laws.

Using Critique to Advance a Paradigm Shift

For sure, this legal movement is not without any criticism. Yet, while some of these criticisms may, at first blush, seem merited – such as the difficulty to enforce Nature’s rights in the context of rivers which traverse more than one legal jurisdiction – they are not insurmountable with a little thought and collaboration in the development process. If anything, when many such criticisms undergo hard analysis they often underscore and add weight to why the optic shift is needed. What is important is that these issues are duly debated, and context-specific solutions identified. Equally, we must work to dispel common myths and fears.

Foremost amongst these, “Legal personhood – that is, the ability to bear rights and duties before the law – is often erroneously being conflated as giving nature the same rights as humans. This is patently not the case and is intended, some may say deliberately, to dismiss the Rights of Nature movement and make it seem absurd. Nowhere is there any suggestion for trees to vote!

Moreover, it must be emphasized that the concept of entities that cannot physically represent themselves being afforded recognitions in our legal system to ensure actions are guided by due ethical pre-requisites is not at all new – whether in the treatment of children, or the rights of corporate entities before the law. The imbalance in the current legal system here in Scotland was brought into sharp focus last year by the Ineos fracking case – where the corporation claimed erroneously that its rights to protection of property had been deprived by a moratorium on fracking. Had Nature’s rights been embedded in our legal system, this particular debate would not have likely even been arguable.

The Failure of World-Leading Environmental Laws

In the U.K. specifically, the most frequently encountered objection to Rights of Nature is that we already have world-leading environmental laws. Prior to Brexit, it is true that the U.K. was thought of as having highly sophisticated environmental laws. Yet, we also know they are failing to stem the rapid decline of Nature. Something is not working. And this is when hard analysis takes us to the heart of matters: many laws today – which are guided predominantly by environmental ‘targets’ – are still often designed with the aim of enabling governments to defend judicial review challenges. We should be clear too, that this is precisely what the U.K. Government’s proposals in its forthcoming Environmental Principles and Governance Bill are intended to do, as currently drafted. (Following the recent move to prorogue the U.K. Parliament, we will now have to await the next Queen’s speech to know even its fate).

The reality is that our existing environmental laws are “saving some trees, while losing the forest.” Developers and their agents have become, from experience, increasingly skilled at gaming environmental law. People and planet are frequently absent in debates that incentivize, indeed reward, extraction and conflict over harmony.

One example: I have recently been instructed to represent members of a local community group in the Lathro area of Kinross that has been battling for several years for existing environmental laws to be upheld and given, in their submission, proper regard. Notwithstanding that the overall area in question is bestowed with some of the highest-level protections and designations under EU and national law – the area, Loch Leven, is a Site for Special Scientific Interest, a National Nature Reserve, a Special Protected Area and a Ramsar site – the community have faced what can only be characterized as a war of attrition with developers. At every step, a battle to undertake proper Environmental Impact Assessment; to obtain independent studies of the impact of proposals on key biodiversity and species; to recognize flooding risks and concerns; and unable to stop the unplanned removal of mature oak trees (so far, without prosecution). This case illustrates how breaches of environmental laws may frequently still be approached as simply a cost of doing business.

Just like Lake Erie in the United States, the loch in this local community, the largest lowland loch in Scotland, is suffering another significant blue-green algae bloom, with many people seemingly unaware of the associated health risks posed. Nature has rendered another invoice for our unsustainable ways.

Reimagining Environmental Law

No one is suggesting that Rights of Nature are the only available tool to align our laws with rapidly advancing scientific understandings. What this movement does offer is an opportunity and an optic through which to re-imagine and guide existing environmental law towards the balance and harmony with Nature we urgently need. For sure this will not be without opposition, but we are running out of road to kick the can down. We can only expect to have the authority of holding others – the Bolsonaros of our world – to account, if we do as we ask of other members of the international community, in order to steer humanity from impending ecological disaster. The risks of failure must, after the recent events in the Amazon, now be patent to us all.

Susan Shaw is a public interest solicitor in Scotland and the founder of Living Law. She specializes in environmental and human rights issues across international, EU and national law. She is also an active member of the IUCN’s World Commission on Environmental Law and an Expert Member of the UN Harmony with Nature initiative.

Editor’s Note: CELDF is pleased to present a guest blog from our partner Susan Shaw, a solicitor and founder of Living Law, in Scotland. We have been engaging with groups in the U.K. for a number of years on advancing Rights of Nature frameworks, including holding a series of workshops, meetings, and public events in January 2019 in Northern Ireland with partner Friends of the Earth U.K.

The time has come for the U.K. to join with others and recognize the strategic potential of a Rights of Nature approach in our national laws.

The tragic events we have witnessed from the Amazon must act as an epiphany for the entire international community: restoring harmony and balance between people and Nature is not an ‘optional nice to do.’ It’s a matter of international peace and security, and humanity’s own survival. The science tells us that time is not on our side. We risk crossing further tipping points in the Earth-system. Every member of the international community must step up, show leadership, and finish the job it started with the Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment in 1972, almost 50 years ago.

The Rights of Nature movement, which is rapidly gaining traction across the world, offers an important pathway forward in law to help guide the required paradigm shift, in a managed way. This premise may seem radical but is a natural (and necessary) departure from approaches that still view Nature as property to be exploited endlessly. Far from being a new concept, Rights of Nature are embedded in indigenous cultures and practices across the world, recognizing the reality that all life is deeply connected and interdependent.

 A Sixth Mass Extinction

For the first time ever, we recently saw the rapid decline in biodiversity placed front-and-centre on the G7 Agenda in Biarritz and our leaders commit to a new ‘Biodiversity Charter.’ This follows the release of the IPBES Report earlier this year that confirmed from the world’s top scientists that we have entered a sixth mass extinction and that 1,000,000 species will likely disappear unless we fundamentally change our course. We are in the midst of an ecological crisis – biodiversity loss is recognized as being an equivalent threat to that of climate change. Chemical pollution, ocean acidification, the nitrogen cycle, and other phenomena present additional challenges, as we come face-to-face with the inescapable reality of how far outside of equilibrium we are living with the natural world.

Planetary Boundaries are said to be linked such that crossing one threshold in the Earth-system may increase the risks of crossing other thresholds, and undermining the overall resilience of Nature to absorb our unsustainable actions. We have known for many years that we face “inter-locking” (not separate) crises. And therefore, so too must our responses be guided urgently by this realization. There is a pressing need for holistic legal and governance solutions; not approaches which simply drive further environmental ‘problem-shifting’ (addressing one environmental problem, only to replace it with another equally problematic or unsustainable practice).

No Harm Obligation

We are simultaneously facing a renewed wave of misrepresentations, and outdated notions, of national sovereignty. These are equally present in the U.K.’s approaches to post-Brexit trade negotiations. We must be clear at this time that as a basic principle of international law, states have an obligation of “no-harm” in relation to activities that have transboundary dimensions. They also have obligations, deriving from human rights law, to protect us, their citizens. These facts must remain at the forefront of our thinking as we move forward. It is, simply put, not a sovereign right to do harm to others.

While acknowledging that law alone cannot realize the required changes in humanity’s behavior, history shows us the pivotal and catalyst role it offers, when used thoughtfully and diligently, to guide realignment. Just as we ended slavery, it’s now time to end the enslavement of Nature (and thereby, also people) that our existing environmental laws promote. Several countries have begun to embrace the Rights of Nature revolution – by recognizing that Nature, including ecosystems, populations, and species are guaranteed the rights to exist, flourish, regenerate, evolve and restore.

Embracing Legal Rights of Nature

From Bolivia to Bangladesh, Colombia, Ecuador, India, and New Zealand, all these countries have now already embraced forms of recognitions of legal rights for Nature in their national laws (as analyzed, amongst others, in a detailed report published by my firm last year). Opportunity exists for states to create legal recognitions of Nature while taking into account their own specific national circumstances. Through collaboration and shared learning with international experts and indigenous leaders, those at the forefront of the Nature Rights movement identified and proposed key guidelines for the recognition and enforcement of legal rights of the natural world (the “Rights of Nature Principles”) which can help guide the development of robust Nature Rights laws.

Using Critique to Advance a Paradigm Shift

For sure, this legal movement is not without any criticism. Yet, while some of these criticisms may, at first blush, seem merited – such as the difficulty to enforce Nature’s rights in the context of rivers which traverse more than one legal jurisdiction – they are not insurmountable with a little thought and collaboration in the development process. If anything, when many such criticisms undergo hard analysis they often underscore and add weight to why the optic shift is needed. What is important is that these issues are duly debated, and context-specific solutions identified. Equally, we must work to dispel common myths and fears.

Foremost amongst these, “Legal personhood – that is, the ability to bear rights and duties before the law – is often erroneously being conflated as giving nature the same rights as humans. This is patently not the case and is intended, some may say deliberately, to dismiss the Rights of Nature movement and make it seem absurd. Nowhere is there any suggestion for trees to vote!

Moreover, it must be emphasized that the concept of entities that cannot physically represent themselves being afforded recognitions in our legal system to ensure actions are guided by due ethical pre-requisites is not at all new – whether in the treatment of children, or the rights of corporate entities before the law. The imbalance in the current legal system here in Scotland was brought into sharp focus last year by the Ineos fracking case – where the corporation claimed erroneously that its rights to protection of property had been deprived by a moratorium on fracking. Had Nature’s rights been embedded in our legal system, this particular debate would not have likely even been arguable.

The Failure of World-Leading Environmental Laws

In the U.K. specifically, the most frequently encountered objection to Rights of Nature is that we already have world-leading environmental laws. Prior to Brexit, it is true that the U.K. was thought of as having highly sophisticated environmental laws. Yet, we also know they are failing to stem the rapid decline of Nature. Something is not working. And this is when hard analysis takes us to the heart of matters: many laws today – which are guided predominantly by environmental ‘targets’ – are still often designed with the aim of enabling governments to defend judicial review challenges. We should be clear too, that this is precisely what the U.K. Government’s proposals in its forthcoming Environmental Principles and Governance Bill are intended to do, as currently drafted. (Following the recent move to prorogue the U.K. Parliament, we will now have to await the next Queen’s speech to know even its fate).

The reality is that our existing environmental laws are “saving some trees, while losing the forest.” Developers and their agents have become, from experience, increasingly skilled at gaming environmental law. People and planet are frequently absent in debates that incentivize, indeed reward, extraction and conflict over harmony.

One example: I have recently been instructed to represent members of a local community group in the Lathro area of Kinross that has been battling for several years for existing environmental laws to be upheld and given, in their submission, proper regard. Notwithstanding that the overall area in question is bestowed with some of the highest-level protections and designations under EU and national law – the area, Loch Leven, is a Site for Special Scientific Interest, a National Nature Reserve, a Special Protected Area and a Ramsar site – the community have faced what can only be characterized as a war of attrition with developers. At every step, a battle to undertake proper Environmental Impact Assessment; to obtain independent studies of the impact of proposals on key biodiversity and species; to recognize flooding risks and concerns; and unable to stop the unplanned removal of mature oak trees (so far, without prosecution). This case illustrates how breaches of environmental laws may frequently still be approached as simply a cost of doing business.

Just like Lake Erie in the United States, the loch in this local community, the largest lowland loch in Scotland, is suffering another significant blue-green algae bloom, with many people seemingly unaware of the associated health risks posed. Nature has rendered another invoice for our unsustainable ways.

Reimagining Environmental Law

No one is suggesting that Rights of Nature are the only available tool to align our laws with rapidly advancing scientific understandings. What this movement does offer is an opportunity and an optic through which to re-imagine and guide existing environmental law towards the balance and harmony with Nature we urgently need. For sure this will not be without opposition, but we are running out of road to kick the can down. We can only expect to have the authority of holding others – the Bolsonaros of our world – to account, if we do as we ask of other members of the international community, in order to steer humanity from impending ecological disaster. The risks of failure must, after the recent events in the Amazon, now be patent to us all.

Susan Shaw is a public interest solicitor in Scotland and the founder of Living Law. She specializes in environmental and human rights issues across international, EU and national law. She is also an active member of the IUCN’s World Commission on Environmental Law and an Expert Member of the UN Harmony with Nature initiative.

Editor’s Note: CELDF is pleased to present a guest blog from our partner Susan Shaw, a solicitor and founder of Living Law, in Scotland. We have been engaging with groups in the U.K. for a number of years on advancing Rights of Nature frameworks, including holding a series of workshops, meetings, and public events in January 2019 in Northern Ireland with partner Friends of the Earth U.K.

The time has come for the U.K. to join with others and recognize the strategic potential of a Rights of Nature approach in our national laws.

The tragic events we have witnessed from the Amazon must act as an epiphany for the entire international community: restoring harmony and balance between people and Nature is not an ‘optional nice to do.’ It’s a matter of international peace and security, and humanity’s own survival. The science tells us that time is not on our side. We risk crossing further tipping points in the Earth-system. Every member of the international community must step up, show leadership, and finish the job it started with the Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment in 1972, almost 50 years ago.

The Rights of Nature movement, which is rapidly gaining traction across the world, offers an important pathway forward in law to help guide the required paradigm shift, in a managed way. This premise may seem radical but is a natural (and necessary) departure from approaches that still view Nature as property to be exploited endlessly. Far from being a new concept, Rights of Nature are embedded in indigenous cultures and practices across the world, recognizing the reality that all life is deeply connected and interdependent.

 A Sixth Mass Extinction

For the first time ever, we recently saw the rapid decline in biodiversity placed front-and-centre on the G7 Agenda in Biarritz and our leaders commit to a new ‘Biodiversity Charter.’ This follows the release of the IPBES Report earlier this year that confirmed from the world’s top scientists that we have entered a sixth mass extinction and that 1,000,000 species will likely disappear unless we fundamentally change our course. We are in the midst of an ecological crisis – biodiversity loss is recognized as being an equivalent threat to that of climate change. Chemical pollution, ocean acidification, the nitrogen cycle, and other phenomena present additional challenges, as we come face-to-face with the inescapable reality of how far outside of equilibrium we are living with the natural world.

Planetary Boundaries are said to be linked such that crossing one threshold in the Earth-system may increase the risks of crossing other thresholds, and undermining the overall resilience of Nature to absorb our unsustainable actions. We have known for many years that we face “inter-locking” (not separate) crises. And therefore, so too must our responses be guided urgently by this realization. There is a pressing need for holistic legal and governance solutions; not approaches which simply drive further environmental ‘problem-shifting’ (addressing one environmental problem, only to replace it with another equally problematic or unsustainable practice).

No Harm Obligation

We are simultaneously facing a renewed wave of misrepresentations, and outdated notions, of national sovereignty. These are equally present in the U.K.’s approaches to post-Brexit trade negotiations. We must be clear at this time that as a basic principle of international law, states have an obligation of “no-harm” in relation to activities that have transboundary dimensions. They also have obligations, deriving from human rights law, to protect us, their citizens. These facts must remain at the forefront of our thinking as we move forward. It is, simply put, not a sovereign right to do harm to others.

While acknowledging that law alone cannot realize the required changes in humanity’s behavior, history shows us the pivotal and catalyst role it offers, when used thoughtfully and diligently, to guide realignment. Just as we ended slavery, it’s now time to end the enslavement of Nature (and thereby, also people) that our existing environmental laws promote. Several countries have begun to embrace the Rights of Nature revolution – by recognizing that Nature, including ecosystems, populations, and species are guaranteed the rights to exist, flourish, regenerate, evolve and restore.

Embracing Legal Rights of Nature

From Bolivia to Bangladesh, Colombia, Ecuador, India, and New Zealand, all these countries have now already embraced forms of recognitions of legal rights for Nature in their national laws (as analyzed, amongst others, in a detailed report published by my firm last year). Opportunity exists for states to create legal recognitions of Nature while taking into account their own specific national circumstances. Through collaboration and shared learning with international experts and indigenous leaders, those at the forefront of the Nature Rights movement identified and proposed key guidelines for the recognition and enforcement of legal rights of the natural world (the “Rights of Nature Principles”) which can help guide the development of robust Nature Rights laws.

Using Critique to Advance a Paradigm Shift

For sure, this legal movement is not without any criticism. Yet, while some of these criticisms may, at first blush, seem merited – such as the difficulty to enforce Nature’s rights in the context of rivers which traverse more than one legal jurisdiction – they are not insurmountable with a little thought and collaboration in the development process. If anything, when many such criticisms undergo hard analysis they often underscore and add weight to why the optic shift is needed. What is important is that these issues are duly debated, and context-specific solutions identified. Equally, we must work to dispel common myths and fears.

Foremost amongst these, “Legal personhood – that is, the ability to bear rights and duties before the law – is often erroneously being conflated as giving nature the same rights as humans. This is patently not the case and is intended, some may say deliberately, to dismiss the Rights of Nature movement and make it seem absurd. Nowhere is there any suggestion for trees to vote!

Moreover, it must be emphasized that the concept of entities that cannot physically represent themselves being afforded recognitions in our legal system to ensure actions are guided by due ethical pre-requisites is not at all new – whether in the treatment of children, or the rights of corporate entities before the law. The imbalance in the current legal system here in Scotland was brought into sharp focus last year by the Ineos fracking case – where the corporation claimed erroneously that its rights to protection of property had been deprived by a moratorium on fracking. Had Nature’s rights been embedded in our legal system, this particular debate would not have likely even been arguable.

The Failure of World-Leading Environmental Laws

In the U.K. specifically, the most frequently encountered objection to Rights of Nature is that we already have world-leading environmental laws. Prior to Brexit, it is true that the U.K. was thought of as having highly sophisticated environmental laws. Yet, we also know they are failing to stem the rapid decline of Nature. Something is not working. And this is when hard analysis takes us to the heart of matters: many laws today – which are guided predominantly by environmental ‘targets’ – are still often designed with the aim of enabling governments to defend judicial review challenges. We should be clear too, that this is precisely what the U.K. Government’s proposals in its forthcoming Environmental Principles and Governance Bill are intended to do, as currently drafted. (Following the recent move to prorogue the U.K. Parliament, we will now have to await the next Queen’s speech to know even its fate).

The reality is that our existing environmental laws are “saving some trees, while losing the forest.” Developers and their agents have become, from experience, increasingly skilled at gaming environmental law. People and planet are frequently absent in debates that incentivize, indeed reward, extraction and conflict over harmony.

One example: I have recently been instructed to represent members of a local community group in the Lathro area of Kinross that has been battling for several years for existing environmental laws to be upheld and given, in their submission, proper regard. Notwithstanding that the overall area in question is bestowed with some of the highest-level protections and designations under EU and national law – the area, Loch Leven, is a Site for Special Scientific Interest, a National Nature Reserve, a Special Protected Area and a Ramsar site – the community have faced what can only be characterized as a war of attrition with developers. At every step, a battle to undertake proper Environmental Impact Assessment; to obtain independent studies of the impact of proposals on key biodiversity and species; to recognize flooding risks and concerns; and unable to stop the unplanned removal of mature oak trees (so far, without prosecution). This case illustrates how breaches of environmental laws may frequently still be approached as simply a cost of doing business.

Just like Lake Erie in the United States, the loch in this local community, the largest lowland loch in Scotland, is suffering another significant blue-green algae bloom, with many people seemingly unaware of the associated health risks posed. Nature has rendered another invoice for our unsustainable ways.

Reimagining Environmental Law

No one is suggesting that Rights of Nature are the only available tool to align our laws with rapidly advancing scientific understandings. What this movement does offer is an opportunity and an optic through which to re-imagine and guide existing environmental law towards the balance and harmony with Nature we urgently need. For sure this will not be without opposition, but we are running out of road to kick the can down. We can only expect to have the authority of holding others – the Bolsonaros of our world – to account, if we do as we ask of other members of the international community, in order to steer humanity from impending ecological disaster. The risks of failure must, after the recent events in the Amazon, now be patent to us all.

Susan Shaw is a public interest solicitor in Scotland and the founder of Living Law. She specializes in environmental and human rights issues across international, EU and national law. She is also an active member of the IUCN’s World Commission on Environmental Law and an Expert Member of the UN Harmony with Nature initiative.

Editor’s Note: CELDF is pleased to present a guest blog from our partner Susan Shaw, a solicitor and founder of Living Law, in Scotland. We have been engaging with groups in the U.K. for a number of years on advancing Rights of Nature frameworks, including holding a series of workshops, meetings, and public events in January 2019 in Northern Ireland with partner Friends of the Earth U.K.

The time has come for the U.K. to join with others and recognize the strategic potential of a Rights of Nature approach in our national laws.

The tragic events we have witnessed from the Amazon must act as an epiphany for the entire international community: restoring harmony and balance between people and Nature is not an ‘optional nice to do.’ It’s a matter of international peace and security, and humanity’s own survival. The science tells us that time is not on our side. We risk crossing further tipping points in the Earth-system. Every member of the international community must step up, show leadership, and finish the job it started with the Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment in 1972, almost 50 years ago.

The Rights of Nature movement, which is rapidly gaining traction across the world, offers an important pathway forward in law to help guide the required paradigm shift, in a managed way. This premise may seem radical but is a natural (and necessary) departure from approaches that still view Nature as property to be exploited endlessly. Far from being a new concept, Rights of Nature are embedded in indigenous cultures and practices across the world, recognizing the reality that all life is deeply connected and interdependent.

 A Sixth Mass Extinction

For the first time ever, we recently saw the rapid decline in biodiversity placed front-and-centre on the G7 Agenda in Biarritz and our leaders commit to a new ‘Biodiversity Charter.’ This follows the release of the IPBES Report earlier this year that confirmed from the world’s top scientists that we have entered a sixth mass extinction and that 1,000,000 species will likely disappear unless we fundamentally change our course. We are in the midst of an ecological crisis – biodiversity loss is recognized as being an equivalent threat to that of climate change. Chemical pollution, ocean acidification, the nitrogen cycle, and other phenomena present additional challenges, as we come face-to-face with the inescapable reality of how far outside of equilibrium we are living with the natural world.

Planetary Boundaries are said to be linked such that crossing one threshold in the Earth-system may increase the risks of crossing other thresholds, and undermining the overall resilience of Nature to absorb our unsustainable actions. We have known for many years that we face “inter-locking” (not separate) crises. And therefore, so too must our responses be guided urgently by this realization. There is a pressing need for holistic legal and governance solutions; not approaches which simply drive further environmental ‘problem-shifting’ (addressing one environmental problem, only to replace it with another equally problematic or unsustainable practice).

No Harm Obligation

We are simultaneously facing a renewed wave of misrepresentations, and outdated notions, of national sovereignty. These are equally present in the U.K.’s approaches to post-Brexit trade negotiations. We must be clear at this time that as a basic principle of international law, states have an obligation of “no-harm” in relation to activities that have transboundary dimensions. They also have obligations, deriving from human rights law, to protect us, their citizens. These facts must remain at the forefront of our thinking as we move forward. It is, simply put, not a sovereign right to do harm to others.

While acknowledging that law alone cannot realize the required changes in humanity’s behavior, history shows us the pivotal and catalyst role it offers, when used thoughtfully and diligently, to guide realignment. Just as we ended slavery, it’s now time to end the enslavement of Nature (and thereby, also people) that our existing environmental laws promote. Several countries have begun to embrace the Rights of Nature revolution – by recognizing that Nature, including ecosystems, populations, and species are guaranteed the rights to exist, flourish, regenerate, evolve and restore.

Embracing Legal Rights of Nature

From Bolivia to Bangladesh, Colombia, Ecuador, India, and New Zealand, all these countries have now already embraced forms of recognitions of legal rights for Nature in their national laws (as analyzed, amongst others, in a detailed report published by my firm last year). Opportunity exists for states to create legal recognitions of Nature while taking into account their own specific national circumstances. Through collaboration and shared learning with international experts and indigenous leaders, those at the forefront of the Nature Rights movement identified and proposed key guidelines for the recognition and enforcement of legal rights of the natural world (the “Rights of Nature Principles”) which can help guide the development of robust Nature Rights laws.

Using Critique to Advance a Paradigm Shift

For sure, this legal movement is not without any criticism. Yet, while some of these criticisms may, at first blush, seem merited – such as the difficulty to enforce Nature’s rights in the context of rivers which traverse more than one legal jurisdiction – they are not insurmountable with a little thought and collaboration in the development process. If anything, when many such criticisms undergo hard analysis they often underscore and add weight to why the optic shift is needed. What is important is that these issues are duly debated, and context-specific solutions identified. Equally, we must work to dispel common myths and fears.

Foremost amongst these, “Legal personhood – that is, the ability to bear rights and duties before the law – is often erroneously being conflated as giving nature the same rights as humans. This is patently not the case and is intended, some may say deliberately, to dismiss the Rights of Nature movement and make it seem absurd. Nowhere is there any suggestion for trees to vote!

Moreover, it must be emphasized that the concept of entities that cannot physically represent themselves being afforded recognitions in our legal system to ensure actions are guided by due ethical pre-requisites is not at all new – whether in the treatment of children, or the rights of corporate entities before the law. The imbalance in the current legal system here in Scotland was brought into sharp focus last year by the Ineos fracking case – where the corporation claimed erroneously that its rights to protection of property had been deprived by a moratorium on fracking. Had Nature’s rights been embedded in our legal system, this particular debate would not have likely even been arguable.

The Failure of World-Leading Environmental Laws

In the U.K. specifically, the most frequently encountered objection to Rights of Nature is that we already have world-leading environmental laws. Prior to Brexit, it is true that the U.K. was thought of as having highly sophisticated environmental laws. Yet, we also know they are failing to stem the rapid decline of Nature. Something is not working. And this is when hard analysis takes us to the heart of matters: many laws today – which are guided predominantly by environmental ‘targets’ – are still often designed with the aim of enabling governments to defend judicial review challenges. We should be clear too, that this is precisely what the U.K. Government’s proposals in its forthcoming Environmental Principles and Governance Bill are intended to do, as currently drafted. (Following the recent move to prorogue the U.K. Parliament, we will now have to await the next Queen’s speech to know even its fate).

The reality is that our existing environmental laws are “saving some trees, while losing the forest.” Developers and their agents have become, from experience, increasingly skilled at gaming environmental law. People and planet are frequently absent in debates that incentivize, indeed reward, extraction and conflict over harmony.

One example: I have recently been instructed to represent members of a local community group in the Lathro area of Kinross that has been battling for several years for existing environmental laws to be upheld and given, in their submission, proper regard. Notwithstanding that the overall area in question is bestowed with some of the highest-level protections and designations under EU and national law – the area, Loch Leven, is a Site for Special Scientific Interest, a National Nature Reserve, a Special Protected Area and a Ramsar site – the community have faced what can only be characterized as a war of attrition with developers. At every step, a battle to undertake proper Environmental Impact Assessment; to obtain independent studies of the impact of proposals on key biodiversity and species; to recognize flooding risks and concerns; and unable to stop the unplanned removal of mature oak trees (so far, without prosecution). This case illustrates how breaches of environmental laws may frequently still be approached as simply a cost of doing business.

Just like Lake Erie in the United States, the loch in this local community, the largest lowland loch in Scotland, is suffering another significant blue-green algae bloom, with many people seemingly unaware of the associated health risks posed. Nature has rendered another invoice for our unsustainable ways.

Reimagining Environmental Law

No one is suggesting that Rights of Nature are the only available tool to align our laws with rapidly advancing scientific understandings. What this movement does offer is an opportunity and an optic through which to re-imagine and guide existing environmental law towards the balance and harmony with Nature we urgently need. For sure this will not be without opposition, but we are running out of road to kick the can down. We can only expect to have the authority of holding others – the Bolsonaros of our world – to account, if we do as we ask of other members of the international community, in order to steer humanity from impending ecological disaster. The risks of failure must, after the recent events in the Amazon, now be patent to us all.

Susan Shaw is a public interest solicitor in Scotland and the founder of Living Law. She specializes in environmental and human rights issues across international, EU and national law. She is also an active member of the IUCN’s World Commission on Environmental Law and an Expert Member of the UN Harmony with Nature initiative.

Editor’s Note: CELDF is pleased to present a guest blog from our partner Susan Shaw, a solicitor and founder of Living Law, in Scotland. We have been engaging with groups in the U.K. for a number of years on advancing Rights of Nature frameworks, including holding a series of workshops, meetings, and public events in January 2019 in Northern Ireland with partner Friends of the Earth U.K.

The time has come for the U.K. to join with others and recognize the strategic potential of a Rights of Nature approach in our national laws.

The tragic events we have witnessed from the Amazon must act as an epiphany for the entire international community: restoring harmony and balance between people and Nature is not an ‘optional nice to do.’ It’s a matter of international peace and security, and humanity’s own survival. The science tells us that time is not on our side. We risk crossing further tipping points in the Earth-system. Every member of the international community must step up, show leadership, and finish the job it started with the Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment in 1972, almost 50 years ago.

The Rights of Nature movement, which is rapidly gaining traction across the world, offers an important pathway forward in law to help guide the required paradigm shift, in a managed way. This premise may seem radical but is a natural (and necessary) departure from approaches that still view Nature as property to be exploited endlessly. Far from being a new concept, Rights of Nature are embedded in indigenous cultures and practices across the world, recognizing the reality that all life is deeply connected and interdependent.

 A Sixth Mass Extinction

For the first time ever, we recently saw the rapid decline in biodiversity placed front-and-centre on the G7 Agenda in Biarritz and our leaders commit to a new ‘Biodiversity Charter.’ This follows the release of the IPBES Report earlier this year that confirmed from the world’s top scientists that we have entered a sixth mass extinction and that 1,000,000 species will likely disappear unless we fundamentally change our course. We are in the midst of an ecological crisis – biodiversity loss is recognized as being an equivalent threat to that of climate change. Chemical pollution, ocean acidification, the nitrogen cycle, and other phenomena present additional challenges, as we come face-to-face with the inescapable reality of how far outside of equilibrium we are living with the natural world.

Planetary Boundaries are said to be linked such that crossing one threshold in the Earth-system may increase the risks of crossing other thresholds, and undermining the overall resilience of Nature to absorb our unsustainable actions. We have known for many years that we face “inter-locking” (not separate) crises. And therefore, so too must our responses be guided urgently by this realization. There is a pressing need for holistic legal and governance solutions; not approaches which simply drive further environmental ‘problem-shifting’ (addressing one environmental problem, only to replace it with another equally problematic or unsustainable practice).

No Harm Obligation

We are simultaneously facing a renewed wave of misrepresentations, and outdated notions, of national sovereignty. These are equally present in the U.K.’s approaches to post-Brexit trade negotiations. We must be clear at this time that as a basic principle of international law, states have an obligation of “no-harm” in relation to activities that have transboundary dimensions. They also have obligations, deriving from human rights law, to protect us, their citizens. These facts must remain at the forefront of our thinking as we move forward. It is, simply put, not a sovereign right to do harm to others.

While acknowledging that law alone cannot realize the required changes in humanity’s behavior, history shows us the pivotal and catalyst role it offers, when used thoughtfully and diligently, to guide realignment. Just as we ended slavery, it’s now time to end the enslavement of Nature (and thereby, also people) that our existing environmental laws promote. Several countries have begun to embrace the Rights of Nature revolution – by recognizing that Nature, including ecosystems, populations, and species are guaranteed the rights to exist, flourish, regenerate, evolve and restore.

Embracing Legal Rights of Nature

From Bolivia to Bangladesh, Colombia, Ecuador, India, and New Zealand, all these countries have now already embraced forms of recognitions of legal rights for Nature in their national laws (as analyzed, amongst others, in a detailed report published by my firm last year). Opportunity exists for states to create legal recognitions of Nature while taking into account their own specific national circumstances. Through collaboration and shared learning with international experts and indigenous leaders, those at the forefront of the Nature Rights movement identified and proposed key guidelines for the recognition and enforcement of legal rights of the natural world (the “Rights of Nature Principles”) which can help guide the development of robust Nature Rights laws.

Using Critique to Advance a Paradigm Shift

For sure, this legal movement is not without any criticism. Yet, while some of these criticisms may, at first blush, seem merited – such as the difficulty to enforce Nature’s rights in the context of rivers which traverse more than one legal jurisdiction – they are not insurmountable with a little thought and collaboration in the development process. If anything, when many such criticisms undergo hard analysis they often underscore and add weight to why the optic shift is needed. What is important is that these issues are duly debated, and context-specific solutions identified. Equally, we must work to dispel common myths and fears.

Foremost amongst these, “Legal personhood – that is, the ability to bear rights and duties before the law – is often erroneously being conflated as giving nature the same rights as humans. This is patently not the case and is intended, some may say deliberately, to dismiss the Rights of Nature movement and make it seem absurd. Nowhere is there any suggestion for trees to vote!

Moreover, it must be emphasized that the concept of entities that cannot physically represent themselves being afforded recognitions in our legal system to ensure actions are guided by due ethical pre-requisites is not at all new – whether in the treatment of children, or the rights of corporate entities before the law. The imbalance in the current legal system here in Scotland was brought into sharp focus last year by the Ineos fracking case – where the corporation claimed erroneously that its rights to protection of property had been deprived by a moratorium on fracking. Had Nature’s rights been embedded in our legal system, this particular debate would not have likely even been arguable.

The Failure of World-Leading Environmental Laws

In the U.K. specifically, the most frequently encountered objection to Rights of Nature is that we already have world-leading environmental laws. Prior to Brexit, it is true that the U.K. was thought of as having highly sophisticated environmental laws. Yet, we also know they are failing to stem the rapid decline of Nature. Something is not working. And this is when hard analysis takes us to the heart of matters: many laws today – which are guided predominantly by environmental ‘targets’ – are still often designed with the aim of enabling governments to defend judicial review challenges. We should be clear too, that this is precisely what the U.K. Government’s proposals in its forthcoming Environmental Principles and Governance Bill are intended to do, as currently drafted. (Following the recent move to prorogue the U.K. Parliament, we will now have to await the next Queen’s speech to know even its fate).

The reality is that our existing environmental laws are “saving some trees, while losing the forest.” Developers and their agents have become, from experience, increasingly skilled at gaming environmental law. People and planet are frequently absent in debates that incentivize, indeed reward, extraction and conflict over harmony.

One example: I have recently been instructed to represent members of a local community group in the Lathro area of Kinross that has been battling for several years for existing environmental laws to be upheld and given, in their submission, proper regard. Notwithstanding that the overall area in question is bestowed with some of the highest-level protections and designations under EU and national law – the area, Loch Leven, is a Site for Special Scientific Interest, a National Nature Reserve, a Special Protected Area and a Ramsar site – the community have faced what can only be characterized as a war of attrition with developers. At every step, a battle to undertake proper Environmental Impact Assessment; to obtain independent studies of the impact of proposals on key biodiversity and species; to recognize flooding risks and concerns; and unable to stop the unplanned removal of mature oak trees (so far, without prosecution). This case illustrates how breaches of environmental laws may frequently still be approached as simply a cost of doing business.

Just like Lake Erie in the United States, the loch in this local community, the largest lowland loch in Scotland, is suffering another significant blue-green algae bloom, with many people seemingly unaware of the associated health risks posed. Nature has rendered another invoice for our unsustainable ways.

Reimagining Environmental Law

No one is suggesting that Rights of Nature are the only available tool to align our laws with rapidly advancing scientific understandings. What this movement does offer is an opportunity and an optic through which to re-imagine and guide existing environmental law towards the balance and harmony with Nature we urgently need. For sure this will not be without opposition, but we are running out of road to kick the can down. We can only expect to have the authority of holding others – the Bolsonaros of our world – to account, if we do as we ask of other members of the international community, in order to steer humanity from impending ecological disaster. The risks of failure must, after the recent events in the Amazon, now be patent to us all.

Susan Shaw is a public interest solicitor in Scotland and the founder of Living Law. She specializes in environmental and human rights issues across international, EU and national law. She is also an active member of the IUCN’s World Commission on Environmental Law and an Expert Member of the UN Harmony with Nature initiative.

Editor’s Note: CELDF is pleased to present a guest blog from our partner Susan Shaw, a solicitor and founder of Living Law, in Scotland. We have been engaging with groups in the U.K. for a number of years on advancing Rights of Nature frameworks, including holding a series of workshops, meetings, and public events in January 2019 in Northern Ireland with partner Friends of the Earth U.K.

The time has come for the U.K. to join with others and recognize the strategic potential of a Rights of Nature approach in our national laws.

The tragic events we have witnessed from the Amazon must act as an epiphany for the entire international community: restoring harmony and balance between people and Nature is not an ‘optional nice to do.’ It’s a matter of international peace and security, and humanity’s own survival. The science tells us that time is not on our side. We risk crossing further tipping points in the Earth-system. Every member of the international community must step up, show leadership, and finish the job it started with the Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment in 1972, almost 50 years ago.

The Rights of Nature movement, which is rapidly gaining traction across the world, offers an important pathway forward in law to help guide the required paradigm shift, in a managed way. This premise may seem radical but is a natural (and necessary) departure from approaches that still view Nature as property to be exploited endlessly. Far from being a new concept, Rights of Nature are embedded in indigenous cultures and practices across the world, recognizing the reality that all life is deeply connected and interdependent.

 A Sixth Mass Extinction

For the first time ever, we recently saw the rapid decline in biodiversity placed front-and-centre on the G7 Agenda in Biarritz and our leaders commit to a new ‘Biodiversity Charter.’ This follows the release of the IPBES Report earlier this year that confirmed from the world’s top scientists that we have entered a sixth mass extinction and that 1,000,000 species will likely disappear unless we fundamentally change our course. We are in the midst of an ecological crisis – biodiversity loss is recognized as being an equivalent threat to that of climate change. Chemical pollution, ocean acidification, the nitrogen cycle, and other phenomena present additional challenges, as we come face-to-face with the inescapable reality of how far outside of equilibrium we are living with the natural world.

Planetary Boundaries are said to be linked such that crossing one threshold in the Earth-system may increase the risks of crossing other thresholds, and undermining the overall resilience of Nature to absorb our unsustainable actions. We have known for many years that we face “inter-locking” (not separate) crises. And therefore, so too must our responses be guided urgently by this realization. There is a pressing need for holistic legal and governance solutions; not approaches which simply drive further environmental ‘problem-shifting’ (addressing one environmental problem, only to replace it with another equally problematic or unsustainable practice).

No Harm Obligation

We are simultaneously facing a renewed wave of misrepresentations, and outdated notions, of national sovereignty. These are equally present in the U.K.’s approaches to post-Brexit trade negotiations. We must be clear at this time that as a basic principle of international law, states have an obligation of “no-harm” in relation to activities that have transboundary dimensions. They also have obligations, deriving from human rights law, to protect us, their citizens. These facts must remain at the forefront of our thinking as we move forward. It is, simply put, not a sovereign right to do harm to others.

While acknowledging that law alone cannot realize the required changes in humanity’s behavior, history shows us the pivotal and catalyst role it offers, when used thoughtfully and diligently, to guide realignment. Just as we ended slavery, it’s now time to end the enslavement of Nature (and thereby, also people) that our existing environmental laws promote. Several countries have begun to embrace the Rights of Nature revolution – by recognizing that Nature, including ecosystems, populations, and species are guaranteed the rights to exist, flourish, regenerate, evolve and restore.

Embracing Legal Rights of Nature

From Bolivia to Bangladesh, Colombia, Ecuador, India, and New Zealand, all these countries have now already embraced forms of recognitions of legal rights for Nature in their national laws (as analyzed, amongst others, in a detailed report published by my firm last year). Opportunity exists for states to create legal recognitions of Nature while taking into account their own specific national circumstances. Through collaboration and shared learning with international experts and indigenous leaders, those at the forefront of the Nature Rights movement identified and proposed key guidelines for the recognition and enforcement of legal rights of the natural world (the “Rights of Nature Principles”) which can help guide the development of robust Nature Rights laws.

Using Critique to Advance a Paradigm Shift

For sure, this legal movement is not without any criticism. Yet, while some of these criticisms may, at first blush, seem merited – such as the difficulty to enforce Nature’s rights in the context of rivers which traverse more than one legal jurisdiction – they are not insurmountable with a little thought and collaboration in the development process. If anything, when many such criticisms undergo hard analysis they often underscore and add weight to why the optic shift is needed. What is important is that these issues are duly debated, and context-specific solutions identified. Equally, we must work to dispel common myths and fears.

Foremost amongst these, “Legal personhood – that is, the ability to bear rights and duties before the law – is often erroneously being conflated as giving nature the same rights as humans. This is patently not the case and is intended, some may say deliberately, to dismiss the Rights of Nature movement and make it seem absurd. Nowhere is there any suggestion for trees to vote!

Moreover, it must be emphasized that the concept of entities that cannot physically represent themselves being afforded recognitions in our legal system to ensure actions are guided by due ethical pre-requisites is not at all new – whether in the treatment of children, or the rights of corporate entities before the law. The imbalance in the current legal system here in Scotland was brought into sharp focus last year by the Ineos fracking case – where the corporation claimed erroneously that its rights to protection of property had been deprived by a moratorium on fracking. Had Nature’s rights been embedded in our legal system, this particular debate would not have likely even been arguable.

The Failure of World-Leading Environmental Laws

In the U.K. specifically, the most frequently encountered objection to Rights of Nature is that we already have world-leading environmental laws. Prior to Brexit, it is true that the U.K. was thought of as having highly sophisticated environmental laws. Yet, we also know they are failing to stem the rapid decline of Nature. Something is not working. And this is when hard analysis takes us to the heart of matters: many laws today – which are guided predominantly by environmental ‘targets’ – are still often designed with the aim of enabling governments to defend judicial review challenges. We should be clear too, that this is precisely what the U.K. Government’s proposals in its forthcoming Environmental Principles and Governance Bill are intended to do, as currently drafted. (Following the recent move to prorogue the U.K. Parliament, we will now have to await the next Queen’s speech to know even its fate).

The reality is that our existing environmental laws are “saving some trees, while losing the forest.” Developers and their agents have become, from experience, increasingly skilled at gaming environmental law. People and planet are frequently absent in debates that incentivize, indeed reward, extraction and conflict over harmony.

One example: I have recently been instructed to represent members of a local community group in the Lathro area of Kinross that has been battling for several years for existing environmental laws to be upheld and given, in their submission, proper regard. Notwithstanding that the overall area in question is bestowed with some of the highest-level protections and designations under EU and national law – the area, Loch Leven, is a Site for Special Scientific Interest, a National Nature Reserve, a Special Protected Area and a Ramsar site – the community have faced what can only be characterized as a war of attrition with developers. At every step, a battle to undertake proper Environmental Impact Assessment; to obtain independent studies of the impact of proposals on key biodiversity and species; to recognize flooding risks and concerns; and unable to stop the unplanned removal of mature oak trees (so far, without prosecution). This case illustrates how breaches of environmental laws may frequently still be approached as simply a cost of doing business.

Just like Lake Erie in the United States, the loch in this local community, the largest lowland loch in Scotland, is suffering another significant blue-green algae bloom, with many people seemingly unaware of the associated health risks posed. Nature has rendered another invoice for our unsustainable ways.

Reimagining Environmental Law

No one is suggesting that Rights of Nature are the only available tool to align our laws with rapidly advancing scientific understandings. What this movement does offer is an opportunity and an optic through which to re-imagine and guide existing environmental law towards the balance and harmony with Nature we urgently need. For sure this will not be without opposition, but we are running out of road to kick the can down. We can only expect to have the authority of holding others – the Bolsonaros of our world – to account, if we do as we ask of other members of the international community, in order to steer humanity from impending ecological disaster. The risks of failure must, after the recent events in the Amazon, now be patent to us all.

Susan Shaw is a public interest solicitor in Scotland and the founder of Living Law. She specializes in environmental and human rights issues across international, EU and national law. She is also an active member of the IUCN’s World Commission on Environmental Law and an Expert Member of the UN Harmony with Nature initiative.

Editor’s Note: CELDF is pleased to present a guest blog from our partner Susan Shaw, a solicitor and founder of Living Law, in Scotland. We have been engaging with groups in the U.K. for a number of years on advancing Rights of Nature frameworks, including holding a series of workshops, meetings, and public events in January 2019 in Northern Ireland with partner Friends of the Earth U.K.

The time has come for the U.K. to join with others and recognize the strategic potential of a Rights of Nature approach in our national laws.

The tragic events we have witnessed from the Amazon must act as an epiphany for the entire international community: restoring harmony and balance between people and Nature is not an ‘optional nice to do.’ It’s a matter of international peace and security, and humanity’s own survival. The science tells us that time is not on our side. We risk crossing further tipping points in the Earth-system. Every member of the international community must step up, show leadership, and finish the job it started with the Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment in 1972, almost 50 years ago.

The Rights of Nature movement, which is rapidly gaining traction across the world, offers an important pathway forward in law to help guide the required paradigm shift, in a managed way. This premise may seem radical but is a natural (and necessary) departure from approaches that still view Nature as property to be exploited endlessly. Far from being a new concept, Rights of Nature are embedded in indigenous cultures and practices across the world, recognizing the reality that all life is deeply connected and interdependent.

 A Sixth Mass Extinction

For the first time ever, we recently saw the rapid decline in biodiversity placed front-and-centre on the G7 Agenda in Biarritz and our leaders commit to a new ‘Biodiversity Charter.’ This follows the release of the IPBES Report earlier this year that confirmed from the world’s top scientists that we have entered a sixth mass extinction and that 1,000,000 species will likely disappear unless we fundamentally change our course. We are in the midst of an ecological crisis – biodiversity loss is recognized as being an equivalent threat to that of climate change. Chemical pollution, ocean acidification, the nitrogen cycle, and other phenomena present additional challenges, as we come face-to-face with the inescapable reality of how far outside of equilibrium we are living with the natural world.

Planetary Boundaries are said to be linked such that crossing one threshold in the Earth-system may increase the risks of crossing other thresholds, and undermining the overall resilience of Nature to absorb our unsustainable actions. We have known for many years that we face “inter-locking” (not separate) crises. And therefore, so too must our responses be guided urgently by this realization. There is a pressing need for holistic legal and governance solutions; not approaches which simply drive further environmental ‘problem-shifting’ (addressing one environmental problem, only to replace it with another equally problematic or unsustainable practice).

No Harm Obligation

We are simultaneously facing a renewed wave of misrepresentations, and outdated notions, of national sovereignty. These are equally present in the U.K.’s approaches to post-Brexit trade negotiations. We must be clear at this time that as a basic principle of international law, states have an obligation of “no-harm” in relation to activities that have transboundary dimensions. They also have obligations, deriving from human rights law, to protect us, their citizens. These facts must remain at the forefront of our thinking as we move forward. It is, simply put, not a sovereign right to do harm to others.

While acknowledging that law alone cannot realize the required changes in humanity’s behavior, history shows us the pivotal and catalyst role it offers, when used thoughtfully and diligently, to guide realignment. Just as we ended slavery, it’s now time to end the enslavement of Nature (and thereby, also people) that our existing environmental laws promote. Several countries have begun to embrace the Rights of Nature revolution – by recognizing that Nature, including ecosystems, populations, and species are guaranteed the rights to exist, flourish, regenerate, evolve and restore.

Embracing Legal Rights of Nature

From Bolivia to Bangladesh, Colombia, Ecuador, India, and New Zealand, all these countries have now already embraced forms of recognitions of legal rights for Nature in their national laws (as analyzed, amongst others, in a detailed report published by my firm last year). Opportunity exists for states to create legal recognitions of Nature while taking into account their own specific national circumstances. Through collaboration and shared learning with international experts and indigenous leaders, those at the forefront of the Nature Rights movement identified and proposed key guidelines for the recognition and enforcement of legal rights of the natural world (the “Rights of Nature Principles”) which can help guide the development of robust Nature Rights laws.

Using Critique to Advance a Paradigm Shift

For sure, this legal movement is not without any criticism. Yet, while some of these criticisms may, at first blush, seem merited – such as the difficulty to enforce Nature’s rights in the context of rivers which traverse more than one legal jurisdiction – they are not insurmountable with a little thought and collaboration in the development process. If anything, when many such criticisms undergo hard analysis they often underscore and add weight to why the optic shift is needed. What is important is that these issues are duly debated, and context-specific solutions identified. Equally, we must work to dispel common myths and fears.

Foremost amongst these, “Legal personhood – that is, the ability to bear rights and duties before the law – is often erroneously being conflated as giving nature the same rights as humans. This is patently not the case and is intended, some may say deliberately, to dismiss the Rights of Nature movement and make it seem absurd. Nowhere is there any suggestion for trees to vote!

Moreover, it must be emphasized that the concept of entities that cannot physically represent themselves being afforded recognitions in our legal system to ensure actions are guided by due ethical pre-requisites is not at all new – whether in the treatment of children, or the rights of corporate entities before the law. The imbalance in the current legal system here in Scotland was brought into sharp focus last year by the Ineos fracking case – where the corporation claimed erroneously that its rights to protection of property had been deprived by a moratorium on fracking. Had Nature’s rights been embedded in our legal system, this particular debate would not have likely even been arguable.

The Failure of World-Leading Environmental Laws

In the U.K. specifically, the most frequently encountered objection to Rights of Nature is that we already have world-leading environmental laws. Prior to Brexit, it is true that the U.K. was thought of as having highly sophisticated environmental laws. Yet, we also know they are failing to stem the rapid decline of Nature. Something is not working. And this is when hard analysis takes us to the heart of matters: many laws today – which are guided predominantly by environmental ‘targets’ – are still often designed with the aim of enabling governments to defend judicial review challenges. We should be clear too, that this is precisely what the U.K. Government’s proposals in its forthcoming Environmental Principles and Governance Bill are intended to do, as currently drafted. (Following the recent move to prorogue the U.K. Parliament, we will now have to await the next Queen’s speech to know even its fate).

The reality is that our existing environmental laws are “saving some trees, while losing the forest.” Developers and their agents have become, from experience, increasingly skilled at gaming environmental law. People and planet are frequently absent in debates that incentivize, indeed reward, extraction and conflict over harmony.

One example: I have recently been instructed to represent members of a local community group in the Lathro area of Kinross that has been battling for several years for existing environmental laws to be upheld and given, in their submission, proper regard. Notwithstanding that the overall area in question is bestowed with some of the highest-level protections and designations under EU and national law – the area, Loch Leven, is a Site for Special Scientific Interest, a National Nature Reserve, a Special Protected Area and a Ramsar site – the community have faced what can only be characterized as a war of attrition with developers. At every step, a battle to undertake proper Environmental Impact Assessment; to obtain independent studies of the impact of proposals on key biodiversity and species; to recognize flooding risks and concerns; and unable to stop the unplanned removal of mature oak trees (so far, without prosecution). This case illustrates how breaches of environmental laws may frequently still be approached as simply a cost of doing business.

Just like Lake Erie in the United States, the loch in this local community, the largest lowland loch in Scotland, is suffering another significant blue-green algae bloom, with many people seemingly unaware of the associated health risks posed. Nature has rendered another invoice for our unsustainable ways.

Reimagining Environmental Law

No one is suggesting that Rights of Nature are the only available tool to align our laws with rapidly advancing scientific understandings. What this movement does offer is an opportunity and an optic through which to re-imagine and guide existing environmental law towards the balance and harmony with Nature we urgently need. For sure this will not be without opposition, but we are running out of road to kick the can down. We can only expect to have the authority of holding others – the Bolsonaros of our world – to account, if we do as we ask of other members of the international community, in order to steer humanity from impending ecological disaster. The risks of failure must, after the recent events in the Amazon, now be patent to us all.

Susan Shaw is a public interest solicitor in Scotland and the founder of Living Law. She specializes in environmental and human rights issues across international, EU and national law. She is also an active member of the IUCN’s World Commission on Environmental Law and an Expert Member of the UN Harmony with Nature initiative.

Editor’s Note: CELDF is pleased to present a guest blog from our partner Susan Shaw, a solicitor and founder of Living Law, in Scotland. We have been engaging with groups in the U.K. for a number of years on advancing Rights of Nature frameworks, including holding a series of workshops, meetings, and public events in January 2019 in Northern Ireland with partner Friends of the Earth U.K.

The time has come for the U.K. to join with others and recognize the strategic potential of a Rights of Nature approach in our national laws.

The tragic events we have witnessed from the Amazon must act as an epiphany for the entire international community: restoring harmony and balance between people and Nature is not an ‘optional nice to do.’ It’s a matter of international peace and security, and humanity’s own survival. The science tells us that time is not on our side. We risk crossing further tipping points in the Earth-system. Every member of the international community must step up, show leadership, and finish the job it started with the Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment in 1972, almost 50 years ago.

The Rights of Nature movement, which is rapidly gaining traction across the world, offers an important pathway forward in law to help guide the required paradigm shift, in a managed way. This premise may seem radical but is a natural (and necessary) departure from approaches that still view Nature as property to be exploited endlessly. Far from being a new concept, Rights of Nature are embedded in indigenous cultures and practices across the world, recognizing the reality that all life is deeply connected and interdependent.

 A Sixth Mass Extinction

For the first time ever, we recently saw the rapid decline in biodiversity placed front-and-centre on the G7 Agenda in Biarritz and our leaders commit to a new ‘Biodiversity Charter.’ This follows the release of the IPBES Report earlier this year that confirmed from the world’s top scientists that we have entered a sixth mass extinction and that 1,000,000 species will likely disappear unless we fundamentally change our course. We are in the midst of an ecological crisis – biodiversity loss is recognized as being an equivalent threat to that of climate change. Chemical pollution, ocean acidification, the nitrogen cycle, and other phenomena present additional challenges, as we come face-to-face with the inescapable reality of how far outside of equilibrium we are living with the natural world.

Planetary Boundaries are said to be linked such that crossing one threshold in the Earth-system may increase the risks of crossing other thresholds, and undermining the overall resilience of Nature to absorb our unsustainable actions. We have known for many years that we face “inter-locking” (not separate) crises. And therefore, so too must our responses be guided urgently by this realization. There is a pressing need for holistic legal and governance solutions; not approaches which simply drive further environmental ‘problem-shifting’ (addressing one environmental problem, only to replace it with another equally problematic or unsustainable practice).

No Harm Obligation

We are simultaneously facing a renewed wave of misrepresentations, and outdated notions, of national sovereignty. These are equally present in the U.K.’s approaches to post-Brexit trade negotiations. We must be clear at this time that as a basic principle of international law, states have an obligation of “no-harm” in relation to activities that have transboundary dimensions. They also have obligations, deriving from human rights law, to protect us, their citizens. These facts must remain at the forefront of our thinking as we move forward. It is, simply put, not a sovereign right to do harm to others.

While acknowledging that law alone cannot realize the required changes in humanity’s behavior, history shows us the pivotal and catalyst role it offers, when used thoughtfully and diligently, to guide realignment. Just as we ended slavery, it’s now time to end the enslavement of Nature (and thereby, also people) that our existing environmental laws promote. Several countries have begun to embrace the Rights of Nature revolution – by recognizing that Nature, including ecosystems, populations, and species are guaranteed the rights to exist, flourish, regenerate, evolve and restore.

Embracing Legal Rights of Nature

From Bolivia to Bangladesh, Colombia, Ecuador, India, and New Zealand, all these countries have now already embraced forms of recognitions of legal rights for Nature in their national laws (as analyzed, amongst others, in a detailed report published by my firm last year). Opportunity exists for states to create legal recognitions of Nature while taking into account their own specific national circumstances. Through collaboration and shared learning with international experts and indigenous leaders, those at the forefront of the Nature Rights movement identified and proposed key guidelines for the recognition and enforcement of legal rights of the natural world (the “Rights of Nature Principles”) which can help guide the development of robust Nature Rights laws.

Using Critique to Advance a Paradigm Shift

For sure, this legal movement is not without any criticism. Yet, while some of these criticisms may, at first blush, seem merited – such as the difficulty to enforce Nature’s rights in the context of rivers which traverse more than one legal jurisdiction – they are not insurmountable with a little thought and collaboration in the development process. If anything, when many such criticisms undergo hard analysis they often underscore and add weight to why the optic shift is needed. What is important is that these issues are duly debated, and context-specific solutions identified. Equally, we must work to dispel common myths and fears.

Foremost amongst these, “Legal personhood – that is, the ability to bear rights and duties before the law – is often erroneously being conflated as giving nature the same rights as humans. This is patently not the case and is intended, some may say deliberately, to dismiss the Rights of Nature movement and make it seem absurd. Nowhere is there any suggestion for trees to vote!

Moreover, it must be emphasized that the concept of entities that cannot physically represent themselves being afforded recognitions in our legal system to ensure actions are guided by due ethical pre-requisites is not at all new – whether in the treatment of children, or the rights of corporate entities before the law. The imbalance in the current legal system here in Scotland was brought into sharp focus last year by the Ineos fracking case – where the corporation claimed erroneously that its rights to protection of property had been deprived by a moratorium on fracking. Had Nature’s rights been embedded in our legal system, this particular debate would not have likely even been arguable.

The Failure of World-Leading Environmental Laws

In the U.K. specifically, the most frequently encountered objection to Rights of Nature is that we already have world-leading environmental laws. Prior to Brexit, it is true that the U.K. was thought of as having highly sophisticated environmental laws. Yet, we also know they are failing to stem the rapid decline of Nature. Something is not working. And this is when hard analysis takes us to the heart of matters: many laws today – which are guided predominantly by environmental ‘targets’ – are still often designed with the aim of enabling governments to defend judicial review challenges. We should be clear too, that this is precisely what the U.K. Government’s proposals in its forthcoming Environmental Principles and Governance Bill are intended to do, as currently drafted. (Following the recent move to prorogue the U.K. Parliament, we will now have to await the next Queen’s speech to know even its fate).

The reality is that our existing environmental laws are “saving some trees, while losing the forest.” Developers and their agents have become, from experience, increasingly skilled at gaming environmental law. People and planet are frequently absent in debates that incentivize, indeed reward, extraction and conflict over harmony.

One example: I have recently been instructed to represent members of a local community group in the Lathro area of Kinross that has been battling for several years for existing environmental laws to be upheld and given, in their submission, proper regard. Notwithstanding that the overall area in question is bestowed with some of the highest-level protections and designations under EU and national law – the area, Loch Leven, is a Site for Special Scientific Interest, a National Nature Reserve, a Special Protected Area and a Ramsar site – the community have faced what can only be characterized as a war of attrition with developers. At every step, a battle to undertake proper Environmental Impact Assessment; to obtain independent studies of the impact of proposals on key biodiversity and species; to recognize flooding risks and concerns; and unable to stop the unplanned removal of mature oak trees (so far, without prosecution). This case illustrates how breaches of environmental laws may frequently still be approached as simply a cost of doing business.

Just like Lake Erie in the United States, the loch in this local community, the largest lowland loch in Scotland, is suffering another significant blue-green algae bloom, with many people seemingly unaware of the associated health risks posed. Nature has rendered another invoice for our unsustainable ways.

Reimagining Environmental Law

No one is suggesting that Rights of Nature are the only available tool to align our laws with rapidly advancing scientific understandings. What this movement does offer is an opportunity and an optic through which to re-imagine and guide existing environmental law towards the balance and harmony with Nature we urgently need. For sure this will not be without opposition, but we are running out of road to kick the can down. We can only expect to have the authority of holding others – the Bolsonaros of our world – to account, if we do as we ask of other members of the international community, in order to steer humanity from impending ecological disaster. The risks of failure must, after the recent events in the Amazon, now be patent to us all.

Susan Shaw is a public interest solicitor in Scotland and the founder of Living Law. She specializes in environmental and human rights issues across international, EU and national law. She is also an active member of the IUCN’s World Commission on Environmental Law and an Expert Member of the UN Harmony with Nature initiative.

Editor’s Note: CELDF is pleased to present a guest blog from our partner Susan Shaw, a solicitor and founder of Living Law, in Scotland. We have been engaging with groups in the U.K. for a number of years on advancing Rights of Nature frameworks, including holding a series of workshops, meetings, and public events in January 2019 in Northern Ireland with partner Friends of the Earth U.K.

The time has come for the U.K. to join with others and recognize the strategic potential of a Rights of Nature approach in our national laws.

The tragic events we have witnessed from the Amazon must act as an epiphany for the entire international community: restoring harmony and balance between people and Nature is not an ‘optional nice to do.’ It’s a matter of international peace and security, and humanity’s own survival. The science tells us that time is not on our side. We risk crossing further tipping points in the Earth-system. Every member of the international community must step up, show leadership, and finish the job it started with the Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment in 1972, almost 50 years ago.

The Rights of Nature movement, which is rapidly gaining traction across the world, offers an important pathway forward in law to help guide the required paradigm shift, in a managed way. This premise may seem radical but is a natural (and necessary) departure from approaches that still view Nature as property to be exploited endlessly. Far from being a new concept, Rights of Nature are embedded in indigenous cultures and practices across the world, recognizing the reality that all life is deeply connected and interdependent.

 A Sixth Mass Extinction

For the first time ever, we recently saw the rapid decline in biodiversity placed front-and-centre on the G7 Agenda in Biarritz and our leaders commit to a new ‘Biodiversity Charter.’ This follows the release of the IPBES Report earlier this year that confirmed from the world’s top scientists that we have entered a sixth mass extinction and that 1,000,000 species will likely disappear unless we fundamentally change our course. We are in the midst of an ecological crisis – biodiversity loss is recognized as being an equivalent threat to that of climate change. Chemical pollution, ocean acidification, the nitrogen cycle, and other phenomena present additional challenges, as we come face-to-face with the inescapable reality of how far outside of equilibrium we are living with the natural world.

Planetary Boundaries are said to be linked such that crossing one threshold in the Earth-system may increase the risks of crossing other thresholds, and undermining the overall resilience of Nature to absorb our unsustainable actions. We have known for many years that we face “inter-locking” (not separate) crises. And therefore, so too must our responses be guided urgently by this realization. There is a pressing need for holistic legal and governance solutions; not approaches which simply drive further environmental ‘problem-shifting’ (addressing one environmental problem, only to replace it with another equally problematic or unsustainable practice).

No Harm Obligation

We are simultaneously facing a renewed wave of misrepresentations, and outdated notions, of national sovereignty. These are equally present in the U.K.’s approaches to post-Brexit trade negotiations. We must be clear at this time that as a basic principle of international law, states have an obligation of “no-harm” in relation to activities that have transboundary dimensions. They also have obligations, deriving from human rights law, to protect us, their citizens. These facts must remain at the forefront of our thinking as we move forward. It is, simply put, not a sovereign right to do harm to others.

While acknowledging that law alone cannot realize the required changes in humanity’s behavior, history shows us the pivotal and catalyst role it offers, when used thoughtfully and diligently, to guide realignment. Just as we ended slavery, it’s now time to end the enslavement of Nature (and thereby, also people) that our existing environmental laws promote. Several countries have begun to embrace the Rights of Nature revolution – by recognizing that Nature, including ecosystems, populations, and species are guaranteed the rights to exist, flourish, regenerate, evolve and restore.

Embracing Legal Rights of Nature

From Bolivia to Bangladesh, Colombia, Ecuador, India, and New Zealand, all these countries have now already embraced forms of recognitions of legal rights for Nature in their national laws (as analyzed, amongst others, in a detailed report published by my firm last year). Opportunity exists for states to create legal recognitions of Nature while taking into account their own specific national circumstances. Through collaboration and shared learning with international experts and indigenous leaders, those at the forefront of the Nature Rights movement identified and proposed key guidelines for the recognition and enforcement of legal rights of the natural world (the “Rights of Nature Principles”) which can help guide the development of robust Nature Rights laws.

Using Critique to Advance a Paradigm Shift

For sure, this legal movement is not without any criticism. Yet, while some of these criticisms may, at first blush, seem merited – such as the difficulty to enforce Nature’s rights in the context of rivers which traverse more than one legal jurisdiction – they are not insurmountable with a little thought and collaboration in the development process. If anything, when many such criticisms undergo hard analysis they often underscore and add weight to why the optic shift is needed. What is important is that these issues are duly debated, and context-specific solutions identified. Equally, we must work to dispel common myths and fears.

Foremost amongst these, “Legal personhood – that is, the ability to bear rights and duties before the law – is often erroneously being conflated as giving nature the same rights as humans. This is patently not the case and is intended, some may say deliberately, to dismiss the Rights of Nature movement and make it seem absurd. Nowhere is there any suggestion for trees to vote!

Moreover, it must be emphasized that the concept of entities that cannot physically represent themselves being afforded recognitions in our legal system to ensure actions are guided by due ethical pre-requisites is not at all new – whether in the treatment of children, or the rights of corporate entities before the law. The imbalance in the current legal system here in Scotland was brought into sharp focus last year by the Ineos fracking case – where the corporation claimed erroneously that its rights to protection of property had been deprived by a moratorium on fracking. Had Nature’s rights been embedded in our legal system, this particular debate would not have likely even been arguable.

The Failure of World-Leading Environmental Laws

In the U.K. specifically, the most frequently encountered objection to Rights of Nature is that we already have world-leading environmental laws. Prior to Brexit, it is true that the U.K. was thought of as having highly sophisticated environmental laws. Yet, we also know they are failing to stem the rapid decline of Nature. Something is not working. And this is when hard analysis takes us to the heart of matters: many laws today – which are guided predominantly by environmental ‘targets’ – are still often designed with the aim of enabling governments to defend judicial review challenges. We should be clear too, that this is precisely what the U.K. Government’s proposals in its forthcoming Environmental Principles and Governance Bill are intended to do, as currently drafted. (Following the recent move to prorogue the U.K. Parliament, we will now have to await the next Queen’s speech to know even its fate).

The reality is that our existing environmental laws are “saving some trees, while losing the forest.” Developers and their agents have become, from experience, increasingly skilled at gaming environmental law. People and planet are frequently absent in debates that incentivize, indeed reward, extraction and conflict over harmony.

One example: I have recently been instructed to represent members of a local community group in the Lathro area of Kinross that has been battling for several years for existing environmental laws to be upheld and given, in their submission, proper regard. Notwithstanding that the overall area in question is bestowed with some of the highest-level protections and designations under EU and national law – the area, Loch Leven, is a Site for Special Scientific Interest, a National Nature Reserve, a Special Protected Area and a Ramsar site – the community have faced what can only be characterized as a war of attrition with developers. At every step, a battle to undertake proper Environmental Impact Assessment; to obtain independent studies of the impact of proposals on key biodiversity and species; to recognize flooding risks and concerns; and unable to stop the unplanned removal of mature oak trees (so far, without prosecution). This case illustrates how breaches of environmental laws may frequently still be approached as simply a cost of doing business.

Just like Lake Erie in the United States, the loch in this local community, the largest lowland loch in Scotland, is suffering another significant blue-green algae bloom, with many people seemingly unaware of the associated health risks posed. Nature has rendered another invoice for our unsustainable ways.

Reimagining Environmental Law

No one is suggesting that Rights of Nature are the only available tool to align our laws with rapidly advancing scientific understandings. What this movement does offer is an opportunity and an optic through which to re-imagine and guide existing environmental law towards the balance and harmony with Nature we urgently need. For sure this will not be without opposition, but we are running out of road to kick the can down. We can only expect to have the authority of holding others – the Bolsonaros of our world – to account, if we do as we ask of other members of the international community, in order to steer humanity from impending ecological disaster. The risks of failure must, after the recent events in the Amazon, now be patent to us all.

Susan Shaw is a public interest solicitor in Scotland and the founder of Living Law. She specializes in environmental and human rights issues across international, EU and national law. She is also an active member of the IUCN’s World Commission on Environmental Law and an Expert Member of the UN Harmony with Nature initiative.

In emails, the Ohio Chamber of Commerce says undermining Rights of Nature “is essential to what we’re trying to accomplish.”

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:
Tish ODell, Ohio Community Organizer
CELDF.org
tish@celdf.org
440-552-6774

COLUMBUS, OH: In April 2019, Zachary Frymier, Director of Energy and Environmental Policy for the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, reached out to an Ohio state representative with concerns about the Lake Erie Bill of Rights. The groundbreaking local initiative was proposed and adopted by Toledo, Ohio, voters two months earlier, recognizing  residents’ rights to a clean and healthy environment and the rights of Lake Erie to exist, flourish, and evolve, while banning harmful corporate activities as violations of those rights.

“We have some language that we’d request be considered for the budget,” Frymier wrote. Language stating that ecosystems and nature “do not have [legal] standing,” he wrote, “is essential to what we’re trying to accomplish. If we could get that added I would be very grateful.” The language was added to an unrelated biennial budget bill and passed into law by the Ohio General Assembly, and signed by the Governor.

The emails were obtained through Ohio’s Public Records Act, by Ohio community rights organizer Bill Lyons. “People are under the impression that their elected representatives write the laws and the process is transparent. This shows that industry is doing it for them. It’s supposed to be The People’s budget, the representatives say, but this is just a mirage,” says Lyons.

“The fact is it’s not just the Ohio Chamber,” says the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund’s (CELDF) National Organizing Director Ben Price. CELDF helped draft the Lake Erie Bill of Rights and is helping defend it in federal court. “Across the country, front groups for America’s plutocrats are on a mission to privatize government,” says Price. “We don’t have government by the people. Corporations run the show. We’ve got to put an end to that.”

While state and corporate efforts to stop the growing Rights of Nature movement are building across the country, growing numbers of communities are surging ahead with citizen initiatives and state constitutional amendments to recognize those rights and elevate them above corporate “rights.” Communities have adopted more than 30 Rights of Nature laws in the United States since 2006. Internationally, Rights of Nature laws are recognized in New Zealand, Ecuador, Colombia, and other nations.  

About CELDF — Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) is building a movement for Community Rights and the Rights of Nature to advance democratic, economic, social, and environmental rights – building upward from the grassroots to the state, federal, and international level.

Featured Image: Ohio Statehouse (Columbus, Ohio, USA) 1 by James St. John, Flickr Creative Commons

In emails, the Ohio Chamber of Commerce says undermining Rights of Nature “is essential to what we’re trying to accomplish.”

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:
Tish ODell, Ohio Community Organizer
CELDF.org
tish@celdf.org
440-552-6774

COLUMBUS, OH: In April 2019, Zachary Frymier, Director of Energy and Environmental Policy for the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, reached out to an Ohio state representative with concerns about the Lake Erie Bill of Rights. The groundbreaking local initiative was proposed and adopted by Toledo, Ohio, voters two months earlier, recognizing  residents’ rights to a clean and healthy environment and the rights of Lake Erie to exist, flourish, and evolve, while banning harmful corporate activities as violations of those rights.

“We have some language that we’d request be considered for the budget,” Frymier wrote. Language stating that ecosystems and nature “do not have [legal] standing,” he wrote, “is essential to what we’re trying to accomplish. If we could get that added I would be very grateful.” The language was added to an unrelated biennial budget bill and passed into law by the Ohio General Assembly, and signed by the Governor.

The emails were obtained through Ohio’s Public Records Act, by Ohio community rights organizer Bill Lyons. “People are under the impression that their elected representatives write the laws and the process is transparent. This shows that industry is doing it for them. It’s supposed to be The People’s budget, the representatives say, but this is just a mirage,” says Lyons.

“The fact is it’s not just the Ohio Chamber,” says the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund’s (CELDF) National Organizing Director Ben Price. CELDF helped draft the Lake Erie Bill of Rights and is helping defend it in federal court. “Across the country, front groups for America’s plutocrats are on a mission to privatize government,” says Price. “We don’t have government by the people. Corporations run the show. We’ve got to put an end to that.”

While state and corporate efforts to stop the growing Rights of Nature movement are building across the country, growing numbers of communities are surging ahead with citizen initiatives and state constitutional amendments to recognize those rights and elevate them above corporate “rights.” Communities have adopted more than 30 Rights of Nature laws in the United States since 2006. Internationally, Rights of Nature laws are recognized in New Zealand, Ecuador, Colombia, and other nations.  

About CELDF — Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) is building a movement for Community Rights and the Rights of Nature to advance democratic, economic, social, and environmental rights – building upward from the grassroots to the state, federal, and international level.

Featured Image: Ohio Statehouse (Columbus, Ohio, USA) 1 by James St. John, Flickr Creative Commons

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Advocates for a Clean Lake Erie
Mike Ferner
mike.ferner@sbcglobal.net
419-729-7273

Toledoans for Safe Water
Markie Miller
SafeWaterToledo@gmail.com
419-665-3743

Toledo, OH:

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine has signed a 2500+ page state budget bill which not only includes provisions attempting to abolish Rights of Nature law in the state of Ohio, but also contains hidden language to enhance protections for industrial agricultural operations, including animal factories and water privatization corporations.

 Lake Eerie Advocates want to raise awareness that the Ohio legislature and Governor have opted to protect industry and the ‘rights’ of corporate constituents to pollute while simultaneously stripping the people of their rights to pass local laws and protect the rights of ecosystems that sustain their community. The budget bill also includes statutory provisions that permit and legalize the theft of a community water supply in the interest of corporate profit.

 The budget bill states:

Nature or any ecosystem does not have standing to participate in or bring an action in any court of common pleas;

  • No person, on behalf of or representing nature or an ecosystem, shall bring an action in any court of common pleas;

  • In a civil action for nuisances involving agricultural activities, it is a complete defense if:

    • The agricultural activities were conducted within an (…) agricultural district or on land devoted exclusively to agricultural use (…);

    • The agricultural activities were established within the agricultural district prior to the plaintiff’s activities or interest on which the action is based;

    • The plaintiff was not involved in agricultural production; and

    • The agricultural activities were not in conflict with federal, state, and local laws and rules relating to the alleged nuisances or were conducted in accordance with generally accepted agriculture practices

 Markie Miller of TSW stated, “this sneaky and seemingly innocent language values, above everything,  corporate ‘rights’ to destroy the natural life sources we all depend on, for immediate profit, the consequences be damned.”

 In addition, the General Assembly has quietly installed significant new statutory powers in the Ohio Dept of Natural Resources to issue permits legalizing the theft of aquifer water, which when combined with the destruction of the rights of nature, seriously cripples a community’s only avenue to exert any control or protection over the privatization of their water source.

Lake Eerie advocates recognize the danger latent in this move on the part of the Ohio legislature.

“Do legislators and the governor understand what they’re doing by siding with corporations and making it illegal for people to protect the systems that support all life?  The so-called ‘right to farm’ part of this bill has nothing to do with farming and everything to do with letting animal factories continue using Lake Erie as a free toilet. The stakes are high and we will defend the only Earth we have,” said Mike Ferner of Advocates for a Clean Lake Erie.

These legislative actions demonstrate the recent pattern in Ohio of revoking the democratic rights of citizens while legalizing destructive corporate harms.

Hilary Tore of TSW commented, “this budget bill is a clear violation of Ohio’s single-subject law, yet the legislature continues to cherry-pick which laws they want to follow. A government is created by the people to protect the people and their rights. We don’t create government to harm us, yet that is what we have.”

Following a Daily Show profile of the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, the Ohio legislature has agreed on a new state budget that bans Rights of Nature enforcement.

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:
Tish O’Dell, Ohio Community Organizer
CELDF.org
tish@celdf.org
440-552-6774

COLUMBUS, OH: Yesterday, the Ohio Senate and House agreed on a new state budget that includes language to ban Rights of Nature enforcement. 

Rights of Nature is a new legal paradigm that is gaining momentum in Ohio, across the U.S., and around the world. More than thirty communities in the U.S. have adopted Rights of Nature laws, which recognize the rights of ecosystems to exist and flourish, protecting communities and nature from increasing environmental threats. Similar laws and court decisions are in place in New Zealand, Ecuador, Colombia, and other countries. In February, Toledo, Ohio, residents overwhelmingly adopted the Lake Erie Bill of Rights  the first law in the U.S. recognizing the rights of a distinct ecosystem.

This week, The Daily Show featured the people of Toledo behind the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, determined to protect their only water source from harmful corporate activities, by using Rights of Nature. In response, the state of Ohio is cracking down to stop them.

The language in the Ohio budget bill creates a section (2305.011) that defines “Nature” and “Ecosystem” in law, and goes on to ban legal actions on behalf of or by nature or ecosystems. The budget reads:

“Nature or any ecosystem does not have standing to participate in or bring an action in any court of common pleas.

No person, on behalf of or representing nature or an ecosystem, shall bring an action in any court of common pleas.”

Since 2012, nearly three dozen Rights of Nature initiatives have qualified for city and county ballots, and have faced varying levels of obstruction. Fourteen measures have been removed from the ballot and not allowed a vote, five have been passed into law by voters.

“When peoples’ movements work to expand rights, we see legislative efforts to stop them,” says the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund’s (CELDF) organizer Tish O’Dell. “It is a pattern that has been repeated over and over. In recent years when LGBTQ+ marriage equality was gaining momentum, reactionary states began to ban it. Today, it is the Ohio legislature, desperate to stop another expansion of rights. This won’t work either. The Ohio legislature is on the wrong side of history – the Rights of Nature train has already left the station.”

Despite the legislature’s attempts at dissuading the movement, residents of Williams County, Ohio, gathered 2,077 valid signatures to place a new county charter on the November 2019 ballot that would recognize the rights of the Michindoh Aquifer and protect it from privatization. They are facing opposition from the state and common pleas court to keep their initiative off the ballot. Columbus residents are also circulating petitions for a charter amendment to protect their water source, and seven other Ohio communities are fighting to protect their civil rights to propose such laws, against the state.

About CELDF — Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) is building a movement for Community Rights and the Rights of Nature to advance democratic, economic, social, and environmental rights – building upward from the grassroots to the state, federal, and international level.

###

Both the House and Senate have approved language to ban Rights of Nature enforcement.

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

CONTACT:
Tish O’Dell, Ohio Community Organizer
CELDF.org
tish@celdf.org
440-552-6774

COLUMBUS, OH:  This Sunday, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine is scheduled to sign off on a new state budget for 2020-2021.

Hidden within the 3,000+ page document are several paragraphs prohibiting the enforcement of a paradigm-shifting concept that has taken root in the state: legally enforceable rights for ecosystems. The budget bill comes four months after residents of Toledo passed the Lake Erie Bill of Rights (LEBOR) city charter amendment that recognizes the lake’s rights to “exist, flourish, and naturally evolve.”

The proposed House language reads:

“Nature or any ecosystem does not have standing to participate in or bring an action in any court of common pleas….No person, on behalf of or representing nature or an ecosystem, shall intervene in any manner.”

The state is coming out on the wrong side of history as the government tries to stop Rights of Nature, a concept that is experiencing accelerating growth around the planet.

The state is also attempting to stop Rights of Nature in court. Attorney General David Yost intervened on behalf of an agribusiness company to help overturn LEBOR. The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) helped draft LEBOR and is providing legal support to defend the people’s law.

As an apparent concession to Toledo residents, who adopted LEBOR because the state was failing to protect the Lake, Governor Mike DeWine proposed his H2Ohio plan to allocate $900 million dollars to invest in the health of Ohio waterways and Lake Erie. As with all other previous plans, the money will go towards future studies and vague solutions, such as “investing in technology to combat pollution.” No concrete plan to prohibit pollution is offered.

“By attempting to ban Rights of Nature enforcement, the state has delegitimized itself,” says CELDF’s Ohio organizer, Tish O’Dell. “The people of Toledo have exposed the truth. No one is protecting the Lake. Throwing more taxpayer dollars for ‘studies’ and ‘testing’ is not fooling anyone. The state cannot claim to be the sole protector of the Lake, while simultaneously opposing the people who are trying to protect the lake, siding with polluters, and trying to ban Rights of Nature!”

“Given dire warnings about the climate crisis and ecological devastation, the state’s actions are negligent. From Ecuador to New Zealand, to communities across the U.S., Rights of Nature laws are spreading because we must change our relationship with Nature. The time is now. Rights of Nature is here, and the state cannot stop this growing tide for change,” added Ellen Mavrich, Lorain County, Ohio Community Rights Network board member.

About CELDF — Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) is building a movement for Community Rights and the Rights of Nature to advance democratic, economic, social, and environmental rights – building upward from the grassroots to the state, federal, and international level.

Attorney General files complaint against the Lake Erie Bill of Rights protecting polluters


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

CONTACT:
CELDF
Tish O’Dell, Ohio Community Organizer
440-552-6774
tish@celdf.org

COLUMBUS, OH: On Friday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost filed a legal complaint to have the Lake Erie Bill of Rights (LEBOR) overturned.

The AG’s filing comes less than two weeks after the Ohio House of Representatives adopted its 2020-2021 budget with provisions that prohibit anyone, including local governments, from enforcing recognized legal rights for ecosystems. Friday’s court filing is the state’s intervention in a lawsuit filed by the agribusiness industry against LEBOR, Drewes Farm Partnership v. City of Toledo. The Ohio Farm Bureau is backing the lawsuit.

In Friday’s complaint, the State of Ohio “requests the court issue a permanent injunction” to stop the City of Toledo, any person, or “fictitious entity…from enforcing any provisions of [the] Charter Amendment.”

In defending its title as “proprietor in trust to the waters of Lake Erie,” the state argues LEBOR must be invalidated because it “deprives” fictitious corporate “persons” of the “privilege of engaging in lawful operations.” This includes, according to the state, “sludge management permits and permits for the discharge of sewage, industrial waste, or other wastes.” The state argues that denying industries’ permission to pollute, which the state controls, would be a violation of the constitutional rights of fictitious corporate “persons” under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. As such, the state claims it is beyond the power of local voters to protect their own rights or the lake.

“The lake is dying and the AG says only the state of Ohio has the power to protect it. But it’s not. A generation has passed during which the Ohio legislature and governors have stood by enabling a corrupt system of permitting and willfully ignoring scientific data that has caused water quality and the Lake’s condition to worsen to crisis levels. The people have had enough. The state claims to be the sole trustee of Lake Erie, but they have forfeited that trust by their inaction. The lake and the people have suffered direct harm due to the state’s failure to protect the health, safety and welfare of the people and the lake. Our Constitution states that the people can step in when their government fails them,” said Tish O’Dell, CELDF Ohio Organizer.

Markie Miller of Toledoans for Safe Water added, “Because of the state’s failure to act on behalf of the people and Lake Erie, we have suffered without water and we fear the next contamination or algae bloom. We know Lake Erie is dying, so this winter, WE did what the state would not – we took action. We asserted our inalienable democratic right to pass a law that will actually protect the Lake and our community. Now, ‘our’ government claims the people’s law is invalid and our judiciary is keeping us out of the judicial process completely. We will not allow this government to sabotage our basic rights, the rights of the Lake, and – most importantly – the future of our children.” 

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) is representing Toledoans as they fight to defend their Lake Erie Bill of Rights. 

About CELDF — Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund 

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund is a non-profit, public interest law firm providing free and affordable legal services to communities facing threats to their local environment, local agriculture, local economy, and quality of life. Its mission is to build sustainable communities by assisting people to assert their right to local self-government and the rights of nature. 

###

But it’s not for the reasons you would hope

 

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:
CELDF
Tish O’Dell, Ohio Community Organizer
440-552-6774
tish@celdf.org                                                                                                                                                                        

COLUMBUS, OH:  Today, the Ohio House of Representatives adopted its 2020-2021 budget with provisions that prohibit anyone, including local governments, from enforcing recognized legal rights for ecosystems.

The political maneuver is a direct response to the historic Lake Erie Bill of Rights passed by Toledo voters in February. That law recognizes legally enforceable rights for Erie, the 11th largest lake on the planet. It made national and international news.

At a time when the United Nations is reporting “unprecedented” rates of species extinction, such political strong arming to repress efforts to address the global crisis is in keeping with the state’s actions since 2014.

Over a dozen rights-based measures that included recognizing rights for ecosystems have been systematically stymied from being voted on by illegitimate actions taken by the Ohio supreme court, secretary of state, appointed board of elections officials, and the state legislature. Those tactics — ongoing for 5 years — are the subject of a federal Civil Rights lawsuit that communities jointly filed in February 2019.

“It’s not surprising that the Ohio legislature has the shameful distinction of being the first in the country to specifically name ecosystem rights – trying to quash them rather than taking the lead in recognizing them. This is the same state government that passed HB463 in 2016 in an attempt to stop communities from even advancing rights-based citizen initiatives,” stated Tish O’Dell, community organizer for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF). CELDF assisted these Ohio communities through organizing and legal support as they drafted, advanced, and defended their measures.

Crystal Jankowski, organizer with Toledoans for Safe Water – the local group behind the Lake Erie Bill of Rights – stated, “The state legislature’s continued efforts to quash this growing movement tell us that we are on the right track. Whenever people advance rights – for people of color, women, LGBTQ+ communities, or others – we see the 1% try to stop it, but we are not going away. Rights of Nature is a paradigm shift that is wholly necessary. We are facing catastrophic global warming and species extinction. The people of the planet, including Toledo, will act locally to address the crisis. We do not need permission.”

About CELDF — Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund is a non-profit, public interest law firm providing free and affordable legal services to communities facing threats to their local environment, local agriculture, local economy, and quality of life. Its mission is to build sustainable communities by assisting people to assert their right to local self-government and the rights of nature.

         

 

First law securing the rights of a plant species to exist and flourish

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:
Nicolette Slagle
Honor the Earth
nicolette@honorearth.org
218-979-0168

MERCERSBURG, PA:  The White Earth Band of Ojibwe – part of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe – adopted a Rights of Manoomin law.  The law protects legal rights of manoomin, or wild rice, securing on- and off-reservation protection of manoomin and the clean, fresh water resources and habitats on which it depends. The 1855 Treaty Authority adopted the Rights of Manoomin as well.

The White Earth tribal resolution explains that Rights of Manoomin was adopted because “it has become necessary to provide a legal basis to protect wild rice and fresh water resources as part of our primary treaty foods for future generations.”  This comes as wild rice, a traditional staple and sacred food for this Nation, faces significant impacts from habitat loss, climate change, development, genetic engineering, and other threats.

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) assisted Honor the Earth, an indigenous-led environmental advocacy group, in the development of the law.

“Manoomin is sacred to the Anishinaabeg, and it is time the law reflects this,” explains Winona LaDuke, Honor the Earth’s executive director.

“This is a very important step forward in the Rights of Nature movement, as this is the very first law to recognize legal rights of a plant species,” adds a CELDF representative.

CELDF has pioneered the first world’s first rights of nature laws, through its partnerships with communities and groups across the United States, with tribal nations, as well as with organizations in Nepal, India, Australia, and other countries.

– 30 –

Honor the Earth
607 Main Street, Callway, MN 56521
honorearth.org

Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund
P.O. Box 360, Mercersburg, PA 17236
celdf.org

Featured image: Wild Rice and Wild Clouds by Brett Whaley, Flickr Creative Commons

         

 

First law securing the rights of a plant species to exist and flourish

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:
Nicolette Slagle
Honor the Earth
nicolette@honorearth.org
218-979-0168

MERCERSBURG, PA:  The White Earth Band of Ojibwe – part of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe – adopted a Rights of Manoomin law.  The law protects legal rights of manoomin, or wild rice, securing on- and off-reservation protection of manoomin and the clean, fresh water resources and habitats on which it depends. The 1855 Treaty Authority adopted the Rights of Manoomin as well.

The White Earth tribal resolution explains that Rights of Manoomin was adopted because “it has become necessary to provide a legal basis to protect wild rice and fresh water resources as part of our primary treaty foods for future generations.”  This comes as wild rice, a traditional staple and sacred food for this Nation, faces significant impacts from habitat loss, climate change, development, genetic engineering, and other threats.

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) assisted Honor the Earth, an indigenous-led environmental advocacy group, in the development of the law.

“Manoomin is sacred to the Anishinaabeg, and it is time the law reflects this,” explains Winona LaDuke, Honor the Earth’s executive director.

“This is a very important step forward in the Rights of Nature movement, as this is the very first law to recognize legal rights of a plant species,” adds a CELDF representative.

CELDF has pioneered the first world’s first rights of nature laws, through its partnerships with communities and groups across the United States, with tribal nations, as well as with organizations in Nepal, India, Australia, and other countries.

– 30 –

Honor the Earth
607 Main Street, Callway, MN 56521
honorearth.org

Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund
P.O. Box 360, Mercersburg, PA 17236
celdf.org

Featured image: Wild Rice and Wild Clouds by Brett Whaley, Flickr Creative Commons

With a 70-percent affirmative vote of its membership, the National Lawyers Guild has incorporated advancement of “the rights of ecosystems” into its Guild Constitution.

The National Lawyers Guild Constitution’s Preamble now reads:

“The National Lawyers Guild is an association dedicated to the need for basic change in the structure of our political and economic system. We seek to unite the lawyers, law students, legal workers and jailhouse lawyers of America in an organization which shall function as an effective political and social force in the service of the people, to the end that human rights and the rights of ecosystems shall be regarded as more sacred than property interests…”

Marti Schmidt, an employment law attorney in Seattle, proposed the change last year, and several members of the association added statements of support.

“The truth of the matter is that the rights of ecosystems are human rights. Humans are a part of the ecosystem; they are not separate from it. Rather than a relationship based on human domination, we must recognize that the humans are dependent on ecosystems.” Nathan C. Frischkorn – AZ

“If we aim to keep fighting for democracy and justice, we must necessarily fight for the ecosystems on which all life depends. The Guild has always been at the vanguard of the struggle for human rights. Now it must also step forward and speak up for the rights of nature.” Karen Hoffman – PA

The National Lawyers Guild is the oldest and most extensive network of public interest and human rights activists working within the legal system. It was founded in 1937 by progressive lawyers and jurists who believed then – and now – theirs is a major role in reconstructing legal values to emphasize human rights over property rights. Over the past 82 years they have:

  • helped prosecute Nazis at Nuremburg,
  • participated in Hansberry v. Lee,
  • represented the U.S. in the founding of the United Nations,
  • founded the American Trial Lawyers Association and the Center for Constitutional Rights,
  • represented accused during the McCarthy Era, and
  • represented civil rights activists and the Chicago 7 in the 1960s.

Several National Lawyers Guild attorneys who were involved also represent the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, which applauds the inclusion of ecosystem rights.

“Recognizing the rights of the earth and its ecosystems is going to take time, and this social movement will progress in stages. The first stage is just being able to think the thought that ecosystems can have rights, and not be merely property.” Lindsey Schromen-Wawrin – WA

The Rights of Nature Journey: Reflections

CELDF’s National Organizing Director Ben Price remembers 2008, when CELDF assisted in the drafting of Rights of Nature provisions for Ecuador’s new constitution. The Ecuadorian people adopted their new constitution overwhelmingly, with nearly 64% of the vote. Today, Rights of Nature is a growing global movement.

“When the tide of history changes, you can feel strong currents and undertows all around you,” reflects Ben Price, CELDF’s National Organizer Director. “When Ecuador followed the lead of little Tamaqua, Pennsylvania, by recognizing in law the intrinsic, unalienable Rights of Nature, I could feel the sea change and I knew that although it would take time, in the end, nothing would ever be the same.”

Still engaged in the work a decade later, Price realizes that “our instincts were right, and all the pragmatic reasons why it is not practical to recognize unalienable rights for Nature are manifestly wrong. Materialism is literally substance abuse. We can either awaken from the pipe dream of dominion over the world or perish in our self-delusion. The era of the reign of property and wealth are coming to an end. The Earth won’t long suffer to be enslaved by greed and the philosophy of the parasite. The project of turning the living world into money and power has failed to serve people or Nature.”

When asked how the work has grown and changed, Price recognizes that “the movement for the Rights of Nature has taken on a life of its own. Dozens of U.S. communities have enacted legal recognition of the rights of ecosystems. Native American councils have taken up the cause, and other nation-states, like India, New Zealand and Bolivia have taken action. The idea that Nature has rights offends only those whose privilege and power are threatened by the thought that they may no longer act with impunity toward the world on which we depend for health and life. It is a wholesome, common sense, normal notion that, as the people stir from the long coma of civilization under the dictatorship of greed, the Rights of Nature will eventually gain universal acceptance.”

Price feels it is now important to acknowledge that “it isn’t the invocation of human law, but a nurturing spirit that will lead eventually to right-relationship with the world. We have embarked on a mission to change the human paradigm, to reject the naive philosophy of human exceptionalism and separateness from Nature. For now, as we begin to resist and cure the pathology of empire built upon the legal fiction of property, we must rely on new life-affirming laws that will act like counter-spells to the trance-inducing legal deceptions of the past.”

International Rights of Nature Symposium
Quito, Ecuador
September 27 – 28, 2018

This Thursday and Friday! Rights of Nature champions from around the world are gathering in Quito, Ecuador, for this week’s International Rights of Nature Symposium and celebration, including a CELDF representative.

Watch Livestreaming!

Today, CELDF has assisted more than thirty communities in the United States to adopt laws recognizing the rights of ecosystems to exist and flourish. We are working with our partners in India to advance the rights of the Ganges River, in Nepal to recognize the rights of the Himalayas, in Australia to to recognize the Rights of the Great Barrier Reef, and dozens of other countries and communities around the globe.

Your support makes our Rights of Nature work viable. Please donate today – a better world is possible with your help.

Featured image: Hibiscus Blooms by Les Williams, Flickr Creative Commons

CELDF’s National Organizing Director Ben Price remembers 2008, when CELDF assisted in the drafting of Rights of Nature provisions for Ecuador’s new constitution. The Ecuadorian people adopted their new constitution overwhelmingly, with nearly 64% of the vote. Today, Rights of Nature is a growing global movement.

“When the tide of history changes, you can feel strong currents and undertows all around you,” reflects Ben Price, CELDF’s National Organizer Director. “When Ecuador followed the lead of little Tamaqua, Pennsylvania, by recognizing in law the intrinsic, unalienable Rights of Nature, I could feel the sea change and I knew that although it would take time, in the end, nothing would ever be the same.”

Still engaged in the work a decade later, Price realizes that “our instincts were right, and all the pragmatic reasons why it is not practical to recognize unalienable rights for Nature are manifestly wrong. Materialism is literally substance abuse. We can either awaken from the pipe dream of dominion over the world or perish in our self-delusion. The era of the reign of property and wealth are coming to an end. The Earth won’t long suffer to be enslaved by greed and the philosophy of the parasite. The project of turning the living world into money and power has failed to serve people or Nature.”

When asked how the work has grown and changed, Price recognizes that “the movement for the Rights of Nature has taken on a life of its own. Dozens of U.S. communities have enacted legal recognition of the rights of ecosystems. Native American councils have taken up the cause, and other nation-states, like India, New Zealand and Bolivia have taken action. The idea that Nature has rights offends only those whose privilege and power are threatened by the thought that they may no longer act with impunity toward the world on which we depend for health and life. It is a wholesome, common sense, normal notion that, as the people stir from the long coma of civilization under the dictatorship of greed, the Rights of Nature will eventually gain universal acceptance.”

Price feels it is now important to acknowledge that “it isn’t the invocation of human law, but a nurturing spirit that will lead eventually to right-relationship with the world. We have embarked on a mission to change the human paradigm, to reject the naive philosophy of human exceptionalism and separateness from Nature. For now, as we begin to resist and cure the pathology of empire built upon the legal fiction of property, we must rely on new life-affirming laws that will act like counter-spells to the trance-inducing legal deceptions of the past.”

International Rights of Nature Symposium
Quito, Ecuador
September 27 – 28, 2018

This Thursday and Friday! Rights of Nature champions from around the world are gathering in Quito, Ecuador, for this week’s International Rights of Nature Symposium and celebration, including a CELDF representative.

Watch Livestreaming!

Today, CELDF has assisted more than thirty communities in the United States to adopt laws recognizing the rights of ecosystems to exist and flourish. We are working with our partners in India to advance the rights of the Ganges River, in Nepal to recognize the rights of the Himalayas, in Australia to to recognize the Rights of the Great Barrier Reef, and dozens of other countries and communities around the globe.

Your support makes our Rights of Nature work viable. Please donate today – a better world is possible with your help.

Featured image: Hibiscus Blooms by Les Williams, Flickr Creative Commons

CELDF’s National Organizing Director Ben Price remembers 2008, when CELDF assisted in the drafting of Rights of Nature provisions for Ecuador’s new constitution. The Ecuadorian people adopted their new constitution overwhelmingly, with nearly 64% of the vote. Today, Rights of Nature is a growing global movement.

“When the tide of history changes, you can feel strong currents and undertows all around you,” reflects Ben Price, CELDF’s National Organizer Director. “When Ecuador followed the lead of little Tamaqua, Pennsylvania, by recognizing in law the intrinsic, unalienable Rights of Nature, I could feel the sea change and I knew that although it would take time, in the end, nothing would ever be the same.”

Still engaged in the work a decade later, Price realizes that “our instincts were right, and all the pragmatic reasons why it is not practical to recognize unalienable rights for Nature are manifestly wrong. Materialism is literally substance abuse. We can either awaken from the pipe dream of dominion over the world or perish in our self-delusion. The era of the reign of property and wealth are coming to an end. The Earth won’t long suffer to be enslaved by greed and the philosophy of the parasite. The project of turning the living world into money and power has failed to serve people or Nature.”

When asked how the work has grown and changed, Price recognizes that “the movement for the Rights of Nature has taken on a life of its own. Dozens of U.S. communities have enacted legal recognition of the rights of ecosystems. Native American councils have taken up the cause, and other nation-states, like India, New Zealand and Bolivia have taken action. The idea that Nature has rights offends only those whose privilege and power are threatened by the thought that they may no longer act with impunity toward the world on which we depend for health and life. It is a wholesome, common sense, normal notion that, as the people stir from the long coma of civilization under the dictatorship of greed, the Rights of Nature will eventually gain universal acceptance.”

Price feels it is now important to acknowledge that “it isn’t the invocation of human law, but a nurturing spirit that will lead eventually to right-relationship with the world. We have embarked on a mission to change the human paradigm, to reject the naive philosophy of human exceptionalism and separateness from Nature. For now, as we begin to resist and cure the pathology of empire built upon the legal fiction of property, we must rely on new life-affirming laws that will act like counter-spells to the trance-inducing legal deceptions of the past.”

International Rights of Nature Symposium
Quito, Ecuador
September 27 – 28, 2018

This Thursday and Friday! Rights of Nature champions from around the world are gathering in Quito, Ecuador, for this week’s International Rights of Nature Symposium and celebration, including a CELDF representative.

Watch Livestreaming!

Today, CELDF has assisted more than thirty communities in the United States to adopt laws recognizing the rights of ecosystems to exist and flourish. We are working with our partners in India to advance the rights of the Ganges River, in Nepal to recognize the rights of the Himalayas, in Australia to to recognize the Rights of the Great Barrier Reef, and dozens of other countries and communities around the globe.

Your support makes our Rights of Nature work viable. Please donate today – a better world is possible with your help.

Featured image: Hibiscus Blooms by Les Williams, Flickr Creative Commons

CELDF’s National Organizing Director Ben Price remembers 2008, when CELDF assisted in the drafting of Rights of Nature provisions for Ecuador’s new constitution. The Ecuadorian people adopted their new constitution overwhelmingly, with nearly 64% of the vote. Today, Rights of Nature is a growing global movement.

“When the tide of history changes, you can feel strong currents and undertows all around you,” reflects Ben Price, CELDF’s National Organizer Director. “When Ecuador followed the lead of little Tamaqua, Pennsylvania, by recognizing in law the intrinsic, unalienable Rights of Nature, I could feel the sea change and I knew that although it would take time, in the end, nothing would ever be the same.”

Still engaged in the work a decade later, Price realizes that “our instincts were right, and all the pragmatic reasons why it is not practical to recognize unalienable rights for Nature are manifestly wrong. Materialism is literally substance abuse. We can either awaken from the pipe dream of dominion over the world or perish in our self-delusion. The era of the reign of property and wealth are coming to an end. The Earth won’t long suffer to be enslaved by greed and the philosophy of the parasite. The project of turning the living world into money and power has failed to serve people or Nature.”

When asked how the work has grown and changed, Price recognizes that “the movement for the Rights of Nature has taken on a life of its own. Dozens of U.S. communities have enacted legal recognition of the rights of ecosystems. Native American councils have taken up the cause, and other nation-states, like India, New Zealand and Bolivia have taken action. The idea that Nature has rights offends only those whose privilege and power are threatened by the thought that they may no longer act with impunity toward the world on which we depend for health and life. It is a wholesome, common sense, normal notion that, as the people stir from the long coma of civilization under the dictatorship of greed, the Rights of Nature will eventually gain universal acceptance.”

Price feels it is now important to acknowledge that “it isn’t the invocation of human law, but a nurturing spirit that will lead eventually to right-relationship with the world. We have embarked on a mission to change the human paradigm, to reject the naive philosophy of human exceptionalism and separateness from Nature. For now, as we begin to resist and cure the pathology of empire built upon the legal fiction of property, we must rely on new life-affirming laws that will act like counter-spells to the trance-inducing legal deceptions of the past.”

International Rights of Nature Symposium
Quito, Ecuador
September 27 – 28, 2018

This Thursday and Friday! Rights of Nature champions from around the world are gathering in Quito, Ecuador, for this week’s International Rights of Nature Symposium and celebration, including a CELDF representative.

Watch Livestreaming!

Today, CELDF has assisted more than thirty communities in the United States to adopt laws recognizing the rights of ecosystems to exist and flourish. We are working with our partners in India to advance the rights of the Ganges River, in Nepal to recognize the rights of the Himalayas, in Australia to to recognize the Rights of the Great Barrier Reef, and dozens of other countries and communities around the globe.

Your support makes our Rights of Nature work viable. Please donate today – a better world is possible with your help.

Featured image: Hibiscus Blooms by Les Williams, Flickr Creative Commons

CELDF’s National Organizing Director Ben Price remembers 2008, when CELDF assisted in the drafting of Rights of Nature provisions for Ecuador’s new constitution. The Ecuadorian people adopted their new constitution overwhelmingly, with nearly 64% of the vote. Today, Rights of Nature is a growing global movement.

“When the tide of history changes, you can feel strong currents and undertows all around you,” reflects Ben Price, CELDF’s National Organizer Director. “When Ecuador followed the lead of little Tamaqua, Pennsylvania, by recognizing in law the intrinsic, unalienable Rights of Nature, I could feel the sea change and I knew that although it would take time, in the end, nothing would ever be the same.”

Still engaged in the work a decade later, Price realizes that “our instincts were right, and all the pragmatic reasons why it is not practical to recognize unalienable rights for Nature are manifestly wrong. Materialism is literally substance abuse. We can either awaken from the pipe dream of dominion over the world or perish in our self-delusion. The era of the reign of property and wealth are coming to an end. The Earth won’t long suffer to be enslaved by greed and the philosophy of the parasite. The project of turning the living world into money and power has failed to serve people or Nature.”

When asked how the work has grown and changed, Price recognizes that “the movement for the Rights of Nature has taken on a life of its own. Dozens of U.S. communities have enacted legal recognition of the rights of ecosystems. Native American councils have taken up the cause, and other nation-states, like India, New Zealand and Bolivia have taken action. The idea that Nature has rights offends only those whose privilege and power are threatened by the thought that they may no longer act with impunity toward the world on which we depend for health and life. It is a wholesome, common sense, normal notion that, as the people stir from the long coma of civilization under the dictatorship of greed, the Rights of Nature will eventually gain universal acceptance.”

Price feels it is now important to acknowledge that “it isn’t the invocation of human law, but a nurturing spirit that will lead eventually to right-relationship with the world. We have embarked on a mission to change the human paradigm, to reject the naive philosophy of human exceptionalism and separateness from Nature. For now, as we begin to resist and cure the pathology of empire built upon the legal fiction of property, we must rely on new life-affirming laws that will act like counter-spells to the trance-inducing legal deceptions of the past.”

International Rights of Nature Symposium
Quito, Ecuador
September 27 – 28, 2018

This Thursday and Friday! Rights of Nature champions from around the world are gathering in Quito, Ecuador, for this week’s International Rights of Nature Symposium and celebration, including a CELDF representative.

Watch Livestreaming!

Today, CELDF has assisted more than thirty communities in the United States to adopt laws recognizing the rights of ecosystems to exist and flourish. We are working with our partners in India to advance the rights of the Ganges River, in Nepal to recognize the rights of the Himalayas, in Australia to to recognize the Rights of the Great Barrier Reef, and dozens of other countries and communities around the globe.

Your support makes our Rights of Nature work viable. Please donate today – a better world is possible with your help.

Featured image: Hibiscus Blooms by Les Williams, Flickr Creative Commons

CELDF’s National Organizing Director Ben Price remembers 2008, when CELDF assisted in the drafting of Rights of Nature provisions for Ecuador’s new constitution. The Ecuadorian people adopted their new constitution overwhelmingly, with nearly 64% of the vote. Today, Rights of Nature is a growing global movement.

“When the tide of history changes, you can feel strong currents and undertows all around you,” reflects Ben Price, CELDF’s National Organizer Director. “When Ecuador followed the lead of little Tamaqua, Pennsylvania, by recognizing in law the intrinsic, unalienable Rights of Nature, I could feel the sea change and I knew that although it would take time, in the end, nothing would ever be the same.”

Still engaged in the work a decade later, Price realizes that “our instincts were right, and all the pragmatic reasons why it is not practical to recognize unalienable rights for Nature are manifestly wrong. Materialism is literally substance abuse. We can either awaken from the pipe dream of dominion over the world or perish in our self-delusion. The era of the reign of property and wealth are coming to an end. The Earth won’t long suffer to be enslaved by greed and the philosophy of the parasite. The project of turning the living world into money and power has failed to serve people or Nature.”

When asked how the work has grown and changed, Price recognizes that “the movement for the Rights of Nature has taken on a life of its own. Dozens of U.S. communities have enacted legal recognition of the rights of ecosystems. Native American councils have taken up the cause, and other nation-states, like India, New Zealand and Bolivia have taken action. The idea that Nature has rights offends only those whose privilege and power are threatened by the thought that they may no longer act with impunity toward the world on which we depend for health and life. It is a wholesome, common sense, normal notion that, as the people stir from the long coma of civilization under the dictatorship of greed, the Rights of Nature will eventually gain universal acceptance.”

Price feels it is now important to acknowledge that “it isn’t the invocation of human law, but a nurturing spirit that will lead eventually to right-relationship with the world. We have embarked on a mission to change the human paradigm, to reject the naive philosophy of human exceptionalism and separateness from Nature. For now, as we begin to resist and cure the pathology of empire built upon the legal fiction of property, we must rely on new life-affirming laws that will act like counter-spells to the trance-inducing legal deceptions of the past.”

International Rights of Nature Symposium
Quito, Ecuador
September 27 – 28, 2018

This Thursday and Friday! Rights of Nature champions from around the world are gathering in Quito, Ecuador, for this week’s International Rights of Nature Symposium and celebration, including a CELDF representative.

Watch Livestreaming!

Today, CELDF has assisted more than thirty communities in the United States to adopt laws recognizing the rights of ecosystems to exist and flourish. We are working with our partners in India to advance the rights of the Ganges River, in Nepal to recognize the rights of the Himalayas, in Australia to to recognize the Rights of the Great Barrier Reef, and dozens of other countries and communities around the globe.

Your support makes our Rights of Nature work viable. Please donate today – a better world is possible with your help.

Featured image: Hibiscus Blooms by Les Williams, Flickr Creative Commons

CELDF’s National Organizing Director Ben Price remembers 2008, when CELDF assisted in the drafting of Rights of Nature provisions for Ecuador’s new constitution. The Ecuadorian people adopted their new constitution overwhelmingly, with nearly 64% of the vote. Today, Rights of Nature is a growing global movement.

“When the tide of history changes, you can feel strong currents and undertows all around you,” reflects Ben Price, CELDF’s National Organizer Director. “When Ecuador followed the lead of little Tamaqua, Pennsylvania, by recognizing in law the intrinsic, unalienable Rights of Nature, I could feel the sea change and I knew that although it would take time, in the end, nothing would ever be the same.”

Still engaged in the work a decade later, Price realizes that “our instincts were right, and all the pragmatic reasons why it is not practical to recognize unalienable rights for Nature are manifestly wrong. Materialism is literally substance abuse. We can either awaken from the pipe dream of dominion over the world or perish in our self-delusion. The era of the reign of property and wealth are coming to an end. The Earth won’t long suffer to be enslaved by greed and the philosophy of the parasite. The project of turning the living world into money and power has failed to serve people or Nature.”

When asked how the work has grown and changed, Price recognizes that “the movement for the Rights of Nature has taken on a life of its own. Dozens of U.S. communities have enacted legal recognition of the rights of ecosystems. Native American councils have taken up the cause, and other nation-states, like India, New Zealand and Bolivia have taken action. The idea that Nature has rights offends only those whose privilege and power are threatened by the thought that they may no longer act with impunity toward the world on which we depend for health and life. It is a wholesome, common sense, normal notion that, as the people stir from the long coma of civilization under the dictatorship of greed, the Rights of Nature will eventually gain universal acceptance.”

Price feels it is now important to acknowledge that “it isn’t the invocation of human law, but a nurturing spirit that will lead eventually to right-relationship with the world. We have embarked on a mission to change the human paradigm, to reject the naive philosophy of human exceptionalism and separateness from Nature. For now, as we begin to resist and cure the pathology of empire built upon the legal fiction of property, we must rely on new life-affirming laws that will act like counter-spells to the trance-inducing legal deceptions of the past.”

International Rights of Nature Symposium
Quito, Ecuador
September 27 – 28, 2018

This Thursday and Friday! Rights of Nature champions from around the world are gathering in Quito, Ecuador, for this week’s International Rights of Nature Symposium and celebration, including a CELDF representative.

Watch Livestreaming!

Today, CELDF has assisted more than thirty communities in the United States to adopt laws recognizing the rights of ecosystems to exist and flourish. We are working with our partners in India to advance the rights of the Ganges River, in Nepal to recognize the rights of the Himalayas, in Australia to to recognize the Rights of the Great Barrier Reef, and dozens of other countries and communities around the globe.

Your support makes our Rights of Nature work viable. Please donate today – a better world is possible with your help.

Featured image: Hibiscus Blooms by Les Williams, Flickr Creative Commons

CELDF’s National Organizing Director Ben Price remembers 2008, when CELDF assisted in the drafting of Rights of Nature provisions for Ecuador’s new constitution. The Ecuadorian people adopted their new constitution overwhelmingly, with nearly 64% of the vote. Today, Rights of Nature is a growing global movement.

“When the tide of history changes, you can feel strong currents and undertows all around you,” reflects Ben Price, CELDF’s National Organizer Director. “When Ecuador followed the lead of little Tamaqua, Pennsylvania, by recognizing in law the intrinsic, unalienable Rights of Nature, I could feel the sea change and I knew that although it would take time, in the end, nothing would ever be the same.”

Still engaged in the work a decade later, Price realizes that “our instincts were right, and all the pragmatic reasons why it is not practical to recognize unalienable rights for Nature are manifestly wrong. Materialism is literally substance abuse. We can either awaken from the pipe dream of dominion over the world or perish in our self-delusion. The era of the reign of property and wealth are coming to an end. The Earth won’t long suffer to be enslaved by greed and the philosophy of the parasite. The project of turning the living world into money and power has failed to serve people or Nature.”

When asked how the work has grown and changed, Price recognizes that “the movement for the Rights of Nature has taken on a life of its own. Dozens of U.S. communities have enacted legal recognition of the rights of ecosystems. Native American councils have taken up the cause, and other nation-states, like India, New Zealand and Bolivia have taken action. The idea that Nature has rights offends only those whose privilege and power are threatened by the thought that they may no longer act with impunity toward the world on which we depend for health and life. It is a wholesome, common sense, normal notion that, as the people stir from the long coma of civilization under the dictatorship of greed, the Rights of Nature will eventually gain universal acceptance.”

Price feels it is now important to acknowledge that “it isn’t the invocation of human law, but a nurturing spirit that will lead eventually to right-relationship with the world. We have embarked on a mission to change the human paradigm, to reject the naive philosophy of human exceptionalism and separateness from Nature. For now, as we begin to resist and cure the pathology of empire built upon the legal fiction of property, we must rely on new life-affirming laws that will act like counter-spells to the trance-inducing legal deceptions of the past.”

International Rights of Nature Symposium
Quito, Ecuador
September 27 – 28, 2018

This Thursday and Friday! Rights of Nature champions from around the world are gathering in Quito, Ecuador, for this week’s International Rights of Nature Symposium and celebration, including a CELDF representative.

Watch Livestreaming!

Today, CELDF has assisted more than thirty communities in the United States to adopt laws recognizing the rights of ecosystems to exist and flourish. We are working with our partners in India to advance the rights of the Ganges River, in Nepal to recognize the rights of the Himalayas, in Australia to to recognize the Rights of the Great Barrier Reef, and dozens of other countries and communities around the globe.

Your support makes our Rights of Nature work viable. Please donate today – a better world is possible with your help.

Featured image: Hibiscus Blooms by Les Williams, Flickr Creative Commons