Rights and responsibilities, adults or children, we all have them. Animals also have rights! But nature? This nature, which is plundered and cannot defend itself, is at the heart of the fight of environmentalists to offer it rights and a regulation to protect it. Discovering the rights of nature!
Rights of nature, what are they?
This is a concept to recognize rights to natural entities, give them a status and thus offer them the possibility of having their interests defended in court. These rights can protect living things, ecosystems, or even a river, a glacier. Natural resources will then be recognized and endowed with specific rights. There was an environmental law in which nature was a possession of man. The idea today is to consider the various systems necessary for life ( biodiversity , climate, fresh water) in relation to their link with human society. A new legal field is emerging in which nature and its components will be able to claim the right to exist, develop and evolve, with the notion of the crime "ecocide" if necessary via legal recourse.
What is the principle of these rights?
The Rights of Nature, or Rights of the Earth, are inspired by the Jurisprudence of the Earth, imagined by Thomas Berry. This philosophy is opposed to the biocentric vision which considers nature as the property of Man. The Rights of Nature consider the world as indigenous peoples: a living Whole whose each component is interdependent on the others. An obvious fact that modern societies have erased, considering nature as a tool at their service, and ignoring that without nature, there is no longer Man.
Biocentric thinking and the rights of nature
Thus, these rights are based on a precise notion: each natural entity has a role in the overall functioning of the Earth. Each therefore has an intrinsic value in the same way as other natural entities, equal to the others since each is necessary. This is the idea of the "Greater Whole": a community of which each member is an essential component since they participate in the proper functioning of the system. This biocentric vision is the cornerstone of these rights as opposed to anthropocentrism which considers man as sovereign. With the Rights of Nature, the integrity of natural entities is preserved and defended: nature is no longer protected only for the purposes of exploitation by man, according to the value it represents, but simply for what it is, in a new egalitarian vision where man is no longer at the center.
How does it work?
Each country may or may not recognize rights to Nature through legal entities provided that the living entity can be represented by an organization such as an association, a person recognized as a guardian, or custodian of this entity. These may be lawyers, political figures, associations, etc. The Ganges in India had been recognized as a legal entity and provided with representatives, but this decision was suspended. Providing legal personality to a living entity is the first condition for recognizing its rights. Then, it is necessary to define rights and grant them to it, to exist to allow it to fully play its role. Over the last 20 years, more and more countries have recognized rights of this type to ecosystems, at local or national scale, through legislative or judicial actions.
Which texts define the rights of nature?
In the past, several texts have paved the way for the rights to Nature as they are currently envisaged. Adopted in 2010, during the World Conference on Climate Change, the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth included the definition of the Earth as an "indivisible community of interdependent entities" at the international level. This declaration gives humans and institutions a series of rights and duties towards ecosystems. Since 2009, the United Nations has initiated several discussions to adopt resolutions aligned with Earth Jurisprudence and adopt a global vision of the rights of nature. Then, the World Declaration of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) of 2016 paved the way for a European evolution of environmental law. More recently, the Belgian House of Representatives adopted a resolution to recognize the crime of ecocide, i.e. the irreparable damage to an ecosystem by destruction or exploitation. Most countries share this vision, but none have followed through with this approach. However, it was one of the strongest proposals of the Citizens' Convention for Climate, which ultimately resulted in a simple pollution offence. Many activists persist in integrating ecocide into the Environmental Crime Directive at the European level.
All these changes and battles, led to protect nature in concrete terms, are a tremendous hope. But the urgency is there. Far from being a new fad, the rights of nature, inspired by ancestral philosophies, humbly recognize the dependence on ecosystems and, in fact, the imperative need to preserve them, to preserve oneself. The well-being of Man on earth is inextricably linked to the proper functioning of ecosystems and living entities among themselves.