courtesy of Wired Science
by Brandon Keim
After decades of exile to environmentalism’s legal fringes, the notion that natural systems could have legal rights is receiving serious attention.
Bolivia’s Law of Mother Earth is set to pass. On Wednesday the United Nations will discuss a proposed treaty based on the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, which was drafted by environmentalists last year. Both mandate legal recognition of ecosystems’ right to exist.
It’s highly unlikely that the United Nations would pass any such treaty in the foreseeable future, and the discussion has been criticized as a time-wasting political maneuver. But the intellectual argument for nature’s rights isn’t necessarily a patchouli-soaked Gaia fantasy translated into legalese. Some say it’s a practical extension of ecological insight.
“It has to happen. We have to be able to give legal protection and consideration to the rest of the natural world,” said Patricia Siemen, executive director of the Center for Earth Jurisprudence. “It’s in the human best interest, as well as the larger natural world’s.”
Teklanika Nature Photography 