Rights of Nature -Establishing a Legal Basis for Protecting Our Planet

Pachamama Alliance

Establishing a Legal Basis for Protecting Our Planet

Rights of Nature recognize the Earth and all its ecosystems as a living being with inalienable rights: to exist, to live free of cruel treatment, to maintain vital processes necessary for the harmonious balance that supports all life. Such laws also recognize the authority of people, communities, and governments to defend those rights.

Innovative Legal Structures for a Thriving Future

When the rights of ecosystems are recognized, we can more effectively balance the needs and wellbeing of all life within the context of existing legal systems – just as we currently do between individuals, corporations, and other rights-bearing entities.

Fundación Pachamama brings their experience and allies in Ecuador to global conversations about sustainable democracy and community self-determination, including:

• Supporting the inclusion of Rights of Nature in the 2008 Ecuadorean Constitution, making Ecuador the first country in history to do so, and ensuring the enforcement at a local level
• Formation, along with The Pachamama Alliance and other partners, of the Global Alliance for Rights of Nature, a group of internationally recognized experts and leaders working for the universal adoption and implementation of Rights of Nature.

What is Rights of Nature?

Rights of Nature is the recognition and honoring that Nature has rights.  It is the recognition that our ecosystems – including trees, oceans, animals, mountains – have rights just as human beings have rights. Rights of Nature is about balancing what is good for human beings against what is good for other species, what is good for the planet as a world.  It is the holistic recognition that all life, all ecosystems on our planet are deeply intertwined.
Rather than treating nature as property under the law, rights of nature acknowledges that nature in all its life forms has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles.
And we – the people –  have the legal authority and responsibility to enforce these rights on behalf of ecosystems.  The ecosystem itself can be named as the defendant.
For indigenous cultures around the world recognizing rights of nature is simply what is so.  All life, including human life, are deeply connected.  Decisions and values are based on what is good for the whole.
Nonetheless, for millennia legal systems around the world have treated land and nature as “property”.   Laws and contracts are written to protect the property rights of individuals, corporations and other legal entities.  As such environmental protection laws actually legalize environmental harm by regulating how much polution or destruction of nature can occur within the law.  Under such law, nature and all of its non-human elements have no standing.
By recognizing rights of nature in its constitution, Ecuador - and a growing number of communities in the United States – are basing their environmental protection systems on the premise that nature has inalienable rights, just as humans do.  This premise is a radical but natural departure from the assumption that nature is property under the law.

 UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF THE RIGHTS OF MOTHER EARTH

April 22, 2010, World People’s Conference on Climate Change

and the Rights of Mother Earth, Cochabamba, Bolivia

Preamble

We, the peoples and nations of Earth:

considering that we are all part of Mother Earth, an indivisible, living community of

interrelated and interdependent beings with a common destiny;

gratefully acknowledging that Mother Earth is the source of life, nourishment and

learning and provides everything we need to live well;

recognizing that the capitalist system and all forms of depredation, exploitation,

abuse and contamination have caused great destruction, degradation and disruption

of Mother Earth, putting life as we know it today at risk through phenomena such as

climate change;convinced that in an interdependent living community it is not possible to recognize

the rights of only human beings without causing an imbalance within Mother Earth;

affirming that to guarantee human rights it is necessary to recognize and defend the

rights of Mother Earth and all beings in her and that there are existing cultures,

practices and laws that do so;conscious of the urgency of taking decisive, collective action to transform structures and systems that cause climate change and other threats to Mother Earth;

proclaim this Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, and call on the

General Assembly of the United Nation to adopt it, as a common standard of

achievement for all peoples and all nations of the world, and to the end that every

individual and institution takes responsibility for promoting through teaching,

education, and consciousness raising, respect for the rights recognized in this

Declaration and ensure through prompt and progressive measures and mechanisms,

national and international, their universal and effective recognition and observance

among all peoples and States in the world.

Article 1. Mother Earth

(1) Mother Earth is a living being.

(2) Mother Earth is a unique, indivisible, self-regulating community of interrelated

beings that sustains, contains and reproduces all beings.

(3) Each being is defined by its relationships as an integral part of Mother Earth.

(4) The inherent rights of Mother Earth are inalienable in that they arise from the same

source as existence.

(5) Mother Earth and all beings are entitled to all the inherent rights recognized in this

Declaration without distinction of any kind, such as may be made between organic

and inorganic beings, species, origin, use to human beings, or any other status.

(6) Just as human beings have human rights, all other beings also have rights which are

specific to their species or kind and appropriate for their role and function within the

communities within which they exist.

(7) The rights of each being are limited by the rights of other beings and any conflict

between their rights must be resolved in a way that maintains the integrity, balance

and health of Mother Earth.

Article 2. Inherent Rights of Mother Earth

(1) Mother Earth and all beings of which she is composed have the following inherent

rights:

(a) the right to life and to exist;

(b) the right to be respected;

(c) the right to continue their vital cycles and processes free from human

disruptions;

(d) the right to maintain its identity and integrity as a distinct, self-regulating and

interrelated being;

(e) the right to water as a source of life;

(f) the right to clean air;

(g) the right to integral health;

(h) the right to be free from contamination, pollution and toxic or radioactive waste;

(i) the right to not have its genetic structure modified or disrupted in a manner that

threatens it integrity or vital and healthy functioning;

(j) the right to full and prompt restoration the violation of the rights recognized in

this Declaration caused by human activities;

(2) Each being has the right to a place and to play its role in Mother Earth for her

harmonious functioning.

(3) Every being has the right to wellbeing and to live free from torture or cruel

treatment by human beings.

Article 3. Obligations of human beings to Mother Earth

(1) Every human being is responsible for respecting and living in harmony with Mother

Earth.

(2) Human beings, all States, and all public and private institutions must:

(a) act in accordance with the rights and obligations recognized in this Declaration;

(b) recognize and promote the full implementation and enforcement of the rights

and obligations recognized in this Declaration;

(c) promote and participate in learning, analysis, interpretation and communication

about how to live in harmony with Mother Earth in accordance with this

Declaration;

(d) ensure that the pursuit of human wellbeing contributes to the wellbeing of

Mother Earth, now and in the future;

(e) establish and apply effective norms and laws for the defence, protection and

conservation of the rights of Mother Earth;

(f) respect, protect, conserve and where necessary, restore the integrity, of the vital

ecological cycles, processes and balances of Mother Earth;

(g) guarantee that the damages caused by human violations of the inherent rights

recognized in this Declaration are rectified and that those responsible are held

accountable for restoring the integrity and health of Mother Earth;

(h) empower human beings and institutions to defend the rights of Mother Earth and

of all beings;

(i) establish precautionary and restrictive measures to prevent human activities

from causing species extinction, the destruction of ecosystems or the disruption

of ecological cycles;

(j) guarantee peace and eliminate nuclear, chemical and biological weapons;

(k) promote and support practices of respect for Mother Earth and all beings, in

accordance with their own cultures, traditions and customs;

(l) promote economic systems that are in harmony with Mother Earth and in

accordance with the rights recognized in this Declaration.

Article 4. Definitions

(1) The term “being” includes ecosystems, natural communities, species and all other

natural entities which exist as part of Mother Earth.

(2) Nothing in this Declaration restricts the recognition of other inherent rights of all beings or specified beings.

Rivers and Natural Ecosystems as Rights Bearing Subjects

by: Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature, Robin Milam Posted on: January 06, 2013 Editor’s Note: Should nature be integrated into our social contracts? Should we be empowered to dissent on her behalf? Read on to learn where these ideas have already been implemented. Written by the Administrative Director for the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature, this piece is filed under our Community Rights section because some argue that communities have a right to grant rights to the natural ecosystems they depend upon.

In a historic preliminary agreement between the Whanganui Iwi (Maori people) and the New Zealand Crown (Elizabeth II) announced in August 2012, the Whanganui River is being granted legal personhood rights. The river is a major commercial route on the North Island and is sacred to the Iwi. The proposed agreement, which has taken decades of negotiation, assigns shared guardian responsibilities for the river to the Iwi and officials representing the Crown. This landmark move is a first for New Zealand but not for the world.
Across the Pacific, Ecuador’s Vilcabamba River has also been recognized as a rights bearing subject of the law. In 2008 Ecuador became the first country in the world to include Rights of Nature in its Constitution. The Constitution states that Nature “… has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and evolutionary processes.” Furthermore, the people of Ecuador have the legal authority and responsibility to enforce these rights on behalf of ecosystems including rivers. In 2011, a major development project impacted the flow of the Vilcabamba River. Local residents filed a suit against the developer on behalf of the river. At the conclusion of a court trial, the river won. The judge awarded damages to the river and restoration is currently in process.
Granting legal standing to natural ecosystems is not isolated to these two cases. Recognizing Rights of Nature and natural ecosystems is the focus of a global grassroots movement. In 2010 in Cochabamba, Bolivia over 35,000 climate justice, indigenous rights, human rights and other civil society activists came together at the Peoples Conference for Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth and acclaimed the Universal Declaration for Rights of Mother Earth.  A copy of the declaration with 120,000 supporting signatures was presented to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the Rio+20 Earth Summit in June 2012. Also in 2010, the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature was formed to provide a global hub for empowering the movement.
The premise of recognizing Rights of Nature has been advanced for decades through the writings of Thomas Berry¹, Cormac Cullinan², Christopher Stone³ and others.  Nonetheless, nature as a rights bearing subject of the law took root in 2006 in the small rural community of Tamaqua Borough, Pennsylvania, USA. In less than a decade almost three dozen communities in the United States have passed local laws that recognize Rights of Nature. In addition to the United States and Ecuador, Rights of Nature laws are being implemented in Bolivia and proposed in other countries.
The story of Tamaqua Borough is an example of one of the ways communities from Maine to Washington State and California are organizing to assert Rights of Nature. Coal has provided the economic base for the Borough of Tamaqua for much of the last century. As coal mining in the region declined, mining companies began to look for other sources of profit by using their abandoned mine pits as toxic waste dumpsites. Industrial waste and agricultural sludge or “biosolids” were being dumped into the large unlined pits. In time, toxic waste began to leach into the surrounding rivers and aquifers. When residents learned the coal companies planned to fill the pits with fly ash—the poisonous dust residue from coal mining—they rallied together. Attempting to protect their community, the Borough Council had an abrupt awakening as they began to understand that the environmental regulatory systems did not provide protection they so desperately wanted and needed. Because the rivers and aquifers had no standing in the law and the contaminating pits were owned by the mining corporations, the community had no recourse for protecting themselves or their local ecosystems under the current laws and regulatory system. The permit process permitted the contamination.
With the assistance of Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF.org), Tamaqua Borough passed a rights-based ordinance that recognized the rights of the natural ecosystems that were being polluted and the rights of the community to decide on issues affecting them. The ordinance declares that “It shall be unlawful for any corporation…to interfere with the existence of natural communities or ecosystems or to cause damage…Ecosystems shall be considered to be ‘person’ for the purpose of enforcement.” The Borough of Tamaqua and its residents are granted standing to represent natural communities and ecosystems.⁴
Other communities are driven by a variety of galvanizing issues. The City of Pittsburgh, PA has passed a local ordinance recognizing the rights of the local ecosystems and natural communities while limiting corporate personhood rights, so as to prevent hydrofracking within the City. For Santa Monica, CA a resolution including recognition of the Rights of Nature is part of the City’s overall Sustainability Plan. In Shapleigh, Maine, the City Council moved to protect the city’s ground water resources from corporate extraction and exploitation, to bar companies such as Nestle from bottling its water. Food sovereignty, the Tar Sands pipeline, threat of toxic contamination, and other emerging issues are uniting communities to stand for the rights of both their human and natural communities.
The move is a fundamental change from the current position of most modern legal systems, which treat nature as property to be bought, sold, and consumed often under commerce laws. The underlying Rights of Nature premise recognizes our human interdependence with the natural ecosystems we are a part of. These interrelated values are integral to ancient indigenous wisdom around the world but are ignored by modern law’s anthropologic framework.
This is a movement that transcends political values and ideologies. If you are inclined to assume the movement is the work of a bunch of left winged progressive tree huggers, think again. Many of the cities and townships in the US who have embraced Rights of Nature are conservative, right wing communities. Citizens across diverging political ideologies are emboldened to take a stand once they fully understand that the U.S. Constitution and/or current environmental protection laws do not protect the natural communities which sustain healthy, human life or our rights as communities to make the quality of life choices that are ours to make.
The time has come to recognize that We the People are an integral part of the natural communities that sustain us.  It is time to recognize the rights of our natural ecosystems not only to exist, but to sustain their natural, healthy balance for the benefit of all life.
For more information on Rights of Nature and the foundational principles behind the movement:

• Global Alliance for Rights of Nature: http://therightsofnature.org/
• Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF): http://celdf.org/
• Rights of Mother Earth Signature Campaign: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/yes-to-rights-of-nature//

Books and Articles:

1. Book: The Great Work: Our Way into the Future by Thomas Berry http://www.amazon.com/The-Great-Work-into-Future/dp/0609804995

2. Book: Wild Law: A Manifesto for Earth Justice: by Cormac Cullinan http://www.chelseagreen.com/bookstore/item/wild_law:paperback

3. Book:  Should Trees Have Standing? by Christopher Stone http://www.amazon.com/Should-Trees-Have-Standing-Environment/dp/0199736073

4. Book: Be The Change: How to Get What You Want in Your Community: http://www.amazon.com/Be-The-Change-What-Community/dp/1423605616

5. Collection of Essays: Rights of Nature: Planting Seeds of Real Change down load free at http://www.globalexchange.org/communityrights/resources/rioreport