Giving nature legal rights could force a change in perception around the world
Posted Date – 12:25 AM, Thu – 1/5/23
![Opinion: Rights and values of nature](https://cdn.telanganatoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/world-justice.jpg)
Tarini Mehta
How do we view nature? Do we see it and value it accordingly – based on its usefulness to humans – or as something with intrinsic value?
The current conservation framework is based on the former view, as is litigation. People tend to judge and appreciate nature in terms of its impact on humans—an anthropocentric perspective. This approach does not allow for the comprehensive protection of nature, thereby prioritizing the need for a nature rights framework.
need frame
Worldwide, the framework has gained more recognition. Ecuador and Bolivia have incorporated the right of nature to exist, persist, sustain and reproduce. In India, there are attempts to give personality to natural resources through litigation. However, there are rebuttals to these legal developments. The key here is that nature is a non-living thing that cannot speak or communicate.
As Christopher Stone put it in his seminal 1972 book: “‘It’s not just human forms of matter that are recognized as rights holders. The lawyer’s world is full of inanimate rights holders: trusts , corporations, joint ventures, municipalities. and nation-states, to name a few. Ships, still called women by the courts, have long had separate legal lives, often with notable consequences.
Decades later, scholars such as La Follette and Maser echoed this sentiment: “There is of course no answer to say that nature, or any natural being, should be disenfranchised because it cannot speak. Rights. All of these entities hire lawyers to represent them and defend their cases in court.”
Intrinsic Value
The roots of arguments against the natural rights framework can be traced to the philosophy that underpins industrialized Western societies—a philosophy that recognizes little or no intrinsic value in nature unless it can be shown to be “beneficial to human beings.” something” or can be transformed into something of material value, on the other hand, Aboriginal cultures and Eastern traditions have a long history of assigning intrinsic, often sacred, value to natural resources.
For example, the Ganges, one of the rivers anthropomorphized by the Uttarakhand High Court, is considered a goddess by Hindus with her own divine history and power. In a similar way, the Whanganui River acquired personality rights in New Zealand through the Whanganui Tribal Settlement Deed due to the unique cultural relationship Māori had with the river. There is a Maori proverb: “Ko au te awa, ko te awa ho au” – “I am the river and the river is me”.
The granting of legal personality to the Whanganui is an important example of the extension of legal rights and personality to non-human and inanimate objects. But this isn’t the first time the concept has been used in law to protect natural resources. In 2006, the Tamaqua District of Pennsylvania, USA, banned the dumping of toxic waste and sewage because it violated nature’s rights. In 2008, Ecuador became the first country to recognize the rights of nature in its national constitution, which eloquently states in Article 71: “Nature or Pachamama, where life multiplies and exists, has the right to exist, insist, Maintain and regenerate its life cycle, structure, function and its evolutionary process.
eco-centric approach
This view of nature is the hallmark of a more ecocentric Earth jurisprudence that seeks to replace the dominant view centered on humans and their interests. An ecocentric approach recognizes the intrinsic value of each living being and therefore requires respect for the rights of each living being.
Bolivia’s Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth sums it up well. It recognizes nature’s right to flourish because Mother Earth is a living being. To ensure that the planet and its resources thrive, it recognizes that a key right of nature is the right to life.
Bolivian law therefore requires public policy and state action to be guided by Buen Vivir, a concept of well-being based on traditional and indigenous values of living in harmony with nature and humanity. This harmony is only possible when one acknowledges the interdependence of all things.
The Mahayana metaphor of Indra’s web illustrates the principle of interdependence well – a magical web hangs over Indra’s palace and extends in all directions. At each node is placed a sparkling gem in which it reflects all other gems in the network. In the same way, each gem reflects the other and is connected by the filaments of the web, we are interconnected and affect each other.
Recognition of this interdependence is found in the formulation of natural rights. The preamble of Bolivia’s Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth declares: “…we are all part of Mother Earth, an indivisible community of life made up of interrelated and interdependent organisms… [and] Convinced that it is impossible to recognize the rights of only human beings in an interdependent living community without creating an internal imbalance in Mother Earth.
In this way, the natural rights framework is reframing human society and humanity’s place within the larger canvas of life on Earth. In fact, sustainability cannot be achieved without integrating this perspective into the relationship of modern society to nature, and thus into development pathways.
challenge
Of course, it’s not without its challenges. Regarding its practical application, there are some questions to be answered. Who is best suited and qualified to be a guardian of natural resources? How will they be selected and by what criteria will they be held? Since the interests of natural resources are ultimately determined by the state and society, is this approach still anthropocentric, and does it undermine the original intention of endowing natural resource rights?
While these issues need to be addressed, the level of environmental destruction we now face makes evident the critical role of the natural rights framework in achieving sustainable development.
The current global ecological crisis is the result of unsustainable development, consumption and production patterns. Now is the time for a new approach – where we acknowledge and accept our interdependence and start living in greater harmony with nature, above all, respecting its inherent values and rights. 360 information
(Associate Professor of Environmental Law, Jindal Global Law School, Jindal Global University)