Environmental personhood is a legal idea that gives certain natural things, like rivers or plants, the same legal rights as people. This means these natural things can have protections, responsibilities, and the ability to be held accountable under the law. Since rivers and plants cannot speak for themselves in court, a "guardian" can act on their behalf to help protect them. The idea of environmental personhood began as laws changed to better protect nature. Over time, the focus shifted from using nature for human benefit to protecting it for future people, and later to seeing nature as valuable on its own. This concept helps recognize how Indigenous peoples connect with natural things, like rivers. It also allows people, such as Indigenous groups, to protect their own rights while ensuring nature is treated with respect.
Background
In the 1970s, a professor from the United States named Christopher D. Stone wrote an article titled "Should trees have standing? Towards legal rights for natural objects." In this article, he suggested that natural objects, such as trees or rivers, could be given legal rights. A legal person cannot be owned, so if a natural object has legal rights, it cannot be owned by anyone. The term "standing" refers to the right to take legal action or appear in court. Only entities with standing, also called "locus standi," can bring legal cases. Natural objects cannot bring legal cases themselves, but a legal guardian can act on their behalf. This could help protect important natural areas or places at risk of harm.
There is no federal law in the United States that gives legal rights to nature. However, a U.S. Supreme Court Justice supported the idea. In 1972, during the case Sierra Club v. Morton, Justice William Douglas wrote a dissenting opinion. He argued that certain natural elements should have the right to be represented in court, and that people with a strong connection to these elements should be allowed to act on their behalf to protect them. By June 2021, at least 53 legal initiatives in 12 countries had included the idea of giving "person" status to natural objects in their laws.
The Sierra Club, an environmental group, sued Roger C. B. Morton, who was the Secretary of the Interior at the time. They argued that the federal government could not allow developers to build a highway, powerlines, and a ski resort in Mineral King Valley, part of Sequoia National Forest. The Sierra Club wanted to protect this area from development. However, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the Sierra Club could not sue under the Administrative Procedure Act because its members would not be directly harmed. This law sets rules for when people can challenge government actions that affect them. The Supreme Court agreed that the Sierra Club could not sue because it could not prove the government’s actions would harm its members. Justice Douglas disagreed, writing that people who care deeply about natural objects should be allowed to speak for them in court. This idea continues to be supported by people who advocate for giving legal rights to nature in the United States and other countries.
Domestic rights of nature
In 2014, Te Urewera National Park became known as Te Urewera, an environmental legal entity. The land that was once owned by the government is now freehold, inalienable land that belongs to itself.
In 2017, New Zealand declared the Whanganui River a legal person, named Te Awa Tupua. This legal entity is described as "an indivisible and living whole from the mountains to the sea, including the Whanganui River and all its physical and metaphysical elements." Two guardians, one from the Whanganui iwi and one from the Crown, will represent the river.
Also in 2017, the New Zealand government signed an agreement to give Mount Taranaki legal personality and to rename Egmont National Park, which surrounds the mountain.
The Ganges and Yamuna Rivers in India are now legal persons to help reduce pollution. These rivers are sacred in Hindu culture because of their healing powers and their role in religious practices, such as bathing and scattering ashes. However, they are heavily polluted by 1.5 billion liters of untreated sewage and 500 million liters of industrial waste entering the rivers daily.
In March 2017, the High Court in Uttarakhand, India, ruled that the Ganges and its main tributary, the Yamuna, should be recognized as legal entities. This means the rivers have "all corresponding rights, duties, and liabilities of a living person." Damaging the rivers is now considered equivalent to harming a person. The court used the example of New Zealand’s Whanganui River, which was also declared a legal person.
Some people are skeptical about this change because simply naming the rivers as legal entities may not stop the pollution they face. There is also concern that the guardianship of the rivers was given only to Uttarakhand, a region that includes only a small part of the rivers’ total length. The Ganges flows through multiple states, with only 96 kilometers in Uttarakhand. The Yamuna flows for 1,376 kilometers, with only a small section in Uttarakhand.
Despite skepticism, recognizing the rivers as legal entities may help protect their environmental and cultural rights. These decisions could serve as a foundation for future environmental laws.
In 2006, the borough of Tamaqua, Pennsylvania, worked with the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) to create laws that protect the community and environment from toxic sewage dumping. Since 2006, CELDF has helped over 30 communities in ten U.S. states develop local laws that give nature rights. CELDF also helped draft Ecuador’s 2008 constitution after a national referendum.
Other U.S. towns have also created laws to give nature rights. In 2008, Shapleigh, Maine, added legal code sections that granted rights to natural bodies of water and removed corporate rights from the U.S. Constitution. This change was prompted by a plan by Nestle Corporation to pump groundwater from Shapleigh for a bottling facility. No lawsuits have been filed against Shapleigh, and Nestle has not challenged the law. Lawyers from Vermont, not CELDF, helped draft these sections.
In 2013, Mora County, New Mexico, worked with CELDF to create an ordinance that limited corporate extraction of gas and oil and gave rights to natural ecosystems and water. This made Mora County the first place in the U.S. to ban gas and oil production in certain areas. A lawsuit was filed against the ordinance, claiming it violated corporate rights, including the first, fifth, and fourteenth amendments. In 2015, a judge ruled the ordinance invalid, stating it violated the first amendment.
In 2014, Grant Township, Pennsylvania, worked with CELDF to draft an ordinance that gave natural rights to ecosystems and water. A company named Pennsylvania General Energy (PGE) converted an old well into a wastewater injection well, which could contaminate groundwater. Residents worried about the risk to Little Mahoning Creek, their main water source. The ordinance also removed corporate rights within the township. PGE sued Grant Township, and in 2019, the township lost the case. The court ordered Grant Township to pay PGE’s legal costs, which totaled over $100,000, and declared the ordinance invalid.
In February 2019, voters in Toledo, Ohio, passed the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, which states that Lake Erie has the right to "flourish." This was prompted by past pollution problems that made tap water unsafe. A lawsuit was filed the day after the bill passed, and in 2020, a judge ruled the bill unconstitutional.
In 2019, the Yurok tribe in northern California gave the Klamath River personhood status.
Ecuador’s 2008 constitution includes the rights of nature "to exist, persist, maintain, and regenerate its vital cycles." This was added after a national referendum in 2008, making Ecuador the first country in the world to recognize nature’s rights in its constitution.
Arguments for and against
The idea of environmental personhood is debated even among people who care about the environment. Some support laws that give nature rights, but may not think making the environment a legal person is the best way to do this. Supporters say allowing people to sue on behalf of the environment helps protect it even when no humans are harmed. This also respects the deep connections that Indigenous peoples have with their natural surroundings.
However, some people disagree with environmental personhood. One worry is that being a legal person means not only being able to sue but also being held responsible. For example, it is unclear how to assign blame to natural things, like a river, during events like floods. A lawyer named Lindsey Schromen-Wawrin said this could make it harder to use nature’s rights to stop harmful actions, and might instead create systems where ecosystems have to pay from funds meant to repair damage.
Another issue is that even if someone has the right to sue for the environment, lawsuits are costly. This can create problems if people cannot afford to use this right, which is unfair. Also, if an environmental entity is in a place where the law about personhood does not apply, it can cause challenges. For example, a river in Uttarakhand, India, was given legal rights, but this led to disagreements. Reports show that some people, like farmers and businesses, oppose environmental personhood because they believe it harms their rights and ways of life.
Significance for cultural human rights
The Whanganui River in New Zealand, known as Te Awa Tupua, was legally recognized as a living entity. This recognition reflects the deep and unbreakable connection between the river and the local Māori people, who view natural features like the river as ancestors. Māori culture sees these natural elements as living beings, and the relationship between the people and the land is central to their identity. Similar ideas are found in other places, such as Colombia, where the Atrato River basin was also given legal personhood to protect its environment.
Gerrard Albert, a leader for the Whanganui iwi, explained, "We see the river as an ancestor and always have. Treating it as a living entity, as a single, complete unit, is the right way to approach it, rather than viewing it as something to own and manage." Scholars James D K Morris and Jacinta Ruru note that giving rivers legal rights is one way to help laws better support reconciliation with Māori. This case was the longest legal battle in New Zealand’s history. The Whanganui iwi have worked for over 150 years to protect their rights and ensure harmony with the river.
Ecocide
The idea of protecting the environment is not new. When the environment suffers serious and either widespread or lasting harm, this harm has a name: ecocide. The Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide describes ecocide as "illegal or reckless actions done with knowledge that there is a high chance of causing serious and either widespread or lasting harm to the environment." Some people support making ecocide an international crime, similar to crimes covered by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). If this happens, ecocide would join other recognized international crimes, such as genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Unlike these crimes, ecocide would be the only crime where harm to humans is not required for legal action. Protecting nature for its own sake is a key idea behind the concept of environmental personhood. Is harm to humans always needed for legal action? The idea of ecocide is not new, nor is the effort to include it in the Rome Statute of the ICC.
Extraterrestrial
In the 2020s, growing interest in space travel beyond Earth has led to discussions about whether planets, such as Mars (including rocks from Mars called Martian meteorites) and especially the Moon, should be considered as having qualities similar to living beings. These discussions suggest the Moon may have the ability to remember and interact with its environment, as its surface changes over time and retains evidence of past events.