Legal rights have been touted as a potential solution to environmental damage, but history has shown its impact to be minimal.
Release Date – 12:45 AM, Thu – 12 January 23
Peter Burden
Hyderabad: In November 2022, the Citizens’ Assembly on Biodiversity Loss Ireland recommended to the government that the constitution should recognize protection of the environment. If successful, Ireland would follow Ecuador in recognizing natural rights at the highest level.
Meanwhile, in the US, dozens of communities have ratified natural rights at the local government level, and New Zealand recognizes the Whanganui River as an “indivisible, living whole” with a personality of its own.
idea seed
It is not difficult to understand the appeal of natural rights. For many advocates, it’s an “idea whose time has come” to inspire us to think about a fundamental shift in the form our legal relationship with nature might take. The best example comes from Christopher Stone, whose 1972 article “Should Trees Have Standing?” was almost single-handedly responsible for planting the seed of this idea.
According to Stone, he first thought of the question in the last moments of a lecture on property law. He pointed out that, like human culture, property law is constantly evolving and has gone through different stages of development. Some people were once considered property; the types of things that could be owned and what ownership meant changed over time.
As the students packed up to go to the next class, Stone offered an idea: “So, what would a completely different law-driven consciousness look like? … Nature has rights … yes, rivers, lakes … Trees…animals…how will this legal position affect how the community sees itself? This thought bubble caused an uproar as Stone told the story, leaving the lecture hall asking himself, “What did you just say in there ? How can a tree have rights? “
limit
The power of natural rights is that it compels us to ask these questions and imagine a future in which the environment is not treated as an inanimate object, property, or a canvas on which the human will can be exercised.
Over the past 15 years, local codes, although often covering small areas, have become a popular way for communities to recognize and protect their rights in nature.
However, as radical as natural rights may seem, they have limitations. Fundamentally, a right is a legal tool that offers the prospect of protection through the courts—an adversarial system in which competing interests are weighed. Extending rights to people demonstrates potential problems. Even though human rights now cover women or people of color, they are not always treated equally with white men. In fact, the first question one must ask during any expansion of rights is: Who will be excluded? Who will benefit less than others?
The company also has legal personality. You might wonder whether an environment will be treated with the same respect as a legal person in a court case.
The case of Ecuador
Ecuador has enjoyed the rights of nature since 2008. The constitutional reform was motivated by a well-organized, Aboriginal-led movement in response to decades of environmental damage. The movement’s demands have changed over the decades, but sovereignty over Aboriginal lands and higher-level decision-making powers have remained constant. Viewed in this light, nature’s rights might be seen as a conservative response that quelled more radical claims to sovereignty.
Those rights are powerless to challenge oil extraction unless indigenous communities have the time, resources and expertise to bring suit in Ecuador’s constitutional court. Since 2008, no case has challenged existing oil projects or resulted in greater compensation to communities affected by the pollution. The most promising case is the Constitutional Court’s 2021 decision to cancel the Los Cedros Reserve’s license. However, the decision was limited to licenses to mine copper and gold in internationally protected reserves. This is a high standard and does not involve oil extraction at the heart of Ecuador’s economy.
In 2021, Ecuador’s national oil company’s oil revenue will reach 12 billion US dollars, an increase of 22% over 2020. This accounts for a significant portion of Ecuador’s national income, and state-owned companies plan to double production over the next five years. In the context of this extraction, what substantive impact can natural rights legislation have?
Similarly, Bolivia has struggled to reconcile natural rights legislation with its desire to exploit the 5.4 million tons of lithium that lie beneath the Salar de Uyuni. Given the world’s need for lithium to power the renewable energy revolution, how long can this part of the environment be protected?
form of conquest
Natural rights advocates often liken their movement to granting slave rights. The comparison is appropriate, but not in the sense they intended. Just as freed slaves remain in bondage and subject to the forces of racism that permeate society, the current example of natural rights may be nothing more than the affirmation of a different form of slavery.
Natural rights are not substantive or transformative legal choices. They are not meant to replace growth economics or build democracy in a way that empowers communities or builds resilience. Instead, Nature’s Rights represents a minimalist alternative and seeks to mitigate environmental damage within the coordinates of the current system. And, so far, it is difficult to find examples of them actually protecting the environment. 360 information
