What if nature has rights?
Sunday 1st June was a day of imagining a different future, one in which nature has its own rights, recognised by law.
Before a talk at the Hay Festival titled Nature: The Fight for Justice, a group of us went to the banks of the River Wye for a ceremony and discussion, including two lawyers at the vanguard of the rights of nature movement.
As it stands, our law is anthropocentric – concerned with the protection of humans. As Philippe Sands said on stage, “If you want to take a case to protect the environment, you essentially have to argue and show harm to humans”.
Barrister Monica Feria-Tinta believes this is where we’ve gone wrong. She sees the planet as a whole organism, with every living entity interconnected and interdependent, as recognised by many indigenous peoples since time immemorial. Protection of human life and protection of the living world should be inseparable. We are dependent on nature for food, water and air. We are part of nature. We are nature. Many of us know it intuitively. Can that reality be upheld in law? As Monica relates in her new book ‘A Barrister for the Earth’ it is already happening in Ecuador…
Barrister and river guardian Paul Powlesland, founder of Lawyers for Nature, opened our campfire discussion saying that in 1787, “about a dozen people met above a printers shop in the City of London with an idea that at that time was laughable – that one human being could not hold another in slavery. And if those twelve people had at that point gone outside onto the street and told people that idea they would have been laughed off as crackpots. Yet within 20 years they had changed the law to ban the slave trade, within [50] years they had outlawed the institution of slavery, and now just over 200 years later the very idea that you could hold another human being in slavery is completely out of the bounds of opinion in our society. And I say that just because sometimes the all-encompassing nature of the changes that we are seeking for rights of nature feels impossible, laughable, how could we ever begin to pursue that… but they did it, people have done it throughout our history”.
If we’re willing to take the imaginative leap, how could ‘rights for nature’ be made real in practice? Given the supremacy of parliament in the UK’s legal system, Powlesland suggests the best route might be to introduce a Nature Rights Act, just as we have the Human Rights Act. Something of equally high standing that recognises intrinsic rights.
Herefordshire Councillor Elissa Swinglehurst floated the idea of a Nature Commissioner. Just as we have a Children’s Commissioner to promote and protect the rights of children, could we have a Nature Commissioner do the same for the rights of nature?
I made the point that any law is only as good as its enforcement. At present, existing environmental laws and regulations are regularly flouted without consequence. Pollution continues unabated and largely with impunity. We are failing to enforce the laws we already have to protect our living world.
If nature could speak, she would surely demand better. So who can speak for nature? The Wye Catchment Nutrient Management Board recently appointed an official ‘Voice of the River Wye’, ecologist Dr Louise Bodnar. This in itself is a pioneering move. When Bodnar attended Sunday's ceremony, she spoke the river’s dreams, which included “darting fish and spawning salmon”, and closed with the line: “I dream of an old and sacred relationship made new again”.
What a dream. What a challenge. Can such a new/old relationship be forged through law?