Rivers and Natural Ecosystems as Rights Bearing Subjects
by: Ecologist Posted on: July 08, 2013
By Robin Millam, Ecologist
Robin Millam from the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature is encouraged to by the progress being made by those countries and communities small and large who are seeking to give legal rights to nature…..
In a historic preliminary agreement announced last August (2012), the Whanganui River of New Zealand is being granted legal personhood rights. The River is a major commercial route on the North Island and is sacred to the Whanganui iwi ─ Maori.
Negotiations have taken decades to get this far. The proposed framework agreement assigns shared guardian responsibilities for the river to Iwi and officials representing the Crown. This landmark move is a first for New Zealand but not for the world.
Across the Pacific, the Vilcabamba River of Ecuador has also been recognized as a rights bearing subject of the law. In 2008 Ecuador became the first country in the world to include Rights of Nature in its Constitution. The Constitution states that Nature
‘… has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and evolutionary processes.’
Furthermore, the people of Ecuador have the legal authority and responsibility to enforce these rights on behalf of ecosystems including rivers. In 2011, a major development project impacted the flow of the Vilcabamba River. Local residents filed a suit against the developer on behalf of the river. At the conclusion of a court trial, the river won. The judge awarded damages to the river and restoration is currently in process.
Granting legal standing to natural ecosystems is not isolated to these two cases. Recognizing rights of nature and natural ecosystems is the focus of a global grassroots movement. In 2010 in Cochabamba (Bolivia) over 35,000 people came together at a Peoples Conference to acclaim the Universal Declaration for Rights of Mother Earth. A copy of the declaration with 120,000 signatures was presented to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the Rio+20 Earth Summit in June 20126. Also in 2010, the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature was formed to provide a global hub for empowering the movement.
Although the idea has