One Earth Film Fest has featured films and discussions about the rights of nature, such as “Invisible Hand: Rights of Nature Documentary” in 2023. The following article, by One Earth veteran eNews writer Susan Messer, delves into this key issue. Learn where to access “Invisible Hand” and watch the 2023 One Earth Film Fest recorded discussion (which included some of the folks mentioned in the groups below).

By Susan Messer

What rights, if any, do our ecosystems have? And who will speak for them?

Under the current system of law in almost every country, humans have the right to exploit nature, because lakes, rivers, wetlands, forestlands, and other ecosystems and natural communities are considered to be property. And, as property, its owner has the right to treat it as they choose, including damaging or destroying it.

Humans, of course, have passed environmental laws—for example, the federal Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and similar state laws—but these laws regulate how much pollution or destruction of nature can occur. So, rather than preventing pollution and environmental destruction, our environmental laws permit it - creating a struggle to balance the health of our planet with human and corporate needs (greed).

Meanwhile, in contrast, other humans have launched the Rights of Nature movement. Those working to promote the rights of nature assert that ecosystems and natural communities are not merely property that can be owned. They are entities with a right to exist and flourish—including the right to not be exploited. Laws recognizing the rights of nature grant people, communities, and governments the authority to defend those rights and to speak on behalf of ecosystems and natural communities.

One group leading this movement is the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (GARN). Its members include scientists, attorneys, economists, indigenous leaders, spiritual leaders, business leaders, politicians, actors, students, and activists in over 100 countries. Also working on these issues is the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights (CDER), which partners with communities, indigenous peoples and tribal nations, grassroots organizations, and governments around the globe to advance Rights of Nature legal protections, and to implement and enforce these rights.

Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights

In our world, you might ask, as do the members of GARN and CDER, if humans (legislators and courts) have given rights to corporations, why not to the earth and all its ecosystems? The answer is that some legislators and courts have decided not to recognize these rights, others have supported these rights, and still others are working on making way for them. Here are a few examples.

First, the disappointments.

In 2014, a toxic algal bloom developed on Lake Erie, due primarily to agricultural runoff. Via an emergency alert, the people of Toledo, Ohio, were warned not to use or drink their tap water. Over the next several years, local residents worked to pass the Lake Erie Bill of Rights (LEBOR), granting one of our five precious Great Lakes the right to exist and even flourish. However, the next day, an industrial farm challenged the constitutionality of the law, and in 2020, an Ohio federal court struck down LEBOR, finding it unconstitutionally vague and beyond the authority of a municipal government.
In Utah, environmental activists, working to save the dying Great Salt Lake, proposed that it be granted its own rights, including the right to exist. In response, in 2024, the Utah legislature passed a bill, H.B. 249, that prohibits any governmental entity in the state from recognizing the natural environment as a “legal person,” which includes a prohibition on recognizing nature as possessing legal rights. As one legislator said, “This bill wasn’t intended about the Great Salt Lake at all . . . . It was just the sheer fact that state after state and all over the world, we’re seeing people abuse the situation of personhood to use it as a weapon.”

On the other hand . . .

In 2008, Ecuador became the first country to pass a constitutional provision on the rights of nature. In 2021, Ecuador’s Constitutional Court ruled in the Los Cedros case that the protection of fragile ecosystems and at-risk species was a constitutionally guaranteed right, elevated over the right of corporations to mine. Even as it recognized that mining is a protected industry within Ecuador’s Constitution, the Court found that the rights of nature provisions overrode those mining protections.
In 2023, the president of Panama signed a national law that promotes the protection and conservation of sea turtles and their habitats. This rights-of-nature law gives sea turtles in Panama the right to live in a healthy environment, free of pollution and other human-caused physical damage, including incidental capture, coastal development, and unregulated tourism.
As of May 2023, a landmark lawsuit filed by the Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe asserting the “rights of salmon” has been settled, with the city of Seattle, Washington, agreeing to provide passageways for the fish around hydroelectric dams on the Skagit River.
In the Hawaii legislature, in 2024, H.B. 2077 was introduced to recognize that all watersheds in Hawaii possess "legal rights to exist, flourish, and naturally evolve, in reflection of native Hawaiian traditional and customary cultural values, practice, and worldview." That bill is currently pending.

On the CDER website, you will find information about many other campaigns to promote the rights of nature. Here are only a few examples:

The “Land that Owns Itself” program, aims to move nature “out from under human control and ownership, to become self-owned and self-governed.”
The rights of pollinators program, as pollinators are essential to our food systems but threatened by habitat loss, pesticides, effects of climate variability, and crop-management practices.
And even the rights of the moon!

The center hosts many training and educational events, including one in October, titled “The Rights of Nature: Drafting, Adopting, and Enforcing Rights of Nature Laws in Cities, Towns, and Counties.” More information about this training is available here.

(Published on 09/04/2024)