...The government, they felt, wasn’t doing enough to protect the lake. And so they wondered: What if the lake could protect itself? The idea they hatched that night ultimately resulted in a
special election, which had the citizens of Toledo voting Tuesday on a
very unusual question: Should Lake Erie be granted the legal rights
normally reserved for a person? The measure passed easily, which means citizens will be
able to sue on behalf of the lake whenever its right to flourish is
being contravened — that is, whenever it’s in danger of major
environmental harm...If the stakes felt almost unbearably high for the activists who pushed for the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, it’s because this was the first rights-based legislation aimed at protecting a whole US ecosystem: the lake, its tributaries, and the many species that live off it.
The law isn’t without precedent, though. It’s part of the nascent rights of nature movement, which has notched several victories in the past dozen years. Rivers and forests have already won legal rights in countries like Ecuador, Colombia, India, and New Zealand.
Activists in the movement often argue that the environment is the next frontier in humanity’s expanding moral circle: over the centuries, we’ve extended rights to more and more beings, so why shouldn’t nature itself be next?...They’re betting that the best strategy for protecting the environment is to stretch our society’s understanding of what counts as a person. It’s a bold bet, but with climate change decimating the planet at such a ferocious rate, it might be the kind of innovative thinking we need.
How the rights of nature idea took off
In 1972, the case of Sierra Club v. Morton came
before the US Supreme Court, leading to a deliberation over whether
nature should have its own rights. The Court decided the answer was no,
but Justice William O. Douglas dissented. “Contemporary public concern
for protecting nature’s ecological equilibrium,” he wrote, “should lead
to the conferral of standing upon environmental objects to sue for their
own preservation.” That same year, law professor Christopher Stone made a
splash with an article titled “Should trees have standing?” It catalyzed
other academics to write a slew of articles and books considering whether natural environments ought to have rights enshrined in law. In 2006, that question left the ether of academia and
came to bear directly on toxic sewage sludge, which had been dumped in
Tamaqua, Pennsylvania. Residents fought for — and won — the first-ever
rights of nature law in the world. Two years later, Ecuador
became the first country to enshrine the rights of nature in its
constitution, thanks in large part to the work of indigenous activists.
Since then, the victories have come fast and furious. In 2014, New Zealand recognized the legal rights of the Te Urewera forest. In 2017, Colombia granted rights to the Rio Atrato river and India recognized the Ganges and Yamuna rivers as legal persons. In 2018, the Amazon rainforest got its own rights, and for the first time, so did a specific plant species: the wild rice known as manoomin, one of the Anishinaabe people’s staple crops.
PLEASE TAKE THE TIME TO READ THIS
1 comment:
Guess we can blame this on Baxter coming up with Plant Rights!! lol
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