African Law Matters: Can nature have rights? That’s no longer the question.
by CDER’s Mari Margil
October 11, 2022
CDER’s Mari Margil wrote this blog, exploring the legal movement for the rights of nature.
This blog is part of a joint symposium between the IACL-AIDC Blog and African Law Matters, featuring posts on the theme ‘Constitutional Transformations’ from participants at the upcoming World Congress of Constitutional Law in Johannesburg, South Africa, 5-9 December 2022.
Read the full blog here.
The beginning of a movement for the rights of nature
“In 2006, the world’s first “rights of nature” law was enacted. The law was adopted by the small community of Tamaqua Borough, in the State of Pennsylvania in the United States of America. Two years later, Ecuador became the first country to enshrine the rights of nature – Pacha Mama – in a national constitution.”
CDER’s Executive Director, Mari Margil, begins this thoughtful editorial describing how the fight to secure the rights of the natural world has been hard won, is global in nature, and is time tested after almost 20 years. Since its inception, local communities, countries, First Nations, and courts have secured legal rights. This includes countries such as Uganda, Panama, Bolivia, Colombia, India, and Bangladesh.
Mari directs us to this Western understanding of the legal realm of Earth and its resources as being a ‘thing’ to utilize or own. This goes directly against the “rights of nature” which holds that our natural ecosystem is its own entity, that we are part of and depend on for our own survival.
Moving toward a rights-based framework to protect nature
The Abolitionist and Sufferage movements within the United States are recent examples of the historical transformation from being viewed as property to personhood. However, just like these examples, the process was a long and arduous one, and this can be expected to be seen in the journey to secure the rights of nature. As stated in the article:
“Often this (opposition) comes from corporate and development interests, but not exclusively. For some, it challenges the notion that human beings are divinely intended to rule nature, or somehow that recognizing the rights that nature needs to be healthy and resilient will diminish the “right” that humanity assumes it has to use nature.”