Rights of nature
Rights of nature or Earth rights is a legal and jurisprudential theory that describes inherent rights as associated with ecosystems and species, similar to the concept of fundamental human rights. The rights of nature concept challenges twentieth-century laws as generally grounded in a flawed frame of nature as "resource" to be owned, used, and degraded. Proponents argue that laws grounded in rights of nature direct humanity to act appropriately and in a way consistent with modern, system-based science, which demonstrates that humans and the natural world are fundamentally interconnected.
This school of thought is underpinned by two basic lines of reasoning. First, since the recognition of human rights is based in part on the philosophical belief that those rights emanate from humanity's own existence, logically, so too do inherent rights of the natural world arise from the natural world's own existence. A second and more pragmatic argument asserts that the survival of humans depends on healthy ecosystems, and so protection of nature's rights in turn, advances human rights and well-being.
From a rights of nature perspective, most environmental laws of the twentieth century are based on an outmoded framework that considers nature to be composed of separate and independent parts, rather than components of a larger whole. A more significant criticism is that those laws tend to be subordinate to economic interests, and aim at reacting to and just partially mitigating economics-driven degradation, rather than placing nature's right to thrive as the primary goal of those laws. This critique of existing environmental laws is an important component of tactics such as climate change litigation that seeks to force societal action to mitigate climate change.
As of May 2024, close to 500 rights of nature laws exist at the local to national levels in 40 countries, including dozens of cities and counties throughout the United States. They take the form of constitutional provisions, treaty agreements, statutes, local ordinances, and court decisions. A state constitutional provision is being sought in Florida.
Basic tenets
Proponents of rights of nature argue that, just as human rights have been recognized increasingly in law, so should nature's rights be recognized and incorporated into human ethics and laws. This claim is underpinned by two lines of reasoning: that the same ethics that justify human rights, also justify nature's rights, and, that humans' own survival depend on healthy ecosystems.File:Thomas Berry.jpg|thumb|left|Thomas Berry – a U.S. cultural historian who introduced the legal concept of Earth Jurisprudence who proposed that society's laws should derive from the laws of nature, explaining that "the universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects"
First, it is argued that if inherent human rights arise from human existence, so too logically do inherent rights of the natural world arise from the natural world's own existence. Human rights, and associated duties to protect those rights, have expanded over time. Most notably, the 1948 adoption by the United Nations, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that formalized recognition of broad categories of inalienable human rights. Drafters of the UDHR stated their belief that the concept of fundamental human rights arose not from "the decision of a worldly power, but rather in the fact of existing."
Some scholars have contended thereafter that, given that basic human rights emanate from humans' own existence, nature's rights similarly arise from the similar existence of nature, and so humans' legal systems should continue to expand to recognize the rights of nature.
Some notable proponents of this approach include U.S. cultural historian Thomas Berry, South African attorney Cormac Cullinan, Indian physicist and eco-social advocate Vandana Shiva, and Canadian law professor and U.N. Special Rapporteur for Human Rights and the Environment David R. Boyd.
Thomas Berry introduced a philosophy and ethics of law concept called Earth jurisprudence that identifies the earth's laws as primary and consequently reasons that everything has an intrinsic right to be and to evolve by the very fact of its existence. Earth Jurisprudence has been increasingly recognized and promoted worldwide by legal scholars, the United Nations, lawmakers, philosophers, ecological economists, and other experts as a foundation for Earth-centered governance, including laws and economic systems that protect the fundamental rights of nature.
Second, support for rights of nature also is supported through the utilitarian argument that humanity can only thrive in the long term by accepting integrated co-existence of humans with the natural world. Berry noted that the concept of human well-being derived from natural systems with no fundamental right to exist is inherently illogical, and that by protecting nature's rights, humans advance their own self-interest.
The legal and philosophical concept of rights of nature offers a shift from a frame of nature as property or resource, to nature as an interconnected Earth community partner. This school of thought aims at following the same path that human rights movements have followed, where at first recognition of rights in the rightless appeared "unthinkable", but later matured into a broadly-espoused worldview.
Christopher Stone, a law professor at the University of Southern California, wrote extensively on this topic in his seminal essay, "Should Trees Have Standing", cited by a U.S. Supreme Court dissent in Sierra Club v. Morton for the position that "environmental issues should be tendered by itself." As described by Stone and others, human rights have increasingly been "found" over time and declared "self-evident", as in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, even where essentially non-existent in the law. The successes of past and current human rights movements provide lessons for the current movement to widen the circle of Earth community to include natural systems and species populations as rights-bearing entities.
Underpinnings and development
Critique of anthropocentric legal systems
Proponents of a shift to a more environmentally protective system of law contend that current legal and economic systems fail because they consider nature fundamentally as property, which can be degraded for profit and human desire. They point out that the perspective of nature as primarily an economic resource already has degraded some ecosystems and species so significantly that now, prominent policy experts are examining "endangered species triage" strategies to decide which species will be let go, rather than re-examine the economics driving the degradation. While twentieth and twenty-first century environmental laws do afford some level of protection to ecosystems and species, it is argued that such protections fail to stop, let alone reverse, overall environmental decline, because nature is by definition subordinated to anthropogenic and economic interests, rather than biocentric well-being.Rights of nature proponents contend that re-envisioning current environmental laws from a nature's rights frame demonstrates the limitations of current legal systems. For example, the U.S. Endangered Species Act prioritizes protection of existing economic interests by activating only when species populations are headed toward extinction. By contrast, a "Healthy Species Act" would prioritize achievement of thriving species populations and facilitate economic systems that drive conservation of species.
As another example, the European Union's Water Framework Directive of 2000, "widely accepted as the most substantial and ambitious piece of European environmental legislation to date", relies on a target of "good status" of all EU waters, which includes consideration of needed "ecological flows". However, decades after the Directive's adoption, despite scientific advances in identifying flow-ecology relationships, there remains no EU definition of "ecological flow", nor a common understanding of how it should be calculated. A nature's rights frame would recognize not only the existing human right to water for basic needs, but would also recognize the rights of waterways to adequate, timely, clean water flows, and would define such basic ecological flow needs accordingly.
Harmonious coexistence within Nature
Scholars and advocacy organizations have also referred to the idea of harmonious coexistence within Nature as a related philosophical and worldview framework. The concept emphasizes living in ways that strengthen ecological interdependence and respect the rights of all beings. It has been discussed in policy and academic literature as part of a broader ecocentric approach to environmental law and environmental ethics.Underlying science and ethics
Modern environmental laws began to arise in the 1960s out of a foundational perspective of the environment as best managed in discrete pieces. For example, United States laws such as the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, Endangered Species Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act, and numerous others began to be adopted in the early 1970s to address various elements of the natural world, separately from other elements. Some laws, such as the U.S. National Environmental Policy Act, called for a more holistic analysis of proposed infrastructure projects and required the disclosure of expected negative environmental impacts. However, it did not require that actions be taken to address those impacts in order to ensure ecosystem and species health.These laws reflected the science of the time, which was grounded in a reductionist analysis of the natural world; the modern, system-based understanding of the natural world, and the integrated place of humans with it, was still in development. The first major textbook on ecological science that described the natural world as a system rather than a collection of different parts, was not written until 1983. The Gaia Hypothesis, which offered a scientific vision of the world as a self-regulating, complex system, first arose in the 1970s. Systems dynamics similarly began to evolve from a business focus to include socioeconomic and natural systems starting in the 1970s. Since then, scientific disciplines have been converging and advancing on the concept that humans live in a dynamic, relationship-based world that "den the possibility of isolation".
While science in the late twentieth century shifted to a systems-based perspective, describing natural systems and human populations as fundamentally interconnected on a shared planet, environmental laws generally did not evolve with this shift. Reductionist U.S. environmental laws passed in the early 1970s remained largely unchanged, and other national and international environmental law regimes similarly stopped short of embracing the modern science of systems.
Nineteenth century linguist and scholar Edward Payson Evans, an early rights of nature theorist and author of "the first extensive American statement of environmental ethics", wrote that each human is "truly a part and product of Nature as any other animal, and attempt to set him up on an isolated point outside of it is philosophically false and morally pernicious".
Thomas Berry proposed that society's laws should derive from the laws of nature, explaining that "the universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects". From the scientific perspective that all life arose from the context of the universe, Berry offered the ethical perspective that it is flawed to view humans as the universe's only subjects, with all other beings merely a collection of objects to be owned and used. Rather, consideration of life as a web of relationships extending back to a shared ancestry confers subject status to all, including the inherent rights associated with that status. Laws based on a recognition of the intrinsic moral value of the natural world, create a new societal moral compass that directs society's interactions with the natural world more effectively toward well-being for all.
Scientists who similarly wrote in support of expanded human moral development and ethical obligation include naturalist John Muir and scientist and forester Aldo Leopold. Leopold expressed that "hen we see land as a community to which we belong", rather than "a commodity belonging to us", we can "begin to use it with love and respect". Leopold offered implementation guidance for his position, stating that a "thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise." Berry similarly observed that "whatever preserves and enhances this meadow in the natural cycles of its transformation is good; what is opposed to this meadow or negates it is not good." Physician and philosopher Albert Schweizer defined right actions as those that recognize a reverence for life and the "will to live".
The outgrowth of scientific and ethical advances around natural systems and species is a proposed new frame for legal and governance systems, one grounded in an ethic and a language that guide behavior away from ecological and social practices that ignore or minimize human-nature interconnections. Court decisions including examples in Ecuador, Colombia and India have relied on these scientific developments in recognizing, interpreting and giving content to the legal rights of nature. Rather than a vision of merely "sustainable development", which reflects a frame of nature maintained as economic feedstock, scholars supporting rights of nature suggest that society is beginning to consider visions such as "thriving communities", where "communities" includes nature as a full subject, rather than simply an object to be used.
While some rights-of-nature laws grant rights to nature without any duties, others view nature as a legal person with rights as well duties and legal liability.