Nature Rights
"The causes of climate change are systemic. Energy efficiency gains may get us to 2030 but to get to where we need to be by 2050 we must look at deeper systemic solutions.”
- Hans Bruyninckx, Executive Director of the European Environment Agency
The rights of nature and underlying philosophy of Earth jurisprudence (meaning system of law) are becoming recognised as necessary additions to our legal system. But what’s getting in the way? Big surprise: it’s our economic system. Modern society and its socioeconomic drive towards growth—increasingly spreading across the developing world—follows an anthropocentric ideology, meaning we place people as both separate-to and above the rest of the living world: our rights come first as none yet exist for nature (in a legal sense).
Other, more nature-attuned cultures, such as the Aboriginals, base their social and spiritual frameworks around the ecosphere, recognising the oneness of humans and nature; that people do not have authority to rule over the world. In the modern West however, our laws are set up in fundamental opposition to nature, based on an outdated (and misinformed) model of growth beginning in the 17th Century – the so-called “Age of Enlightenment”. And we really haven’t moved on much from there: our thinking remains a figurative stick in the mud. And the water is rising.
Ecocide
Just as human rights are now widely enshrined in modern democracies thanks to the Civil Rights movements of the 20th Century, many now demand Nature Rights. We appropriately look upon instances of fascist eradication as genocide, the label itself condemning the act in public consciousness, but we don’t use the same language for the human induced climate crisis, which threatens all living things. That’s why activists have proposed this be labelled ‘ecocide’: a crime against nature; one committed continually for over a century and causing the emergency in which we now find ourselves.
This movement outlines deforestation, ocean damage, land and water contamination, and air pollution as the proposed criminal charges. Currently, the International Criminal Court (ICC) lists only four crimes warranting legal intervention: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes of aggression. Nature Rights campaigners seek to add a fifth crime: ecocide. On the basis that only then can nature stand a chance against the big corporations plundering it for profit.
Corporate Dictatorship
We living in a parasitic system that takes from natural world without giving back in equal measure – if at all. This is made clear from the monetisation of nature, wherein corporations turn land into legal ‘property’ to extract financial gains, as property falls under the rightful dominion of those who can afford it, apparently. A legal system that favours the rights of corporations over living beings is not only untenable, but totally blind to the realities of this planet; to the actual laws of nature. Corporations are even known to sue governments for attempts at protecting nature, as seen in the Bayer, Syngenta case against the EU for banning bee-killing pesticides.
Corporations cover themselves (poorly) with empty promises of carbon and biodiversity offsetting, as if delicately formed ecosystems can simply be destroyed and topped-up again at random without dire consequence. It’s the predictable attitude of those who view everything as capital; worth only what it brings into the bank. Advocates for Nature Rights say that making nature a legal stakeholder is the best way to meet this “corporate dictatorship” head on, playing it at its own game.
Change the System
Establishing legal rights could address this power imbalance. But it is only part of the solution. Researchers believe that if humans feel connected to nature, they will feel a duty, even a desire, to protect it. Writing these amendments into law will help position the ecosphere as part of our cultural value system – inalienable from our understanding of justice, as with other civil rights. Recently, some of the world’s rivers have been recognised as having legal rights, but this legislation has yet to permeate Europe. Acknowledging—not granting—the inherent rights of nature can make great headway towards protecting the Earth from further degradation.
But environmental law in its present form can only go so far, as it still operates under the same paradigm that caused the climate crisis. Many claim that we will need to dismantle our system of expansion to survive, as ‘green growth’ is pretty much an oxymoron.
These rights can therefore be only one part of a bigger change. It’s our value system, our relationship with nature, and thus our economy too, that will require transformation if we are to truly protect our planet.
