28 September 2019 | New Scientist | 21can file a lawsuit if they think
nature’s rights are being violated.
Either way, unless people keep an
eye out and speak up for nature,
giving it rights won’t help.
“I don’t think we yet have a
foolproof mechanism to ensure
that the rights holders can claim
their entitlements,” says Cullet.
As a case in point, Bolivia and
Ecuador – which introduced
rights for nature in 2008 and 2010,
respectively – have failed to slow
their environmental degradation.
A bigger problem will be who
pays the legal fees. In a battle
between a multinational company
and a river backed by concerned
citizens, the side with the deeper
pockets has the advantage.
In several legal fights that have
played out so far, rights haven’t
stopped the environment from
losing. Take Grant Township inPennsylvania, where a law
recognising the rights of natural
ecosystems was held to infringe
the rights of corporations.
Lake Erie’s status is uncertain
too. It’s not just challenges from
farmers it has to contend with.
In August, a business lobby group
managed to insert a clause into a
bill relating to Ohio’s state budget
stating that nature doesn’t have
rights. The courts have yet to
decide whether this statement
or Lake Erie’s rights will win out.
That doesn’t mean rights
for nature won’t work though.
“History has shown us that
when trying to change the
status quo and expand rights to
a new, non-rights-bearing entity,
the first case rarely wins,” says
O’Dell. “However, it can ignite
a movement.” ❚says Peter Higgins at the
University of Edinburgh,
UK. “It makes you think.”
That may be the lasting power
of this movement. Defending
nature’s rights in court will force
us to reassess assumptions long
taken for granted. For Philippe
Cullet at the University of London,
it is a matter of addressing the
anthropocentrism at the heart of
environmental law. It will make
lawyers consider protection from
a standpoint other than how
useful a river is to us, he says.
Protection conferred by rights
may also be hard to remove or
weaken. If a government tried
to take away anti-discrimination
legislation for human minority
groups, the move would be
attacked as illegitimate, even if
such a law was adopted through a
democratic process, says Chapron.
“Using rights may therefore act as
a moral bulwark against the legal
downgrading which has been
problematic for nature laws.”
Still, the protection isn’t
automatic or absolute. The UN’s
Universal Declaration of Human
Rights states: “Everyone has the
right to life, liberty and security
of person.” Yet prisoners have their
liberty taken away and soldiers
die for their country. “To say that a
river has rights doesn’t necessarily
mean that the river will be
pristine,” says Lee.
What’s more, certain countries
choose to ignore human rights.
People are arbitrarily locked up or
tortured all the time. Rights offer
protection only where there is a
fair legal system to uphold them.
Even with that in place, it is
unclear how environmental rights
should be enforced in practice. In
some cases, such as India’s legal
rights for the Ganges river, human
representatives are responsible
for acting on behalf of their legal
charges. Or it may be that anybody▲ Giant pterosaurs
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newscientist.com/insight“ Organisations and nations
don’t necessarily have any
more reason to exist as a
legal entity than a river”1 In July, Bangladesh granted
personhood to all its rivers.
This means that anyone who
damages one can be sued by
its human representatives on
a government-appointed
commission.
2 Last year, 25 young people
took the Colombian government
to court, demanding a plan to
preserve the environment. Part
of the fallout was a decision to
give the Colombian section of the
Amazon river legal personhood.
3 The Ganges and one of its
main tributaries, the Yamuna -
both held sacred by Hindus - have
the legal right to not be harmed,
and can be parties in disputes.
4 Local Maori consider the
Whanganui river (main image) in
New Zealand to be an ancestor.
But it has become severely
degraded. In 2017, the country’s
government recognised the river
as a legal person in a settlement
known as Te Awa Tupua.
5 Because Lake Erie is regularly
polluted, residents of Toledo,
Ohio, voted this year to give it
legal personhood. The move
is subject to ongoing legal
wrangles, however, with a
business group hoping to have
the lake’s rights made illegal.
Water power
Many rivers and a few lakes
around the world are getting
rights as if they were people
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