36 |^5280 |^ MAY 2018
Photo illustration by Sean ParsonsThe Law Of The Land
Colorado environmentalists are gaining ground—and
water—in their efforts to secure humanlike rights for nature.
T
his past fall, Denver lawyer Jason Flores-Williams iled a lawsuit that no U.S.
federal court had ever seen. On behalf of the Colorado River, he sued the state of
Colorado to establish “legal personhood” for the waterway, which would grant the
river the ability to take corporations and individuals that threaten its health to court.
he suit was dismissed in December, but for those in the rights of nature movement,
its appearance in court at all was a small victory toward achieving a larger goal: to
shift the legal perception of nature from property to a rights-bearing living being.
Since the 1970s, the rights of nature movement has fought to defend natural entities
such as forests and waterways from human destruction. he concept gained notoriety after
law professor Christopher D. Stone published his 1972 article “Should Trees Have Stand-
ing?—Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects,” in which he argued that the environment
should be entitled to the same fundamental rights as people and, today, corporations. Since
then, the campaign has attracted advocates around the globe. In 2017, for example, New
Zealand’s judicial system granted the Whanganui River its own legal identity with “all the
rights, powers, duties, and liabilities of a legal person.” (Appointed representatives speak
for the river’s interests.) Only a few natural entities have received the same recognition
from American municipal courts, but that could change, starting here in Colorado. “We’re
talking about a 20- to 30-year time frame here,” says homas Linzey, executive director of
the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. To afect policy, “you need 100, 200,
300 court cases [like Colorado River v. Colorado]. You gotta draw the conlict in enoughplaces to force that up
the ladder.”
As part of that
climb, Deep Green
Resistance (DGR)—a
radical environmental
group with a chapter
on the Front Range—
has been working with
city governments to
secure legal rights for
pinyon-juniper forests
across the Colorado
Plateau. DGR activ-
ist Will Falk says the
Bureau of Land Man-
agement clear-cuts
pinyon-juniper habitat
to open public land
for cattle-grazing. To
keep the forests intact,
DGR is encouraging
indigenous nations on
the Colorado Plateau
to insert nature-centric
provisions into their
tribal constitutions,
which would grant for-
ests the inherent right
to exist and lourish.
A couple hundred
miles away, the citizen-
led Boulder Rights
of Nature group is
working to pass an
ordinance by early 2019
that would grant the
county’s grasslands and
forests the legal right to
exist and evolve. hat
would mean Boulder
Creek, for example,
would gain the right to
maintain a healthy in-
stream low, defending
it against overuse for
municipal or agricul-
tural diversions. A legal
victory there might not
be on the same scale as
one for the Colorado
River, but for rights
of nature advocates, it
would be progress—
and one step closer to
turning a trickle of
policy change into a
torrent. —NICK DAVIDSONENVIRONMENT
Communities
in America
that have
adopted rights
of nature laws,
according to
the Community
Environmental
Legal Defense
Fund36+