Literature Review

n/a

n/a

Despite recent debates about whether ‘rights of nature’ (RoN) are sufficiently de-colonizing, the extent to which they are aligned with, emergent from, or appropriative of Indigenous values and worldviews, their ability to be co-opted by neo-extractivist states and corporations, and the degree to which they remain guided by the assumptions of Western liberal individualism, to date there has been considerably less attention paid to the fact that movements for RoN are challenging not just legal anthropocentrism, but the decision-making authority of states. Drawing on interviews with rights of nature activists, organizers, and lawyers in the mid-western US state of Ohio and on close readings of recent court cases, this chapter demonstrates that, when approached ethnographically, these on-the-ground efforts to legally acknowledge the rights-bearing status of non-humans raise important political-economic questions about the limitations of state environmental regulatory processes that require a reorientation in some of the scholarship on the rights of nature.

We provide a descriptive comparative analysis of features related to emergence and design among 14 Rights of Nature (RoN) case studies worldwide. For analysis, we develop a schematic roadmap in which we categorise RoN into case studies with public guardianship and ones with appointed guardians (termed Environmental Legal Personhoods (ELPs) with further sub-categories of indirect, direct and living ELPs). Our findings suggest that RoN case studies emerged under similar circumstances where existing governance structures had been unable to protect natural environments from continued economic (urban, agricultural and industrial) activity by multiple economic actors. The strong role of local community and Indigenous Peoples in advocacy for RoN point to a divide between in situ communities and external economic agents, allowing for eco-centric value systems to emerge in juxtaposition to existing governance structures. We find that the design of RoN, however, varies in geographical entity, legal framework, legal status and guardianship. Poorly defined liability of guardians and economic agents have led to the overturning of two case studies, which stands in contrast to well-defined rights and liabilities in other case studies, suggesting that attention to liability may be an important building block for the effectiveness of RoN to protect biodiversity.

This chapter addresses how eco-social work that includes Nature-based intervention, therapy, or healing and is rooted in eco-centric worldviews can play a central role in shifting our current human-centred paradigms towards eco-centric paradigms, where humans live in more reciprocal and respectful relationships with Nature and each other—and where the rights of Nature are recognised. In May 2022, the International Federation of Social Workers adopted a new policy for social workers, ‘The Role of Social Workers in Advancing a New Eco-Social World’, recognising that the interconnectedness of all life in our ecosystem is integral in the guiding ethics of social workers and affirming the rights of Nature. To be part of co-creating truly sustainable ways of living, social work must be rooted in eco-centric cosmologies and worldviews that affirm the interdependence and interconnectedness of all life. We explore what social work can look like from eco-centric perspectives and approaches when the principles of Earth Jurisprudence are applied and placed in dialogue with the new policy. Through a case study of a Nature programme offered to women at Danish shelters for victims of partner violence, based a.o. on Shinrin-yoku, we show the healing and transformative powers of Nature and the possibilities for including Nature-based intervention, therapy, or healing in eco-social work.

The industrial modern fossil fueled societies are founded in, and structured by, a worldview in which we humans have considered us to stand above nature with a boundless right to dominate, control and exploit it. What if we instead acknowledge that human survival is intimately linked to nature’s right to flourish? Recognizing Rights of Nature (RoN) in legislation is a system innovation that has been tried around the world in constitutions (Ecuador, Bolivian and Peru), environmental law (Australia, New Zealand), and ordinances of the USA and Spain as well as the international scene, where it is found in the UN Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth with unexpectedly good results in dealing with complex environmental issues. However, there is still much research to be done when it comes to how understand RoN, how to justify it morally, and how to implement RoN locally if it will have local to global impact.

This research project utilizes the Narrative Policy Analysis framework to analyze print news media coverage of the Rights of Nature (RoN) movement in the United States. This burgeoning movement draws upon Indigenous principles of animism and interconnectedness to recognize the existence rights and legal personhood of non-human animals, plants, and ecosystems. This project highlights the legal and legislative challenges the RoN movement has faced. Including the complexities of attempting to incorporate Indigenous epistemologies into a colonialist legal system and highlighting the narrative strategies and emerging coalitions present in the U.S.-based movement.

n/a

The transnational movement to recognise the rights of Nature continues to fuel experimentation by a growing number of jurisdictions in legal form, content, powers, and governance arrangements. In this paper, we focus on the mechanisms through which Nature is represented in various ways. There is enormous diversity in representational arrangements, but there is no clarity on precisely who should be representing Nature, or how Nature can be represented in human spaces, or even what the intent of this representation is (or should be). We describe a spectrum of representation that ranges from speaking about, to speaking for, to speaking with the ... more

Several sectors of Irish society have put forward rights of nature as a way to further enhance environmental protection in the country and help curb environmental degradation. In light of rights of nature developments in other jurisdictions, this piece presents rights of nature in their social, economic, and legal context, and summarises their reception by legal scholars. This portrayal will provide a basis for analysing the two main Irish rights of nature legal propositions and assess, albeit in preliminary fashion, whether these initiatives – if enacted – would further enhance environmental protection in Ireland.

Rights and legal personhood have been granted to natural entities, like rivers, mountains, forests, or the nature as a whole, in recent years. Various legal and conceptual strategies underlie this movement for the rights of nature. We explore some main legal-theoretical divides inside it. First, legal personality can be granted to nature on essentially pragmatic grounds, for purposes sometimes distinct from environmental protection. This is in contrast with metaphysical implications most often associated with those rights. Can natural objects be subjects of rights and in what sense? Are they similar or in opposition to human rights? Are rights of nature reinstating a form of natural law? We also discuss and refute the hypothesis that rights of nature are already protected through particular dispositions and interpretations of extant non-ecocentric legal frameworks. We conclude that a paradigmatic change in the relation between law and nature is inevitable due to current environmental pressures.

This article argues that the Rights of Nature (RoN) framework is compatible with various ideological outlooks and political options. As a result, those initiatives may translate into extremely diverse institutional implementations with contrasted outcomes in terms of power distribution. The institutional design of RoN has deep political implications for various social groups who hold conflicting claims over certain territories. Hence, rather than transforming human-nature relations, RoN primarily transform the power relations between human communities. I delve into three conceptual frameworks that could shape the recognition of RoN and explore their respective distributive implications: green colonialism, environmental justice, and the focus on Indigeneity. Through this critical engagement, I wish to warn against the illusion of a post-political ecology where an ecocentric legal declaration would deliver human-nature harmony without deep political battles, social tensions, and economic confrontations. RoN as an abstract notion does not offer a ready-made toolkit to dismantle the legal architecture of fossil capitalism; nor does it provide clear guidance on the distribution of costs and benefits of the green transition.