Literature Review

The Rights of Nature, a notion that dates back to 1972 when Christopher Stone published Should Trees Have Standing – Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects, is a legal theory that gives nature rights the same way humans have rights. It asserts that human beings and parts of nature like plants, rivers, forests and animals share an equal right to exist. The movement pushes countries to recognize nature as a rights holder and grant nature legal standing. If nature had legal standing, it would be entitled to legal personhood status and the right to defend itself against harm in a court of law.

The Constitution of the Republic of Ecuador is the first in the world to recognize and guarantee rights to nature. These rights are provided in articles 71 and 72 of the Constitution.

In his thesis paper, Addison Luck reviews the history of rights of nature law in Ecuador in order to analyze local challenges and propose possible solutions to its enforcement. He begins by outlining the central tenets of the rights of nature movement, briefly tracing its progress in countries including the U.S., Ecuador, New Zealand, and others that grant legal rights to ecosystems, animals, and natural bodies. Utilizing information gathered from interviews and relevant literature, Luck gains insight into several problem areas that have emerged from the 31 rights of nature court cases that were adjudicated in Ecuador from 2008 to the present. First, Luck identifies various constitutional discrepancies that dictate environmental protections while sanctioning its destruction. He advocates building stronger jurisprudential practices around rights of nature issues as well as requiring a more thorough consideration of nature’s interests in the approval process for potential future development projects. Luck also holds that Ecuador would benefit from more specific definitions of which aspects of nature can be represented in court, and contends that more effort to educate civil society stakeholders, lawyers, and judges on rights of nature issues would be a constructive next step. Finally, Luck criticizes the current Ecuadorian guardianship model whereby every citizen is able to speak in court on behalf of nature. To remedy the inaction that results from this “problem of the masses,” he proposes the creation of a state-sponsored guardianship agency with small funding incentives provided by governmental bodies or large environmental organizations. Despite the concerns he raises, however, Luck still supports the continued adoption and enforcement of rights of nature laws in Ecuador and across the globe.

Miller argues that environmental personhood can eventually be analogized to corporate personhood in that both entities are extensions of individuals (and their goals) and should be treated as such in courts. Being that a natural ecosystem also includes human beings, the system should be able to exercise the rights of its component parts. In order to gain access to federal courts, a natural entity would have to establish personhood to satisfy the narrowly drawn standing requirement under Article III of the Constitution. Examining why the Colorado River case did not succeed, Miller asserts that he believes the plaintiffs focused too much on the Rights of Nature doctrine, failed to allege particularized injury to the Colorado River Ecosystem, and did not do enough research to satisfy the standing challenge. He concludes by advocating a shift in attitude within the United States toward rights of nature models found throughout the international community.

Sheber begins her paper by examining rights of nature case studies in New Zealand, India, and Ecuador, comparing their accomplishments and the ways in which their respective successes came to be. She then discusses the effectiveness of various coalition-building strategies to garner support for rights of nature movements internationally, including information sharing and organizing on various levels. Finally, Sheber explores two major benefits of passing rights of nature laws: better and more frequent protection of nature based in non-anthropocentric logics and increased governmental and societal recognition of indigenous perspectives.

The “Rights of Nature” movement is fundamentally rethinking humanity’s relationship with nature, and it is gaining momentum. It is led by activists advocating for ecosystems such as rivers, lakes, and mountains to bear legal rights in the same, or at least a similar, manner as human beings. This movement is striving for a paradigm shift in which nature is placed at the center and humans are connected to it in an interdependent way, rather than a dominant one. How would such a legal system work, and could giving rights to nature help in the legal battle against climate change? A few case studies offer some insight.

While much has been written about the efforts in multiple jurisdictions to recognize nature and natural features as rightsholders, there has been relatively little research into the relationship of these Rights of Nature developments to the Anthropocene. This article uses historian Dipesh Chakrabarty’s argument for the adoption of a human species identity in the Anthropocene as a jumping off point to analyze how legal rights for nature, such as those enacted in the Ecuador and New Zealand, can help address what Chakrabarty identifies as the challenges the Anthropocene presents to contemporary political thought. These pressing challenges include how to politicize relations between humans and non-humans, extend justice and the sphere of human morality to non-humans, cope with human limitations on our abilities to represent non-humans, and to initiate a withdrawal from a human-dominated world that is a common though uneven legacy of imperialism, capitalism, and globalization. The article argues that by providing responses to these challenges, Rights of Nature laws may also further the development of a human species identity. However, it also qualifies this conclusion in several important regards. First, the more expansive of these protections, embracing all of nature within political boundaries and relying on a remedial approach to justice and broad notions of representation in fact may hinder the adoption of the kind of species identity for which Chakrabarty has called. Second, as a cosmopolitan identity, this identity may be inhibited by continued circumscription of Rights of Nature by notions of state sovereignty.

Anthropocentric mode of consciousness has disturbed the internal cohesion and inter-relatedness of the natural world and is leading the world towards environmental devastation. Climate change is one of the biggest threats to humanity and is the face of this crisis. In view of this, the paper argues that we should make a shift towards ecocentric ways of thinking which look at nature in holistic terms and recognise the intrinsic value and rights of all the constituents of nature—rivers, mountains, plants and animals including human beings. Human existence is possible only when different constituents of nature interact with each other in a positive way. The paper argues that ecocentric awareness should be embedded in human governance system, law, education, culture and ethics, to save the world from environmental devastation.

As the world fights climate change and the exploitation of nature, countries like Ecuador and New Zealand have taken some significant steps in bringing laws into the natural world.

Diplomats from countries around the world gathered in Stocholm to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment—the meeting that made the environment a prominent international issue.

The fields of animal law and environmental law have an uneasy relationship. At a basic level, they are intertwined by the fundamental observation that animals, human and nonhuman, exist in the environment. Environmental law is generally concerned with animals at the level of species (and specifically endangered or threatened species), whereas animal law is concerned with all animals, regardless of particular characteristics. The issue of wild horses in the western United States illustrates this tension. Some environmentalists view the horses as “feral pests” that damage the fragile ecosystem and compete with wildlife — and privately owned cattle — for resources.

The circumstances surrounding the PACT Act — the efforts to obtain it, the celebration of it, and its effects — represent a microcosm of animal-law efforts in the realm of carceral animal law more generally. It is a high-profile palliative intervention that provides a sense of accomplishment without addressing any of the underlying causes of animal suffering. Politicians and advocates celebrate the efforts as landmark victories, but in fact, as this Essay argues, the efforts tend to do more harm than good by reinforcing, and even exaggerating, the invisibility of most animal suffering in law.