In our last narrative season, La Luz de la Angla, about the decades-long fight over oil pollution in the Ecuadorian Amazon,

I mentioned something unique about Ecuador's constitution.

It includes a provision for the rights of nature.

Ecuador re-wrote its constitution in 2008 to include a chapter called rights for nature.

Other countries have toyed with this idea since then, and it freaks a lot of people out,

especially people running large multinational corporations.

Mainly because it challenges one of the core tenets of capitalism, private property.

Rather than treating nature as property under the law, rights for nature articles acknowledge that nature in all its life forms

has the right to exist, persist, maintain, and regenerate.

And that we, the people, have the legal authority to enforce those rights on behalf of ecosystems.

Here's Natalie Greene with the Global Alliance for Rights of Nature, explaining how the concept works in Ecuador.

Well, Ecuador in 2008 re-wrote its constitution and it was passed by the majority of Ecuadorians.

And what we decided is that we don't want to follow a model development like a socialist model or capitalist model.

Because all those models were proven to be wrong, and we decided to recognize something that is

that we are going to fight for and we're going to be working for a model based in well-being.

What's established in the constitution is a model based in well-being.

What's well-being, or sumac outside, or when we be in Spanish,

well-being is this notion of living in harmony with nature.

And here is a handy explainer from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund,

which has been leading a lot of the fights for rights of nature in the U.S.

Under the current system of law, nature is considered to be property.

When something is considered property, that often gives the property owner the right to damage it.

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