The environment will be profoundly affected by climate change. Rivers, the lifeblood and vitality of the Earth, will disappear, leaving behind barren riverbeds. Swathes and swathes forests will be destroyed by the desertification. The resulting environmental catastrophe will destroy biomes that once had a lot of biodiversity.
The most common way to describe the effects of climate change on humans is to use the impact on people. Climate justice discourse does not recognize the wider impact of climate change on all life. The growing jurisprudence about environmental personhood offers a unique perspective on recontextualizing climate change’s impact.
Environmental personhoodIt is a legal concept that gives environmental entities the legal status of legal persons. This concept recognizes that nature is entitled to rights and that courts of law should enforce them. The environment is thus protected.Strong and expansiveLegal protections that are not connected to human rights.
Christopher Stone was the first to advocate the idea that an environmental person is possible.Should Trees be allowed to stand? Towards Legal Rights of Natural Objects. Stone argued that, if an environmental entity is granted legal personhood it cannot be owned and has a right to appear before a court. Stone’s original suggestion that forests and rivers should be represented in court was ridiculed.
Environmental personhood was a fringe legal doctrine until recently. The principle has seen a revival recently. Its increasing relevance in modern environmental justice is intrinsically tied to theInfluence of indigenous waysThe ability to see the relationship between humans and the world. Global legal developments show the impact of indigenous populations on discourses about protecting the environment.
A Global Movement Gains Ground
In 2008, Ecuador made history. It became theFirst countryto amend its constitution to reflect the rights of nature. Bolivia moves quicklyFollowedIn 2010. Both cases of legislative changes occurred in 2010.Co-occurrenceWith an increase in the political power of indigenous groups. Both countries saw theinfluence of indigenous people’sThe importance of the worldviews was obvious inPachamama”nature” in the language of the indigenous Quichua and Aimara groups.
UnterArticle 71of Ecuador’s constitution, nature has the right “to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its process in evolution.” Every person and community has the right to advocate on behalf of nature. The constitution does not directly personify nature. Nature is, instead, the bearer of rights-a distinct entity distinct from human interest.
Bolivia’s legislative protection operates similarly. The collective public interest is what allows for the legal recognition of nature. TheLaw of the Rights of Mother EarthHuman beings are stripped of their power over nature. The law protects nature as a system and not as discrete features, such as forests, rivers or glaciers.
New Zealand adopted a different approach to the problem, but it was rooted in how indigenous communities see their relationship with nature.For example,Maori tribe(iwi), subtribes (hapu), or extended families groups (whanau), a river or mountain could be an ancestor (tupuna). This is an essential part of their worldview. This worldview was influential in the granting of personhood to theWhanganui RiverThe forest and the peopleTe Urewera.
The importance of attributing personhood to discrete natural characteristics is increasing.
The 2014 edition of theSupreme Court of Indiaallowed Article 21the right to lifeof India’s constitution to be extended to non-human animals. In 2021, Canada recognized the legal rights of theMutesheku Shipu(Magpie River). The concept of environmental personhood is gaining popularity.Global movementTo acknowledge both indigenous law, and the rights to nature.
Beyond Human Interests
The movement plays a vital role in the pursuit of climate justice and represents an innovative way to talk about the environment. The most common language used to discuss climate justice and the environment is human interest. Switzerland, for example, has a constitution that recognizes that natural entities have rights that are tied to the dignity and security people. The provision predates Ecuador’s constitutional amendments regarding the rights of nature, but Ecuador’s amendments represent aInnovative wayto recognize the rights and interests of nature as independent from human needs.
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The codification and protection of the environment with human needs is an anthropocentric view of the environment based upon extractive value. InFrictionAnna Lowenhaupt Tsing explains how humans view nature as full of resources that can be exploited by humans. We clearly demarcate land ownership, defining how we can use it and how we should protect the land from environmental destruction.
These are the arguments for protecting the environmentSimilar patternsThese include allowing people to enjoy nature, reducing the damage done to the food supply chain for human consumption, and controlling the speed of economic development. These arguments are rooted within theSame goalsProtecting human life, health and the environment. It is an integrated approach to environmental protection.Ecological philosophyThe 19th and 20th century: Nature is to be exploited by humans.
As we navigate the current climate crisis, our anthropocentric perspectives, which are rooted in human exploitation, shift to more practical, long-term perspectives of environmental protection. These goals are based upon a pivot towards protecting the Earth for future generations. Arguments for immediate climate change action are often based on the fact that we will be the custodians of the Earth our children will live on.
Although this approach is noble, it can be dangerous.Laurence Tribenoted in 1974, a sense of duty towards the environment that gives rise to some effort to act on its behalf “will be translated into the terminology of human self-interest.” As a result, a nature-based approach to protecting nature is preferable to a human-centered one. It gives voice to an entity previously unheard. The legal status of natural entities is now recognized as personhood. It also outlines a number of rights that are not subject to human dominion.
Extractive Capitalism is in Trouble
Environmental personhood has the power to disrupt the capitalist legal system. It is a collective ontological project that rebels against the human tendency of turning nature into an exploitable resource. This concept has at its core the desire for nature to be an actor in social history. Environmental personhood seeks connections between culture, nature, and society. It recognizes that humans are part of nature and cannot exist without it. However, because of the abstract way we engage nature, reducing it to something only found on the edges, we lose sight our connection to it.
The practical value of environmental personhood for climate justice is greater than its ontological value. Climate litigation can be built upon the rights of nature. Only a few climate cases have invoked the rights of nature as a basis for litigation.Global Climate Litigation Report: 2020 Status Review. A decision of the April 2021 by theSupreme Court of Pakistansaw the court recognizing the need to protect the rights of nature, stating that “the environment needs to be protected in its own right.”
These cases have a limited impact. Based on how a claim is made, outcomes can vary. However, the increasing number of lawsuits sets a precedent to encourage national and local governments against projects that might damage a particular ecosystem. This is due to the potential future effects of rising greenhouse gases emissions. Additionally, the lawsuits highlight the harm climate change can cause to marginalized communities, particularly Indigenous communities, whose livelihoods and spiritual practices are dependent on the unique ecosystems that sustain them.
Recognizing the Earth is a living organismLiving systemThe idea that humans are part of the ecosystem, rather than being a property to be destroyed or traded, is a fundamental departure form climate capitalism that permeates global trade, environmental policies, treaties and international agreements. We must stop treating the Earth’s resources as commodities. This is how we can solve climate change. Because it is based on a system of climate capitalism, the current climate capitalism system does not sustain or regenerate life.Bad foundationIt is characterized by industrial extraction and pollution that continues. It is also defined by the privatization of nature and its commodification.
Climate capitalism treats the environment like an exploitable resource. Companies are greenwashing climate action campaigns and releasing carbon emissions into the atmosphere. They use reforestation to claim they are carbon-neutral, while creating systems which increase inequality and accelerate the destruction ecosystems.
TheRecognitionThe rights of nature recognises that human activities should not impair ecosystems’ ability to absorb and regenerate their natural capacity, thrive and develop. It demands that all those responsible for destruction, including corporate actors and governments, be held fully accountable.
It is a radical legal reform that would be incompatible with the existing law. We must uproot western ideas of individualism, property rights, and endless economic growth in order to establish environmental personhood. But such conflicts are necessary and urgent if radical climate change action is to be taken soon.
