November 5, 2020 @ 5pm Eastern/2pm Pacific

Join us for a virtual presentation at the University of Akron — a stop on our Fall 2020 College Speaking Tour. The event is hosted by Environmental Action at the university.

Linzey’s presentation will also highlight what some have called the “most important environmental initiative on the ballot in the United States this November” – an effort to pass a “rights of nature” law in Orange County, Florida (the 30th largest County in the United States) that would recognize that County’s Wekiva and Econlockhatchee Rivers as having the legally recognized rights to “exist, flow, and maintain a healthy ecosystem.”

As part of our Fall 2020 College Speaking Tour across the United States, noted international environmental lawyer Thomas Linzey will be speaking (virtually) at the University of Akron on Thursday, November 5th from 5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. Eastern. The title for Linzey’s talk will be “Who Speaks for the Trees? The Movement for the Rights of Nature.”

Linzey is the senior legal counsel with the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights (CDER), and his presentation will focus on the growing “rights of nature” movement, in which national, state, and local governments have adopted laws which recognize legally enforceable rights for rivers, bays, forests, watersheds, mountains, and other ecosystems.

Linzey’s talk will focus on the genesis of this movement in rural Pennsylvania, and the Ecuadorian constitutional assembly’s placement of the “rights of nature” into its new national constitution in 2008. Linzey will then speak about how the idea has spread to court decisions in India, Bangladesh, Colombia, and other countries, and how Tribal Nations in the United States have advanced “rights of nature” tribal laws over the past ten years.

The event is open to the public and will be available via the Zoom virtual conference platform at this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88019583536?pwd=SndTVzFWNE5sdWk1TTF3S3Q2OFlDUT09