Treating Nature As A Person

There’s a concept that’s been gaining ground which is to treat Nature as a person when creating laws and in rulings in courts of law. 

While this might strike you as strange to treat Nature as a person, we already do that with corporations. The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that corporations are to be treated as a person. If a corporation is a person, then why not Nature?

This concept goes under the title of Rights of Nature. There was a 1972 article by a law professor, Christopher Stone, who wrote about granting nature self-protective rights to forests, oceans, rivers and the natural environment as a whole. He said just like humans, nature has an inherent right to exist, regenerate, flourish and defend themselves from exploitation and death.

Justice William O. Douglas wrote about this concept in a 1972 dissenting opinion in the Supreme Court case of Sierra Club v. Morton. Douglas wrote “Contemporary public concern for protecting nature’s ecological equilibrium should lead to the conferral of standing upon environmental objects to sue for their own preservation.” 

This protection shows up in how almost all Native American tribes relate to Nature. They embrace having both a spiritual and symbiotic kinship with their ecosystems. Tribal decisions even include meaningful consultations with the land, water, habitat and future generations.

These tribes have been codifying these traditional practices into Rights of Nature laws that they’ve been creating. There’s even a current case filed by the Ojibwe tribe against the State of Minnesota that names wild rice as one of the Plaintiffs. In August, the court actually ruled that wild rice has standing under tribal law! 

This concept of Nature having rights has been adopted by national parliaments, courts and it’s even incorporated into the constitutions of a number of countries including Columbia, India and New Zealand.

In the United States more than three dozen communities have enacted enforceable Rights of Nature provisions. In 2020 in Orange County Florida, where Disney World is located, a ballot initiative was launched to recognize the Rights of Nature. Lo and behold, a miracle took place as 89% of the voters approved the initiative! 

As you might expect, Governor Ron DeSantis put a provision into state law to nullify any local elections that granted protective rights to nature. This law is being challenged in court. 

That’s also not stopping the people who created the Orange County petition drive. These people are now spearheading launching a petition to put a Rights to Nature provision on the 2024 Florida state ballot.

So…we’ve turned corporations into people, it’s about time we give Nature the same status!
(Reported The Tower Lowdown, January 2022)