Rights of Nature

I have long been interested in heterodox law-making - an interest initially spawned when I began following Indigenous peoples’ legal activism at the UN during their drafting of UNDRIP (UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples) in Geneva, Switzerland, in the mid-1990s. This interest was again spurred during my research on water insurgencies in Europe, where I interviewed lawyers (in Italy especially) who are pushing the boundaries of liberal legal systems to include the concept of the commons. They thus also pushed boundaries around use, possession, and property, as well as around the question of how humans ought to relate to substances that they can never truly possess or have dominion over.

I am currently involved in a book-length project on the rights of nature movement and its relation to what proponents call “Earth Law.” Here, I follow recent rulings in Spain, Peru, Canada, and elsewhere on the rights of waves, rivers, and other acquatic beings. I am also following the proceedings of the International Rights of Nature Tribunals which invite us to think through and push for new figures and distributions of rights and obligations on all scales of law-making, from local to planetary. In essence, my question revolves around the limits of liberal law as it encounters the elementality of nature, asking how “nature” in its excess can be captured by law and what the promises and pitfalls of this capture are.

I have taught an undergraduate class on the topic, which resulted in a Rights of Nature Video we made together with filmmaker Franzina Braje.