Introduction to a New Legal Paradigm
The global environmental crisis, characterized by accelerating climate change, biodiversity loss, and mass pollution, has exposed the limitations of conventional legal frameworks designed to protect the natural world.1 In response, a transformative legal and jurisprudential movement known as the “Rights of Nature” has emerged, proposing a fundamental reordering of the relationship between humanity and the Earth. This movement challenges the centuries-old legal tradition of treating nature as property and instead advocates for recognizing ecosystems, species, and the Earth itself as living beings with inherent, legally enforceable rights.1 This report provides a comprehensive literary analysis of this burgeoning field of “Earth Jurisprudence,” tracing its conceptual underpinnings, intellectual origins, global implementation, and the critical debates shaping its future. It examines how this paradigm shift seeks to move legal systems from merely regulating environmental harm to fundamentally upholding the right of nature to exist, flourish, and evolve.
Defining the Core Tenets: The Shift from Anthropocentrism to Ecocentrism
At its core, the Rights of Nature is a legal and philosophical framework that seeks to change the legal status of nature from an object of human ownership to a subject of rights.3 Under the prevailing legal systems in most countries, nature is considered property. This classification confers upon the property owner the right to use, damage, or even destroy it, subject only to regulations that typically permit a certain level of harm.2 The Rights of Nature movement posits that this anthropocentric, or human-centered, framework is the root cause of the ongoing ecological crisis.5 It views the natural world not as a collection of resources for human exploitation, but as a community of interconnected, living entities.6
The movement’s central premise is built upon two parallel lines of reasoning. The first is a philosophical argument for intrinsic value: just as human rights are understood to emanate from the very fact of human existence, the inherent rights of the natural world logically arise from its own existence, independent of its utility to humans.6 This ecocentric perspective asserts that humans are an immanent part of nature, not separate from or superior to it, and that all life is deeply intertwined.7 The second argument is more pragmatic, asserting that human survival is fundamentally dependent on the health of the planet’s ecosystems.2 From this viewpoint, securing nature’s rights is a necessary precondition for advancing human rights and well-being. Indeed, the recognized human right to a healthy environment can only be fully realized by securing the highest legal protection for the environment itself—by recognizing its own right to be healthy and thrive.3
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This conceptual shift represents a profound legal reclassification, not merely an extension of existing environmental law. Traditional environmental regulations operate within the property framework, asking, “How much pollution or destruction is legally permissible?”.2 In contrast, a Rights of Nature framework begins with a different question: “Does this action violate the inherent right of this river, forest, or ecosystem to exist and flourish?”.3 This reorientation from a utilitarian, property-based system to a rights-based one is analogous to historic legal transformations such as the abolition of slavery or the recognition of women’s suffrage, where entities once legally classified as property were recognized as persons with inalienable rights.3 Such a reclassification has the potential to disrupt foundational legal doctrines far beyond environmental law, impacting property law, torts, and the administrative basis upon which development and resource extraction permits are issued.
The Concept of Legal Personhood for Natural Entities
The primary legal mechanism for implementing the Rights of Nature is the conferral of “legal personhood” upon natural entities.1 Legal personhood is a long-established concept that allows non-human entities to be recognized as subjects of the law, capable of holding rights and duties. Corporations, non-profit organizations, and even ships have long been granted this status, enabling them to enter contracts, own property, and sue or be sued in court.1
By extending legal personhood to a river, a forest, or an entire ecosystem, Rights of Nature laws enable these entities to have their rights defended in a court of law. Since a river or a forest cannot speak for itself, these laws establish systems of guardianship. Designated representatives—which can include individuals, community groups, Indigenous organizations, or government bodies—are empowered to bring legal action in the name of the natural entity.7 In such a case, the ecosystem itself is named as the plaintiff, the injured party with its own legal standing to seek remedy for violations of its rights.1 Any damages recovered from such a lawsuit are typically directed not to the human guardians, but toward the restoration and rehabilitation of the harmed ecosystem.3 This mechanism fundamentally alters the legal landscape, ensuring that the central concern in a legal dispute is the integrity and well-being of the ecosystem itself, rather than solely the economic or property interests of human actors.
Distinguishing Rights of Nature from Traditional Environmental Law
A critical distinction must be drawn between the Rights of Nature framework and the body of conventional environmental laws developed over the past half-century. Proponents of Earth Jurisprudence argue that traditional laws, such as the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act in the United States, are structurally inadequate to prevent systemic ecological decline because their primary function is to legalize environmental harm by regulating the permissible amount of pollution or destruction.2 These laws are fundamentally reactionary; they are designed to manage and mitigate damage after it has been permitted, not to prevent it from occurring in the first place.1 They operate from the premise that nature is a resource to be managed for human use, thereby institutionalizing the very anthropocentric worldview that has led to the current crisis.6
Rights of Nature laws, in contrast, start from an entirely different premise: that ecosystems and natural communities possess an inalienable right to exist and flourish.3 This establishes a preventative legal framework grounded in a foundational principle of rights. This framework empowers people, communities, and governments to reject proposed actions and governmental permits for development that would violate these rights.3 For example, under a traditional regulatory regime, a community might be able to argue that a proposed mining operation’s pollution levels exceed the permitted amount. Under a Rights of Nature regime, the community could argue that the mining operation itself violates the fundamental right of the mountain and watershed to maintain their ecological integrity. This shifts the legal burden, forcing a potential polluter to demonstrate that their actions will not violate nature’s rights, rather than requiring a community to prove that the permitted level of harm is too high. This proactive and rights-based approach represents the most significant departure from the 20th-century model of environmental protection.
Intellectual and Cultural Origins
The Rights of Nature movement is a syncretic legal philosophy, drawing from two distinct yet convergent intellectual streams. One is the long, evolutionary trajectory of Western rights-based liberalism, which has progressively expanded the circle of rights-holders. The other, and arguably more foundational, is the deep well of Indigenous legal traditions and cosmovisions, which have for millennia been grounded in a philosophy of interconnectedness and reciprocal duty between humans and the non-human world. The movement’s contemporary power derives from its unique blending of the Western legal framework of individual rights with the holistic, relational ethos of Indigenous traditions.
The Evolution of Western Legal and Ethical Thought
The idea of extending rights to nature is framed by its proponents as the next logical step in the historical expansion of rights that defines Western legal and political history.9 Professor Roderick Nash, in his seminal 1989 work The Rights of Nature: A History of Environmental Ethics, charts this progression, arguing that just as rights were extended from English barons to colonists, and later to slaves, women, and other groups once considered property or less than fully human, the moral and legal circle is now expanding to include the non-human world.3 This historical narrative situates the movement not as a radical break from the past, but as a continuation of the liberal tradition of emancipation.
This tradition is itself rooted in the ancient concept of “natural rights”—rights that are universal and inalienable, not dependent on the laws of any particular government.11 This idea appeared in ancient Greek philosophy with the Stoics, was articulated by the Roman philosopher Cicero, and was developed in the Middle Ages by Catholic theologians like Thomas Aquinas.11 It reached its modern apotheosis during the Enlightenment with thinkers like John Locke, who argued that fundamental rights to “life, liberty, and estate (property)” could not be surrendered in the social contract.11
While this long history established the concept of rights, the modern environmental movement was required to translate these anthropocentric ideas into an ecocentric context. The intellectual debate shifted from simply arguing that nature has moral value to proposing how that value could be legally recognized and enforced. The pivotal moment in this transition came in 1972 with the publication of law professor Christopher Stone’s article, “Should Trees Have Standing?—Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects”.1 Stone provided the first consequential legal proposal, arguing that if corporations could have legal personality, then so too could forests, oceans, and rivers. He articulated a specific legal mechanism—granting legal standing—that could transform abstract environmental ethics into a concrete and actionable legal strategy.5
Stone’s work was followed by other foundational texts that built out the philosophy of “Earth Jurisprudence.” Nash’s 1989 book provided the crucial historical and ethical context for this expansion of rights.10 In 2003, South African attorney Cormac Cullinan published Wild Law: A Manifesto for Earth Justice, which added a significant spiritual and moral dimension to the discussion and popularized the idea that human governance systems must be subordinate to the laws of nature.13 Together, these thinkers helped mature the concept from a purely philosophical debate into a viable legal and political project.
The Centrality of Indigenous Worldviews
While Western legal theory provided a familiar framework of rights and personhood, the core philosophy of interconnectedness that animates the Rights of Nature movement is deeply rooted in Indigenous worldviews that predate the concept by millennia.7 For many Indigenous cultures, the idea that nature is a living entity with which humans have reciprocal duties is not a novel legal theory but a foundational truth of existence.7 These traditions are not based on a human-nature duality, but on a holistic understanding that humans belong to nature, not the other way around.5
This influence is most explicit in the pioneering legal frameworks of South America. The 2008 Constitution of Ecuador, in its very first article on the subject, equates “Nature” with “Pacha Mama,” the Quechua term for Mother Earth, thereby formally integrating an Andean cosmological concept into national law.18 This constitutional language was directly informed by Indigenous advocates and the Andean concept of sumak kawsay (in Quechua) or vivir bien (in Spanish), which translates to “good living” or “living well” in community and in balance with the Earth.19 Similarly, Bolivia’s 2010 “Law of the Rights of Mother Earth” is explicitly built upon the Andean worldview that deems Pacha Mama as central to all life.20
This pattern is visible globally. In New Zealand, the Te Awa Tupua Act is a direct fusion of the Western legal construct of personhood with the Māori worldview of the Whanganui River as a living ancestor, an indivisible whole from which the people are inseparable.22 In the United States, long before the first municipal ordinances, the Navajo Nation codified Diné Natural Law in 2002, which states that “All creation, from Mother Earth and Father Sky to the animals… have their own laws and have rights and freedoms to exist”.20
However, this syncretism is also a source of significant tension. Critics and Indigenous scholars have pointed out that the movement, while drawing on Indigenous philosophy, has a tendency to “bury” the leadership and influence of Indigenous peoples.16 There is a persistent danger that the holistic and relational worldviews of Indigenous cultures will be distorted or diminished when forced into the Western legal framework of individual, competing rights.5 The successful and just implementation of Rights of Nature in the future may depend on how carefully and respectfully this tension is navigated, ensuring that the framework serves to empower, rather than appropriate, the Indigenous legal traditions from which it draws so much of its inspiration.
Codification and Implementation: Global Case Studies
The theoretical and philosophical principles of the Rights of Nature have transitioned into binding law in a growing number of jurisdictions around the world. However, there is no single, monolithic model for implementation. Instead, a diverse spectrum of legal strategies has emerged, each tailored to the unique constitutional, political, and cultural context in which it was developed. These approaches range from embedding rights in national constitutions to granting legal personality to specific ecosystems through legislation, landmark court rulings, and grassroots municipal ordinances. A comparative analysis of these pioneering efforts reveals the adaptability of the core concept and highlights the distinct legal archetypes that are shaping the future of Earth Jurisprudence.
The Andean Pioneers: Constitutional Rights in Ecuador and Bolivia
Ecuador made legal history in 2008 by becoming the first country in the world to recognize the Rights of Nature in its national constitution.15 This groundbreaking step was the result of a constituent assembly process that included significant participation from Indigenous and civil society movements.24 The rights are enshrined in Chapter 7 of the constitution, with Article 71 serving as the cornerstone: “Nature, or Pacha Mama, where life is reproduced and occurs, has the right to integral respect for its existence and for the maintenance and regeneration of its life cycles, structure, functions and evolutionary processes”.18
The Ecuadorian framework is notable for its universal scope, applying to all of nature throughout the country. It establishes several key entitlements and mechanisms:
- The Right to Restoration: Article 72 explicitly states that “Nature has the right to be restored,” a duty that is separate from the state’s obligation to compensate human communities affected by environmental harm.19
- State Duties: Article 73 places a preventative duty on the state to apply restrictive measures on activities that could lead to species extinction, ecosystem destruction, or the permanent alteration of natural cycles.19
- Universal Standing: Crucially, the constitution grants any person, community, or nation the legal standing to call upon public authorities to enforce these rights on nature’s behalf.19
Following Ecuador’s lead, Bolivia enacted its “Law of the Rights of Mother Earth” (Law 071) in 2010, and later the more comprehensive “Framework Law of Mother Earth and Integral Development for Living Well” in 2012.13 The Bolivian model is distinguished by its detailed enumeration of specific, substantive rights. Law 071 grants Mother Earth seven fundamental rights:
- The right to life and to exist.
- The right to the diversity of life (to preserve the variety of beings without genetic alteration).
- The right to water (as a source of life).
- The right to clean air.
- The right to equilibrium (to the maintenance and restoration of the interrelationship of nature’s components).
- The right to restoration (of livelihoods and affected systems).
- The right to live free from pollution (from contamination, and toxic and radioactive waste).18
The law defines Mother Earth as a “dynamic living system” and a “collective subject of public interest,” establishing a framework rooted in the Indigenous concept of Vivir Bien (“Living Well”).21
A Fusion of Legal Traditions: The Whanganui River in New Zealand
New Zealand adopted a unique and highly influential model with the passage of the Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Act 2017.26 This legislation, the result of the longest-running litigation in the nation’s history, did not grant a broad set of rights to nature in general, but instead conferred a singular legal personality upon a specific ecosystem: the Whanganui River.22 The Act declares that “Te Awa Tupua is a legal person and has all the rights, powers, duties, and liabilities of a legal person”.27
This framework is a direct and explicit fusion of Western legal mechanisms with Māori Indigenous law and worldview. The Act recognizes the river as “an indivisible and living whole, comprising the Whanganui River from the mountains to the sea, incorporating its tributaries and all its physical and metaphysical elements”.23 This legal definition is grounded in the deep spiritual connection of the Whanganui Iwi (the Māori tribes of the river), which is encapsulated in their proverb, “Ko au te Awa, ko te Awa ko au” (“I am the River and the River is me”).17
A key innovation of the Te Awa Tupua model is its co-governance structure. The legal personality of the river is represented by two guardians who serve as the “human face” of the river, known as Te Pou Tupua. One guardian is appointed by the Crown (the New Zealand government) and the other is appointed by the Whanganui Iwi, ensuring that both state and Indigenous interests are jointly responsible for upholding the river’s health and well-being.22
Biocultural Rights in Jurisprudence: The Atrato River Ruling in Colombia
In 2016, Colombia’s Constitutional Court pioneered a judicial pathway to recognizing the Rights of Nature in its landmark ruling T-622/2016 concerning the heavily polluted Atrato River.15 Facing a severe ecological and humanitarian crisis driven by illegal mining, the Court declared the Atrato River, its basin, and its tributaries to be a “subject of rights” entitled to “protection, conservation, maintenance, and restoration”.28
The ruling is particularly significant for its development of the concept of “biocultural rights.” The Court explicitly recognized the deep, intrinsic, and inseparable link between the natural environment and the culture of the Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities that depend on it for their physical and spiritual sustenance.28 It found that the degradation of the river constituted a serious violation of the fundamental human rights of these communities to life, health, water, food security, and a healthy environment. By linking the river’s rights directly to the human and cultural rights of its inhabitants, the Court created a powerful legal precedent that has since been applied by lower courts to grant rights to other rivers and ecosystems across Colombia, including the Amazon rainforest.28 Like the New Zealand model, the Atrato ruling established a co-guardianship structure, with representation from both the government and the ethnic communities of the river basin.29
The Grassroots Movement in the United States
In the United States, the Rights of Nature movement has advanced not through national legislation or constitutional amendment, but through a decentralized, grassroots strategy focused on municipal and tribal law. The first Rights of Nature law in the world was a local ordinance enacted in 2006 by Tamaqua Borough, Pennsylvania, to ban the dumping of toxic sewage sludge as a violation of the rights of local ecosystems.2
Since then, dozens of communities have followed suit. Notable examples include the City of Pittsburgh, which in 2010 became the first major U.S. city to codify these rights to prevent fracking, and Toledo, Ohio, whose residents passed the Lake Erie Bill of Rights in 2019, the first law to recognize the rights of a specific ecosystem in the country.2 These local laws typically establish the right of ecosystems to “exist and flourish” and empower residents to sue on their behalf to defend these rights.2
Alongside municipal efforts, Tribal Nations have been at the forefront of codifying Rights of Nature into their own legal systems, drawing on long-standing traditions of environmental stewardship. The White Earth Band of Ojibwe in Minnesota adopted the “Rights of Manoomin” in 2018, the first law to recognize the rights of a specific plant species (wild rice), including its right to clean water and a healthy habitat.2 Other tribes, such as the Yurok of California (Klamath River) and the Nez Perce of Idaho (Snake River), have passed similar resolutions recognizing the rights of rivers that are central to their culture and survival.31
The diversity of these global case studies demonstrates the adaptability of the Rights of Nature concept. The legal language and governance structures are evolving, moving from broad, philosophical principles toward more specific, ecologically-grounded entitlements. While Ecuador’s constitution grants universal rights to “exist” and “regenerate,” later laws have become more tailored, such as the right of manoomin to “freshwater habitat” or the right of the Magpie River in Canada to “flow” and “maintain its natural biodiversity”.31 This trend suggests a maturation of the legal drafting process, aimed at creating more practical and enforceable rights that can be more effectively adjudicated in court and which may help address critiques of vagueness.
Table 3.1: Comparative Analysis of Key National Rights of Nature Frameworks
| Feature | Ecuador | Bolivia | New Zealand (Whanganui River) | Colombia (Atrato River) |
| Legal Basis | 2008 Constitution (Arts. 71-74) 18 | Law of the Rights of Mother Earth (2010) 18 | Te Awa Tupua Act (2017) 23 | Constitutional Court Ruling T-622/16 28 |
| Rights-Holder | Nature, or “Pacha Mama” 18 | “Mother Earth” 18 | “Te Awa Tupua” (the river as a living whole) 23 | The Atrato River, its basin, and tributaries 28 |
| Key Rights | To exist, persist, maintain & regenerate life cycles; to restoration 18 | To life, diversity of life, water, clean air, balance, restoration, freedom from pollution 18 | Rights, powers, duties, and liabilities of a legal person 27 | To protection, conservation, maintenance, and restoration 28 |
| Guardianship Model | Any person can enforce rights 19 | Office of Mother Earth (ombudsman) 21 | Two guardians (Te Pou Tupua): one from the Crown, one from the Iwi 22 | Two guardians: one from the government, one from community representatives 29 |
| Cultural Framing | Explicitly links Nature to Indigenous concept of Pachamama 19 | Rooted in Indigenous worldview of “Living Well” (Vivir Bien) 25 | Fuses Western legal personhood with Māori worldview of the river as an ancestor 23 | Recognizes “biocultural rights” linking river health to ethnic communities 28 |
The Rights of Nature in Practice: Landmark Cases and Legal Challenges
The codification of the Rights of Nature in constitutions and statutes is only the first step; its true impact is determined in the courtroom. A growing body of jurisprudence from around the world is beginning to define the practical meaning and scope of these rights. These landmark cases have provided crucial victories for the movement, establishing legal precedents and halting destructive projects. However, they have also exposed significant challenges related to enforcement, guardianship, and the inherent complexities of granting legal personality to the natural world. A critical gap often exists between the judicial recognition of rights and the executive capacity or political will to enforce them, demonstrating that a court order alone is not sufficient to guarantee protection.
Testing the Limits in Ecuador
As the first nation to constitutionalize the Rights of Nature, Ecuador has generated the most extensive body of case law. The very first lawsuit to successfully enforce these rights was the Vilcabamba River case in 2011. The Provincial Court of Justice of Loja ruled in favor of the river, which was named as the plaintiff, against a government road construction project that was dumping rock and debris into its waters. The court ordered the cessation of the harmful activities, establishing the vital precedent that nature could not only have rights but could also win in court.13
A decade later, the Los Cedros Protected Forest case (2021) represented a major maturation of Ecuador’s environmental jurisprudence. In a powerful and detailed ruling, the nation’s Constitutional Court revoked mining and environmental permits for mineral exploration within the highly biodiverse cloud forest. The Court held that the mining project threatened the forest’s fragile ecosystems and endangered species, thereby violating the rights of nature. The ruling established several crucial principles: that nature’s rights are applicable throughout the entire territory of Ecuador, not just within designated national parks; that the precautionary principle must be applied, meaning that a lack of scientific certainty about harm cannot be used as a reason to postpone protective measures; and that the rights of nature can and must prevail over economic interests when evidence indicates a risk of severe or irreversible harm.33 The Los Cedros decision has been hailed as one of the most significant and robust applications of the Rights of Nature globally, influencing legal discourse well beyond Ecuador’s borders.33 The country’s courts have also applied the rights to protect mangroves from industrial shrimp farming, to recognize the rights of individual wild animals (as in the case of Estrellita, a woolly monkey), and to declare that marine ecosystems possess legal rights.31
A Sacred Right Contested: The Ganges and Yamuna Rivers in India
In March 2017, the High Court of the Indian state of Uttarakhand issued a pair of stunning rulings that captured global attention. Citing the severe pollution threatening India’s most sacred rivers, the court declared the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers, their tributaries, and associated ecosystems to be “juristic/legal persons/living entities having the status of a legal person with all corresponding rights, duties and liabilities”.35 The court’s reasoning was rooted in both environmental necessity and Hindu spirituality, drawing a legal parallel between the rivers, which are venerated as goddesses, and Hindu deities, which are already recognized as legal persons under Indian law.35 To act as guardians, the court appointed several state officials, including the Chief Secretary of Uttarakhand and the director of the national “Namami Gange” river cleanup project.36
This celebrated victory, however, was short-lived. The state government appealed the decision to the Supreme Court of India, which issued a stay just a few months later in July 2017.35 The Supreme Court’s intervention effectively “stress-tested” the concept of legal personhood for nature, exposing a host of unresolved practical and legal questions. The state government argued that the ruling was legally unsustainable because it was impractical. For example, if a river is a legal person with liabilities, could the state, as its guardian, be held financially responsible for damages caused by flooding? Such a liability could be massive and unmanageable.35 The Supreme Court also noted that the High Court had likely overstepped its jurisdiction, as the river flows through multiple states, and that granting personhood required a legislative act, not a judicial one.38 The case serves as a critical cautionary tale, demonstrating that for Rights of Nature to be legally durable, the frameworks must be carefully designed to address complex issues of liability, financial responsibility, and the appointment of independent, unconflicted guardians.
Enforcement, Guardianship, and Restoration
Across jurisdictions, the practical implementation of Rights of Nature has revealed persistent challenges. The most significant is often enforcement. The Atrato River case in Colombia provides a stark example. Despite the Constitutional Court’s powerful 2016 ruling, a 2025 United Nations communication warned of a “serious and ongoing human rights crisis” in the region, noting that illegal gold mining and associated mercury contamination—the very issues the ruling sought to address—had continued and in some cases worsened.29 This highlights the profound difficulty of translating a court decision into on-the-ground reality, especially in areas with weak state presence and powerful illegal economic actors. Without robust and sustained government action, adequate funding, and the political will to enforce the law, a legal right can remain purely symbolic.39
The question of guardianship—who speaks for nature?—also remains a complex issue. While Ecuador’s model of universal standing is highly democratic, it can lead to a lack of coordinated legal strategy. The co-guardianship models in New Zealand and Colombia offer a more structured approach but can be fraught with their own challenges, including power imbalances between government and community representatives. The Indian case revealed the clear conflict of interest that arises when the very state agencies that have failed to prevent pollution are appointed as nature’s legal guardians.35
Finally, the right to restoration, a cornerstone of many Rights of Nature laws, presents immense practical and financial hurdles. For ecosystems like the Atrato or Ganges, which have suffered from decades of severe industrial and municipal pollution, the technical and monetary requirements for a full restoration are staggering. While the legal right to be restored is a powerful moral and legal statement, defining what “restoration” means in a scientifically rigorous way and securing the resources to achieve it remain among the movement’s greatest long-term challenges.
Critical Perspectives and the Path Forward
As the Rights of Nature movement gains momentum and moves from the fringes of legal theory to the center of environmental governance debates, it has attracted a growing body of critical analysis. These critiques challenge the movement on philosophical, practical, and political grounds, raising important questions about its legal sustainability and its potential consequences for democratic society. Simultaneously, proponents are working to strengthen the concept by linking it to established human rights frameworks and the global sustainable development agenda. The movement currently stands at a strategic crossroads, navigating the tension between its role as a radical tool for protest and its aspiration to become a mainstream paradigm for governance.
Addressing the Critiques: Ambiguity, Enforceability, and Democratic Implications
The primary critiques of the Rights of Nature can be grouped into three main categories. First is the charge of legal ambiguity. Critics argue that foundational concepts like the right of an ecosystem to “flourish” are inherently vague and difficult to define in a legal context.40 This ambiguity can lead to unhelpful legal conflicts, pitting the newly recognized rights of a river against the established property rights of a corporation or landowner in a zero-sum contest that courts are ill-equipped to resolve. This view holds that the language of rights, borrowed from the Western individualist tradition, may be a poor fit for the complex, interconnected realities of ecosystems.40
Second is the persistent problem of unenforceability. As the experience in the United States has shown, many local Rights of Nature ordinances have been successfully challenged in court and struck down on the grounds that they are preempted by state or federal law.20 This has led some analysts to conclude that these laws function more as “political resources in legal mobilization”—powerful tools for organizing community opposition and critiquing existing environmental law—than as a formal, winning litigation strategy.41 While this political function is valuable, it raises questions about the long-term viability of a legal strategy that rarely succeeds in court.
The third and perhaps most profound challenge comes from a critique that the movement could have anti-democratic consequences. This argument, articulated by legal scholars like Noah M. Sachs, posits that the Rights of Nature movement is designed to check and constrain democratic institutions.42 By creating what are framed as absolute, enforceable rights for a limitless class of non-human entities, the movement effectively shifts decision-making power away from publicly accountable, representative bodies like legislatures and toward unelected judges. A legislature is designed to balance competing interests—economic development, social needs, and environmental protection. A court, when asked to adjudicate an alleged violation of a fundamental right, is compelled to prioritize that right. Widespread implementation of this vision, the critique holds, would “straitjacket” representative institutions, undermine public input, and diminish the capacity of democratic governments to solve complex social and environmental problems through deliberation and compromise.42 This critique forces the movement to articulate a clear theory of governance that demonstrates how a rights-based framework for nature can enhance, rather than subvert, democratic processes.
The Interplay with Human Rights and Sustainable Development
In response to these challenges, and as a core part of their advocacy, proponents are increasingly highlighting the synergistic relationship between the Rights of Nature and human rights. The argument is that these two sets of rights are not in competition, but are mutually dependent and reinforcing.3 The realization of the human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment—a right now recognized by the United Nations—is impossible without healthy, functioning ecosystems. Therefore, recognizing the rights of nature itself to be healthy is a prerequisite for fulfilling this fundamental human right.3
This perspective reframes the Rights of Nature as a holistic tool that can serve as a bridge connecting human rights, the rights of Indigenous peoples, and environmental protection under a single, coherent framework.43 It is seen as a powerful catalyst for achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly those concerning clean water and sanitation (SDG 6), climate action (SDG 13), and life below water and on land (SDGs 14 and 15). By placing the health of ecosystems at the center of governance, the Rights of Nature model encourages the kind of holistic, systems-based thinking necessary to address complex, interconnected challenges like climate change and biodiversity loss.43
Future Horizons: The Expanding Scope of Earth Jurisprudence
Despite the critiques and challenges, the Rights of Nature movement continues to expand its influence. It has gained traction with major international bodies, including the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which has adopted a policy to incorporate the concept into its decision-making, and has been the subject of reports and dialogues at the United Nations.3 Campaigns are underway in Europe, the United Kingdom, and many other nations to advance new laws and constitutional amendments.8
The movement now faces a strategic choice about its future path. It can continue to function primarily as a framework for resistance, providing communities with a powerful legal and moral tool to oppose unwanted and destructive development projects. Alternatively, it can evolve into a comprehensive, alternative paradigm for environmental governance, focusing on the difficult work of building the detailed legal and political institutions necessary for a society that truly lives in harmony with nature.41 This would require moving beyond protest and engaging in the complex task of designing systems that can balance competing rights and interests in a just and sustainable way. Ultimately, the Rights of Nature movement seeks nothing less than a “seismic shift in law and policy making”.44 It is an attempt to unlearn the 20th-century mindset that nature is an inert resource to be manipulated and abused, and to instead encode a new consciousness of interdependence, reciprocity, and care into the very foundation of our legal systems.7
Download a copy of this essay with my compliments- Kevin Parker- Publisher From Property to Personhood: A Comprehensive Analysis of the Rights of Nature Movement
Appendix: Bibliography
Boyd, David R. The Rights of Nature: A Legal Revolution That Could Save the World. Toronto: ECW Press, 2017.
Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights. “Rights of Nature Law Library.” Accessed October 12, 2025. https://www.centerforenvironmentalrights.org/rights-of-nature-law-library.
Corrigan, Daniel P., and Markku Oksanen, eds. Rights of Nature: A Re-examination. Abingdon: Routledge, 2021.
Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature. “Rights of Nature Timeline.” Accessed October 12, 2025. https://www.garn.org/rights-of-nature-timeline/.
Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature. “What are the Rights of Nature?” Accessed October 12, 2025. https://www.garn.org/rights-of-nature/.
Horstmannshoff, Imke, and Barbara Unmüßig. “Seven Points on Rights of Nature.” Heinrich Böll Stiftung, January 24, 2025. https://www.boell.de/en/2025/01/24/seven-points-rights-nature.
International Joint Commission. “Rights of Nature FAQ.” October 2019. https://www.ijc.org/system/files/commentfiles/2019-10-Nicolette%20Slagle/FAQ.pdf.
Nash, Roderick Frazier. The Rights of Nature: A History of Environmental Ethics. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989.
Sachs, Noah M. “Anti-Democratic Rights of Nature.” Georgetown Environmental Law Review 37, no. 1 (2024).
Stone, Christopher D. “Should Trees Have Standing?—Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects.” Southern California Law Review 45 (1972): 450–501.
Surma, Katie. “What Are the Rights of Nature? A Movement to Grant Legal Personhood to Ecosystems Is Spreading.” Inside Climate News, April 2, 2025. https://insideclimatenews.org/news/02042025/introduction-to-rights-of-nature-movement/.
Tănăsescu, Mihnea. “The Rights of Nature Go from Theory to Reality.” Current History 124, no. 858 (January 2025): 21–26.
United Nations. “Rights of Nature Law and Policy.” Harmony with Nature. Accessed October 12, 2025. http://www.harmonywithnatureun.org/rightsOfNaturePolicies/.
Watts, Jonathan. “UK campaigners launch bill to give nature legal rights.” The Guardian, October 23, 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/23/uk-campaigners-launch-bill-to-give-nature-legal-rights.
Wikipedia. “Rights of nature.” Last modified October 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights_of_nature.
Legal and Governmental Documents
Bolivia. Ley de Derechos de la Madre Tierra, Law No. 071 of October 21, 2010.
Colombia. Constitutional Court. Judgment T-622/16. November 10, 2016.
Ecuador. Constitución de la República del Ecuador. 2008.
New Zealand. Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Act 2017.
Uganda. National Environment Act. 2019.
