Ecoseva Institute

By Katie Conlon

Should trees have standing? This question was posed by legal scholar Christopher Stone in 1972, first as an article and then further developed into a book of the same title, which set in motion inspiration for a global movement for the rights of nature.

This prompt poses a profound shift from the dominant framework of humans over nature to the idea that nature has intrinsic rights in and of itself. This same year, Stone’s ideas were brought into consideration in the Sierra Club versus Morton case over the development of a forested mountainside area in California. This court case was ultimately lost—the president for Rights of Nature was still a budding idea without legal precedent—but the idea for Rights of Nature was planted. Importantly, Stone’s philosophical legal questioning inspired Justice William O. Douglas, who, after the case, wrote a famous dissent, arguing that natural entities should have the legal right to sue for their protection.

These efforts lit the embers for the growing movement of Rights of Nature, as people began to realise that granting rights to nature was not so far-fetched, and actually was a reasonable step to address environmental destruction.

Changing the worldview and legal systems is not an easy task. Despite interest, it took time for Rights of Nature to take hold. Finally, in 2006, Tamaqua Burrow (a small township outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the US) set precedence as the first municipality to pass rights of nature, banning the dumping of toxic sludge into their watershed. Then, in 2008, there was the landmark win of the inclusion of RoN in the Constitution of Ecuador, the first country in the world to incorporate Rights of Nature into its constitution. Article 71 states: “Art. 71. Nature or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain, and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions, and its processes in evolution. Every person, people, community, or nationality, will be able to demand the recognition of rights for nature before the public.”

This type of ‘public standing’ interpretation of Rights of Nature means that any citizen can bring a case of Rights of Nature to the court if they are being infringed upon. Soon after, Ecuador released the Rights of Mother Earth (Law 071), passed in December 2010, adding more solidity to the movement. Currently, there are 688 laws, policies, and legal cases that have been attempted under the umbrella of Eco-jurisprudence in 66 countries globally, according to the Eco Jurisprudence Monitor, a global consortium of researchers, practitioners, and institutions that support Earth Law.

Aside from the ‘public standing model,’ other ways Rights of Nature are being implemented include ‘guardianship models’ where a person or group of people are given stewardship responsibilities to protect a natural entity, as in the case with Maori guardianship granted to the Wanganui River in New Zealand in 2017.

Another model is through restoration mandates, as seen in the 2011 case for the Vilcabamba River in Ecuador and in the recent cases in Europe, granting Rights of Nature to Mar Menor in Spain in 2022, and for the protection of the Venetian Lagoon in 2025, to protect the lagoon against pollution and agro-industrial use.

Despite the critical importance of nature and biodiversity for Sri Lanka’s identity, well-being, and livelihoods, to date, there are no cases for Rights of Nature in Sri Lanka.

If Sri Lanka decided to enact frameworks of Rights of Nature, what could this look like? Could the Sri Lankan elephants be given their own rights? How about rights for endemic species like the Sri Lankan leopard, the Purple-faced Langur, the Red Slender Loris, the Rhino-horned Lizard, the Ceylon Birdwing, the Golden Palm Civet, the Sri Lankan Magpie, and the Sri Lankan Grey Hornbill? Could they be given their own right to thrive and exist as they have for millennia? Rights of Nature is a way to honour both the tangible and intangible heritage, culture, and relationships between people and the environments that sustain them—acknowledging that our human place on the planet depends on our peaceful coexistence within the balance of the earth, not dominating but as partners.

Rights of Nature is a visionary worldview that allows nature to be protected for its own sake.

Although we currently have environmental laws, the criticism is that they operate from a premise that continues the exploitation, commodification, and commercialisation of nature. Environmental law as practised operates from an anthropocentric worldview where human concerns dominate. When laws, policy, and public consciousness are framed through dominance, development regularly wins out over the considerations of nature. As the line from the famous Joni Mitchell song goes, “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” Rights of nature operate from an ecocentric worldview where the human role is to act as stewards of nature and biodiversity to realise that we exist with and because of everything else in the natural world around us.

There is a false assumption in the modern worldview that we operate ‘outside of nature’. But try to close yourself off from nature even for a few seconds, and you realise that the oxygen you breathe comes from some of the smallest members of our web of life: the phytoplankton in the ocean, as well as the forests. We cannot go more than a few minutes without inputs from nature that are the result of a highly complex web of life that we—despite all our modern technical prowess—are a far cry from ever being able to replicate.

As such, Rights of Nature is a way to honour this complexity with humility, respect and reciprocity, rather than the arrogance and dominance that have been the downfall of environmental health worldwide. The progression of ‘rights-based’ frameworks has evolved through rights to be free from slavery, rights of women, human rights, and now the next turn is for the Rights of Nature.

Proponents of rights of nature envision the RoN framework as a new way to instil an ethos of respect and the protection of nature. Rights of nature opens up a paradigm shift for relationships between humans and the natural world that can allow us to coexist for generations to come into the future.

When we see elephants eating garbage or dolphins getting entangled, or biodiverse forests getting chopped down only for a short-lived profit, a healthy response includes feelings of care, concern, and wanting to do something not just to solve the immediate harm, but to enact structures that will also prevent harm in the future. Although being hailed for biodiversity, Sri Lanka could go further to reduce human-wildlife conflict, and human-ecosystem conflict, and Rights of Nature is one potential next step.

In 1968, at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, Senegalese forestry engineer Baba Dioum shared a sentiment echoed by Jacques Cousteau and Jane Goodall, and many environmental activists: “In the end, we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand; and we will understand only what we are taught.”

Rights of Nature opens the door for us to understand, relate and work with the world from a new paradigm. One that is presently not taught in schools, employed in our companies, or used in our courts, but could be if we shift to take our obligations to current and future generations seriously. Layers of life in the trees of Sri Lanka. Could rights be extended to trees and other non-human species so that they are granted the intrinsic right to exist, thrive, and evolve?

(Katie Conlon, Ph.D., is a researcher who is profoundly interested in bridging the social-ecological divide and finding ways for modern society to reconnect with nature, reducing harmful elements such as waste, pollution, and environmental degradation. She is a Royal Geographical Society Fellow (2024–), National Geographic Explorer (2019–23), Fulbright Research Fellow
(2018–19), and National Science Foundation Fellow (2014–19). Conlon is also the Director and Founder of Ecoseva Institute, a U.S. nonprofit focused on service for the Earth).