Rights of nature law
[1] Legal standing for natural systems in New Zealand arose alongside new attention paid to long-ignored treaty agreements with the Indigenous Maori.
[21] In August 2012, a treaty agreement signed with the Maori iwi recognized the Whanganui River and tributaries as a legal entity, an "indivisible and living whole" with its own standing.
[29][30][3] In 2019, the High Court of Bangladesh ruled on a case addressing pollution of and illegal development along the Turag River, an upper tributary of the Buriganga.
[35] The court added that humans are “only one more event within a long evolutionary chain [and] in no way... owner of other species, biodiversity or natural resources, or the fate of the planet".
[34][17][35] In 2018, the Colombia Supreme Court took up a climate change case by a group of children and young adults that also raised fundamental rights issues.
"[40][41][42] The Uttarakhand High Court applied the principle of ecocentric law in 2017, recognizing the legal personhood of the Ganga and Yamuna rivers and ecosystems, and calling them "living human entities" and juridical and moral persons.
The Nauta court in Loreto has ruled that what is one of the country's most important rivers and water sources must now be considered a subject with real rights.
[48] This decision was initiated by the Kukama indigenous community of Shapajilla, Loreto, led by women and supported by the Legal Defense Institute.
[56] At the local level dozens of ordinances with rights of nature provisions have been passed as of 2019 throughout the United States, and in tribal lands located within the U.S.
For example, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania passed an anti-fracking law that included the following provision to buttress protections: "Natural communities and ecosystems... possess inalienable and fundamental rights to exist and flourish."
[62] The ordinance emphasized that "[c]orporate entities... do not enjoy special privileges or powers under the law that subordinate the community's rights to their private interests".
[62] It specifically defined "natural communities and ecosystems" to include "groundwater aquifers, atmospheric systems, marine waters, and native species".
In 2018, the city council adopted a Sustainable Groundwater Management Ordinance that specifically referenced the inherent rights of the local aquifer to flourish.
[63] In November, 2020, voters in Orange County, Florida passed a charter amendment for the "right to clean water" by a margin of 89% that protects waterways in the county from pollution and enables citizens to bring lawsuits to defend against such pollution, becoming the largest community in the country to enact such a rights of nature initiative.
[67][68] In his January 2022 monthly newsletter, Jim Hightower identified the Florida initiative as, "the epicenter of today’s Rights of Nature political movement".
[86][87] Since its creation in 2018, the International Observatory on Nature's Rights has been working for the recognition of the legal personality of the St. Lawrence River, one of Quebec's true jewels.
On May 5, 2022, a bill was jointly tabled in the House of Commons and the Quebec National Assembly to recognize the legal personality and rights of the St. Lawrence River, but was never passed.
[88] On July 29, 2021, a coalition of peoples including Tavignany Vivu, UMANI and Terre de Liens Corsica-Terra di u Cumunu launched a Declaration of the Rights of the Tavignanu River.
