Environmental personhood: what is it and why should nature be given legal status?

Giving a river legal rights might seem like a very modern incarnation of environmental awareness, but the idea was coined more than 50 years ago. Since then, a number of countries have recognized the legal status of specific elements of the environment, most often, though not, exclusively rivers, while Ecuador enshrined nature’s rights in its 2008 constitution.

Not all rights of nature frameworks are the same, although they broadly have the same goal. Essentially, the idea means that an individual can take legal action on behalf of nature. So, a person could take the polluter of a protected river to court because the river has the right to be pollution free. What it doesn’t mean is that action is taken on behalf of those people who might be affected by the river’s pollution.

Legal rulings set precedents, which in turn have the ability to influence policy and regulation. Cognisant of this, while cases of this sort are rising, they don’t necessarily go in favour of nature.

This, however, does not alter the fact that there appears to be a shift towards finding new and more powerful ways to protect and restore nature. This suggests either we are beginning to recognize greater value in nature or the tools available to protect nature are insufficient.

There is a mounting realization of the scale of the task of protecting nature. During the Annual Meeting, in Making the Case for Nature, Mindahi Crescencio Bastida Munoz, Coordinator for Earth Elders, described our situation as “such a systemic crisis that we need to rethink our position in the world as human beings”. He went on to question how it was possible that we live in a world where “corporations have more rights than the rivers, the mountains, the sea”.

Speaking on the same panel, Joyeeta Gupta, Professor of the Environment and Development in the Global South at the University of Amsterdam, put forward the idea of enshrining rights on a global scale to the global climate and hydrological cycles. For her, this is the only means by which we can achieve the profound effect that’s required to reverse climate damage.

Employing rights on this scale would mean that every government was legally bound to, for example, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, keep fossil fuels in the ground, and share resources with nature. For Gupta, the protection of single rivers, or the attempts by some economists to place a monetary value on an ecosystem so it can be represented on a balance sheet, simply don’t go sufficiently far or, in the case of the latter, are too theoretical.

Nature cannot speak for itself in a court of law. Those speaking at the Annual Meeting strongly felt that indigenous peoples were best placed to advocate on behalf of the planet and its resources.

From a purely practical perspective, large parts of the world’s biodiversity is found in indigenous lands, and Bastida suggested that it is only these communities that have the “original instructions, the original principles”.

For Cristina Mittermeier, Co-Founder and Lead Storyteller, SeaLegacy, who has worked closely with indigenous communities and animals the world over, there are no other communities as well placed. She spoke of her experiences of seeing degraded lands returned to indigenous communities, who with the “knowledge of thousands of years, the power of community, tradition and language,” more often than not are able to restore the land.

The role of indigenous peoples, their deep and intrinsic links with, and understanding of, nature, and their different values and principles resonated throughout the Annual Meeting. During Making the Case for Nature, one of the strongest sentiments to emerge was that all indigenous peoples share a system of values at the heart of which is the idea that the Earth is not here for people to exploit. On this point, Justin Langan, Curator of the Winnipeg Hub, argued that: “we mustn’t just focus on AI and technology, but instead on the nature and symbiosis of indigenous peoples.”

What also came through strongly was the need for us, as humans, to reconsider our dominant position. Mittermeier argued that if we want to “understand social and economic boundaries, we need to go back to indigenous ways”. This sentiment was echoed in the comments of Emmanuel de Merode, Director of the Virunga National Park, Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature (ICCN), who suggested that this “isn’t about nature; it’s about humanity’s place in the landscape.”

The shift from regarding nature as benefiting people to nature having intrinsic rights and protecting nature for the benefit of nature itself is growing. As Mittermeier said, if we want life to continue on Earth: “we need a full complement of plants and animal species to keep us alive.” If increasing numbers of people ascribe to this idea, then incidents of enshrining the rights of nature in law can be expected to rise as people race to protect the planet.