Rights of nature: Difference between revisions

Proponents of rights of nature argue that, just as [[human rights]] have been recognized increasingly in law, so should nature's rights be recognized and incorporated into human ethics and laws.<ref name="Cullinan 2011"/> This claim is underpinned by two lines of reasoning: that the same ethics that justify human rights, also justify nature's rights, and, that humans' own survival depend on healthy ecosystems.<ref name="Berry 1999"/><ref name="Stone 1996"/><ref name="Nash 1989"/>

 

First, it is argued that if inherent human rights arise from human existence, so too logically do inherent rights of the natural world arise from the natural world's own existence.<ref name="Sheehan 2013"/> Human rights, and associated duties to protect those rights, have expanded over time.<ref name="Stone 1996"/><ref name="Leopold 1949"/> Most notably, the 1948 adoption by the United Nations, of the [[Universal Declaration of Human Rights]] (UDHR) that formalized recognition of broad categories of inalienable human rights. Drafters of the UDHR stated their belief that the concept of fundamental [[human rights]] arose not from "the decision of a worldly power, but rather in the fact of existing."<ref name="UN/Santa Cruz 1948"/>

 

Some notable proponents of this approach include U.S. cultural historian [[Thomas Berry]],<ref name="Bell 2003"/><ref name="Burdon 2012"/> South African attorney [[Cormac Cullinan]], Indian physicist and eco-social advocate [[Vandana Shiva]], and Canadian law professor and U.N. Special Rapporteur for Human Rights and the Environment [[David R. Boyd]].<ref name="UNGA A/71/266 2016"/><ref name="Boyd 2017"/><ref name="Rai 2020"/>

 

 

Thomas Berry introduced a philosophy and ethics of law concept called [[Earth jurisprudence]] that identifies the earth's laws as primary and reasons that everything by the fact of its existence, therefore, has an intrinsic right to be and evolve.<ref name="Berry 2006"/><ref name="Bell 2003"/><ref name="Burdon 2012"/> Earth Jurisprudence has been increasingly recognized and promoted worldwide by legal scholars, the United Nations, lawmakers, philosophers, ecological economists, and other experts as a foundation for Earth-centered governance, including laws and economic systems that protect the fundamental rights of nature.<ref name="UNGA A/71/266 2016"/>

While science in the late twentieth century shifted to a systems-based perspective, describing natural systems and human populations as fundamentally interconnected on a shared planet,<ref name="Thiele 2011"/> environmental laws generally did not evolve with this shift. Reductionist U.S. environmental laws passed in the early 1970s remained largely unchanged, and other national and international environmental law regimes similarly stopped short of embracing the modern science of systems.<ref name="Cullinan 2011"/>

 

 

[[Thomas Berry]] proposed that society's laws should derive from the laws of nature, explaining that "the universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects".<ref name="Berry 2006"/> From the scientific perspective that all life arose from the context of the universe, Berry offered the ethical perspective that it is flawed to view humans as the universe's only subjects, with all other beings merely a collection of objects to be owned and used. Rather, consideration of life as a web of relationships extending back to a shared ancestry confers subject status to all, including the inherent rights associated with that status. Laws based on a recognition of the intrinsic moral value of the natural world, create a new societal moral compass that directs society's interactions with the natural world more effectively toward well-being for all.<ref name="Koons 2008"/><ref name="Babcock 2016"/>

 

 

Scientists who similarly wrote in support of expanded human moral development and ethical obligation include naturalist [[John Muir]] and scientist and forester [[Aldo Leopold]]. Leopold expressed that "[w]hen we see land as a community to which we belong", rather than "a commodity belonging to us", we can "begin to use it with love and respect". Leopold offered implementation guidance for his position, stating that a "thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise."<ref name="Leopold 1949"/><ref name="Nash 1989"/>{{efn|name=fn1}} Berry similarly observed that "whatever preserves and enhances this meadow in the natural cycles of its transformation is good; what is opposed to this meadow or negates it is not good."<ref name="Berry 1993"/><ref name="Nash 1989"/> Physician and philosopher [[Albert Schweizer]] defined right actions as those that recognize a reverence for life and the "will to live".<ref name="Schweitzer 1933"/><ref name="Nash 1989"/>

Many of the world's other religious and spiritual traditions offer insights consistent with a nature's rights worldview.<ref name="Grim & Tucker 2014"/> Eastern religious and philosophical traditions embrace a holistic conception of spirituality that includes the Earth. Chinese [[Daoism]] and [[Neo-Confucianism]], as well as Japanese [[Buddhism in Japan|Buddhism]], teach that the world is a dynamic force field of energies known as [[Busshō (Shōbōgenzō)|bussho]] ([[Buddha-nature|Buddha nature]] or [[qi]]), the material force that flows through humans, nature, and universe. As the eleventh century pioneering [[Neo-Confucianism|Neo-Confucianist]] philosopher [[Zhang Zai]] explained, "that which extends throughout the universe I regard as my body and that which directs the universe I consider as my nature".<ref name="Tucker 1991"/>

 

 

 

 

The [[Qur’an]], Islam's primary authority in all matters of individual and communal life, reflects that "the whole creation praises God by its very being".<ref name="Denny 1998"/> Scholars describe the "ultimate purpose of the [[Sharia|Shari'ah]]"<ref name="Othman Abd ar-Rahman Llewellyn 1984"/> as "the universal common good, the welfare of the entire creation,"<ref name="Othman Abd ar-Rahman Llewellyn 1984"/> and note that "not a single creature, present or future, may be excluded from consideration in deciding a course of action."<ref name="Othman Abd ar-Rahman Llewellyn 1984"/>

Peter Burdon, professor at the University of Adelaide Law School and an Earth Jurisprudence scholar, has expanded upon Nash's analysis, offering that seventeenth century English philosopher and physician [[John Locke]]'s transformative natural rights thesis led to the [[American Revolution]], through the concept that the British monarchy was denying colonists their natural rights.<ref name="Burdon 2011"/> Building on that concept, U.S. President, attorney, and philosopher [[Thomas Jefferson]] argued that the "laws of nature and of nature's God" reveal "self-evident" truths that "all Men are created equal" in their possession of "certain unalienable rights", particularly "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". The 1789 French [[Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen]] later recognized as well the "natural, inalienable and sacred rights of Man", adding that the "final end of every political institution is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of Man."<ref name="Burdon 2011"/><ref name="Nash 1989"/>

 

 

 

The 1948 adoption of the [[Universal Declaration of Human Rights]] (UDHR) by the United Nations was another milestone, underpinned by the belief that fundamental human rights arise from "the fact of existing".<ref name="UN/Santa Cruz 1948"/><ref name="Berry 1999"/> The movement for rights of nature built on this belief, arguing that if "existence" is the defining condition for fundamental rights, this defining condition could not be limited to the rights of only one form of existence, and that all forms of existence should enjoy fundamental rights.<ref name="Nash 1989"/> For example, [[Aldo Leopold]]'s land ethic explicitly recognized nature's "right to continued existence"<ref name="Leopold 1949"/> and sought to "change the role of ''[[Homo sapiens]]'' from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it".<ref name="Leopold 1949"/>

{{Main|Rights of nature law}}

 

 

==Related initiatives==

The development of stronger and more active transnational rights of nature networks during the early 2000s, is a likely cause for the greater adoption of those championed principles into law.<ref name="Kauffman 2020"/> This has occurred in close integration with other, system-changing initiatives and movements for rights, including: development and implementation of new economic and finance models that seek to better reflect human rights and nature's rights;<ref name="Kelly 2003"/><ref name="McKibben 2007"/><ref name="Raworth 2017"/> indigenous leadership to advance both the [[Indigenous rights|rights of indigenous peoples]] and nature's rights;<ref name="Goldtooth"/><ref name="LaDuke 2019"/><ref name="Horinek 2014"/> international social movements such as the [[Human right to water and sanitation|human right to water]];<ref name="Barlow 2019"/><ref name="Sheehan 2013"/> advancement of practical solutions consistent with a nature's rights frame, such as [[rewilding (conservation biology)|rewilding]];<ref name="Monbiot 2013"/> and rights of nature movement capacity building, including through development of nature's rights movement hubs globally.<ref name="Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature"/>

 

 

As awareness of rights of nature law and jurisprudence has spread, a new field of academic research is developing, where legal scholars and other scholars have begun to offer strategies and analysis to drive broader application of such laws, particularly in the face of early implementation successes and challenges.<ref name="Kauffman & Martin 2017"/><ref name="Schaefer 2018"/><ref name="Binjaku & Dixit 2019"/>

*{{cite book |last=Cullinan |first=Cormac |author-link=Cormac Cullinan |date=2011 |title=Wild Law: A Manifesto for Earth Justice |publisher=[[Chelsea Green Publishing]]|location=U.S. |edition=2nd |isbn=978-1603583770}}

*Epstein, Yaffa; Ellison, Aaron M.; Echeverria, Hugo; Abbott, Jessica K., "Science and the Legal Rights of Nature". ''Science''. American Association for the Advancement of Science. 380(6646). https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf4155.

*{{cite journal |first1= Oliver|last1=Houck |date=Winter 2017 |title=Noah's Second Voyage: The Rights of Nature as Law |journal= [[Tulane Environmental Law Journal]]|volume= 31|url=https://www.occompt.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/2019-08-08-Noahs-Second-Voyage-The-Rights-of-Nature-as-Law.pdf}}

*{{cite book |first=Roderick Frazier |last=Nash|author-link=Roderick Nash|date=1989 |title=The Rights of Nature: A History of Environmental Ethics |url=https://archive.org/details/rightsofnaturehi00nash|url-access=registration |publisher=[[University of Wisconsin Press]] |location=U.S. |isbn= 978-0299118440}}

*[http://thomasberry.org/ Thomas Berry and the Great Work]

*[http://www.harmonywithnatureun.org/ United Nations, Harmony with Nature initiative]

[[Category:Rights of nature]]