INSPIRED BY THE ORIGINAL INDIGENOUS WORLDVIEW, A GLOBAL MOVEMENT IS CURRENTLY UNDERWAY TO RECOGNIZE THAT NATURE IS NOT MERE PROPERTY, BUT INSTEAD HAS INHERENT RIGHTS, SUCH AS A FOREST’S RIGHT TO HEALTH OR A RIVER’S RIGHT TO FLOW. ECUADOR FIRST MADE HISTORY BY RECOGNIZING THE RIGHTS OF NATURE IN ITS CONSTITUTION ONLY 12 YEARS AGO.

Now, Rights of Nature is recognized in at least 12 countries, including Canada, Colombia, Ecuador Bangladesh, Mexico, and even the United States (where several Tribal Nations and local communities have recognized Nature’s inherent rights). Rights of Nature is a new, Earth-centered approach for our legal system.

The primary cause of these crises is the legal system’s treatment of Nature as mere human property, with only humans and human-made entities possessing even the most basic rights. In turn, our economic system treats Nature as a commodity, encouraging its exploitation to the maximum possible extent for short-term profits. This fundamentally flawed model has led to the inevitable result of the global degradation of Nature.

Current environmental laws fall short because they merely play defense, reducing but never halting or reversing environmental degradation. In the United States, for example, there exist a wide variety of environmental laws—the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act, to name a few. These laws, although revolutionary at the time many of them were introduced a half century ago, have failed to halt the climate crisis and other ecological devastation. They permit resource extraction, waste discharge, habitat degradation, and species extinction at slower but still continuing rates. Their structure, lacking the idea that nature is a rights-bearing entity, renders them unable to stop global environmental decline, let alone reverse it.

The international community is beginning to recognize that current environmental laws are not enough. For example, a 2019 United Nations “mega report” on biodiversity loss called repeatedly—21 separate times—for “transformative change” to safeguard life on Earth3. In 2020, the “Leaders’ Pledge for Nature,” signed by more than 60 Heads of State and governments, similarly concluded that “transformative change is needed.” Rights of Nature and the broader field of “Earth law” provides such transformative change.