The Rights of Nature

Moving to a Rights-Based Framework to Protect Nature

The growing movement to protect the rights of nature comes as we face overlapping environmental crises, including accelerating species extinction and climate change.

As these crises build, there has been a growing recognition that existing environmental legal frameworks are inadequate to protect nature, and that environmental laws legalize much of the harm that is causing these crises.

Today’s environmental laws authorize human use of the environment, treating nature as property or an item of commerce.

Environmental laws permit certain uses of nature, including: the use and contamination of millions of gallons of fresh water at every fracking well, the use of mountain ecosystems by permitting the blowing up of mountaintops to mine coal, and the use of the atmosphere by authorizing the burning of fossil fuels which increases carbon dioxide levels. The consequences of treating nature in this way – as existing to serve human beings – is unsustainable and destroying the natural world upon which we depend.

The recognition of legal rights of nature represents a fundamental shift in humankind’s relationship with nature, from how we govern ourselves toward nature, to how nature itself is treated under the law.

In practice, this includes ensuring that human activity does not interfere with the ability of the natural world to be healthy, robust, and resilient. For instance, in Ecuador, enforcement of the constitutional rights of nature has included the Constitutional Court’s overturning of mining permits in fragile ecosystems and within the habitat of at-risk species.

Key Elements of Rights of Nature Laws

1. The recognition and protection of legal rights. Several examples:

• Orange County, Florida: secures the rights of rivers and waters to exist, flow, be protected against pollution, and to maintain a healthy ecosystem. (2020)

• Ecuador Constitution: secures the rights of nature – or Pachamama – to exist; to maintain and regenerate its life cycles, structure, functions, and evolutionary processes; and to restoration. (2008)

• White Earth Band of Ojibwe: secures the rights of manoomin to exist, flourish, regenerate, and evolve; to restoration, recovery, and preservation; to pure water and freshwater habitat; to a healthy climate system free from human-caused global warming emissions; to be free from patenting; and to be free from infestation from genetically engineered organisms, trans-genetic risk seed, or other seeds that have been developed using methods other than traditional plant breeding. (2018)

Note: Many rights of nature laws also protect the human right to a healthy environment, such as the Orange County law which recognizes the human right to clean water. 

2. Provisions to protect and defend the legal rights. Rights of nature laws provide people, communities, and governments – or a designated guardian – with the authority to defend and enforce rights on behalf of nature. 

This mechanism stands in stark contrast with today’s environmental laws which make it difficult to demonstrate legal “standing,” preventing effective enforcement of environmental laws. Under existing law, an individual must demonstrate that they have been harmed as a result of harm to nature (i.e., harm to a river from pollution is not the concern of a court, rather it’s harm to an individual as a result of harm to a river). Under a rights of nature law, it is harm to nature that is of foremost concern, and thus finding a remedy to protect nature is of foremost concern as well.

3. Provisions to implement the rights. Rights of nature laws may also provide for government to take steps to bring its actions into alignment with the rights of nature, to ensure that it is acting consistent with the legal rights. This can include changing criteria for governmental decision making, to ensure that its decisions are not interfering with the rights of an ecosystem, for example, to exist and regenerate.

Nature as a Holder of Legal Rights

The rights of nature transforms how the law treats nature – transforming nature from right-less (without legal rights) to rights-bearing (with legal rights).  

Legal rights are the highest form of legal protection in human written law.

Rights of nature laws shift away from legal systems focused on legalizing the exploitation of nature, to one focused on protecting nature and ensuring that human activities do not interfere with the ability of nature to be healthy, robust, and resilient. 

Rights of nature laws require that activities and practices are consistent with the legal rights.

In 2017, CDER’s founders worked with a group of international activists and lawyers to develop the Rights of Nature Principles, which outline the key elements that a rights of nature law should have to guarantee the protection of nature.  Those elements include:

- the protection of certain legal rights

- the authorization of government and people to enforce the legal rights of nature

- the requirement for government to uphold and implement the legal rights of nature

- the requirement that any violation of the rights of nature will require the full restoration of nature

Examples of the Legal Rights of Nature 

Ecuador Constitution, 2008

Article 71.  "Nature, or Pacha Mama, where life is reproduced and occurs, has the right to integral respect for its existence and for the maintenance and regeneration of its life cycles, structure, functions and evolutionary processes.

Article 72. “Nature has the right to be restored.”

Colombia Constitutional Court, 2016, Atrato River Judgment – Key Excerpts

"Recognize the Atrato river, its watershed and tributaries as an entity subject to rights to protection, conservation, maintenance and restoration..."

"...justice with nature must be applied beyond the human scenario and must allow nature to be a subject of rights. Under this understanding, the Court considers it necessary to take a step forward in jurisprudence towards the constitutional protection of one of its most important sources of biodiversity: the Atrato river."

Orange County, Florida, USA, 2020, Rights of Waterways Law

"The Wekiva River and Econlockhatchee River… and all other Waters within the boundaries of Orange County, have a right to exist, Flow, to be protected against Pollution and to maintain a healthy ecosystem."