On March 18, 2020, we were able to participate in a full day of discussion and learnings about the Rights of Nature and what it might mean to advance this in the province. This was all done through video conferencing as we were not able to travel to Vancouver for the events.

Today, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is expected to follow Mississippi’s lead by signing the state legislature’s ill-named “Clean Waterways Act” into law. Supported by Republicans and Democrats alike, the Act fails to address the primary cause of the state’s water quality problems – pollution from large agricultural operations.

In the face of growing environmental crisis around the world, PMPI is demonstrating the importance of advancing the Rights of Nature to make the significant changes that are needed in how humankind governs itself toward the natural world.

March 4, 2020 – Today, the fifteen member Orange County, Florida Charter Review Commission (CRC) voted to place a “rights of nature” initiative onto the November, 2020 ballot. The initiative, the first of its kind to be placed on a county ballot for a public vote, would recognize legal rights for the rivers and waters of Orange County, while also recognizing the rights of Orange County residents to a safe and healthy environment.

The Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights (CDER) congratulates our partners Speak Up Wekiva in Orange County, Florida, for successfully advancing a proposed rights of nature measure to a vote in November 2020. We have worked with them over the past year on a measure to protect the rights of the Wekiva and other waterways in the county.

The Wekiva River flows 16 miles through central Florida, a kayaking and canoeing haven that’s part of several protected conservation areas. But fertilizer runoff from yards and farming operations have dumped more than four times the amount of nitrates in the river than it should have, according to state environmental regulators. To protect the river — and the communities and ecosystems around it — from further harm, a group of Floridians want to give it legal rights.

In January 2020, the legislature of the Menominee Tribe of Wisconsin adopted Resolution 19-52, Recognition of the Rights of the Menominee River. We are proud to have worked with the Menominee tribal non-profit organization, Menikanaehkem, to draft the resolution, and we continue to work together to protect ecosystems and species within the Tribe’s historic lands.

Across the state, Florida waterways are under siege. …In response to those threats, however, people in nine Florida counties, including Alachua, have begun to demand stronger water protections.

Mari Margil, Executive Director of the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights, is interviewed on a special BBC radio program on the Rights of Nature.

By becoming a bearer of rights, nature is now being thrust into the murky realm of legal personhood.  

Conventional environmental laws have allowed Adani’s Carmichael coal mine go forward in Australia. It’s time we changed them.

For decades our laws have been a death sentence for the environment. Now, from the Amazon to Australia, the tide is turning

Climate change is accelerating faster than scientific models predicted. Mari Margil argues a transformation in law and culture is needed to curb the damaging effects on the world’s ecosystems.

A new movement is working to protect our environment through the recognition of its fundamental rights. It’s an idea whose time has come.