REWIND: Should Nature Have Rights?

Climate One

Social Sciences, News Commentary, Science, Earth Sciences, News

4.7 • 585 Ratings

🗓️ 14 January 2022

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS

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Summary

If corporations can be legal persons, why can’t Mother Earth? In 2017, New Zealand granted the Whanganui River the full legal rights of a person. India granted full legal rights to the Ganges and Yamuna rivers, and recognized that the Himalayan Glaciers have a right to exist. In 2019, the city of Toledo passed the Lake Erie Bill of Rights with 61 percent of the vote, but then a year later, a federal judge struck it down. As Lindsey Schromen-Wawrin, an attorney who represented Lake Erie, explains, the problem stems from a 500-year history of Western property law. Our legal system grants rights to property owners, but not to property itself. “If we’re treating ecosystems as property, then ultimately, we as property owners have the right to destroy our property and that fundamentally has to change,” Schromen-Wawrin says. Rebecca Tsosie, a law professor focused on Federal Indian law and Indigenous peoples’ human rights, says there are other rights frameworks to consider. “If we go into Indigenous epistemology, many times it’s a relational universe that comes with mutual responsibility.” Guests: Lindsey Schromen-Wawrin, attorney, formerly with the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund Rebecca Tsosie, Regents Professor of Law at the University of Arizona; Co-Chair, Indigenous Peoples’ Law and Policy Program Carol Van Strum, author of A Bitter Fog, activist Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:30.1	Hi, it's Greg Dalton. I'd like to hear your comments on the show, topics we should cover and guest
0:35.2	suggestions. You can reach me at Greg at climate one.org.
0:38.8	This is Climate One. I'm Greg Dalton.
0:42.3	Western law generally treats the natural environment as property,
0:46.3	with all rights resting with its owners.
0:48.3	So if we're treating the Earth and if we're treating ecosystems as property,
0:52.3	then ultimately we as property owners have the right
0:56.6	to destroy our property. And that fundamentally has to change. If corporations can be legal
1:02.5	persons, why can't Mother Earth? And who should defend the rights of our collective natural
1:07.1	resources? What are the rights and responsibilities of individual owners versus the government's
1:15.8	obligation to preserve those resources or at least some decent quality of the resource because
1:23.2	we all rely on that.
1:25.1	We can't live without water or air. Can a forest or river have legal rights of its own? In the last several years, a growing
1:32.4	number of countries and places within the U.S. have tried to establish legal standing for natural
1:37.3	ecosystems. In 2017, New Zealand granted the Waganui River the full legal rights of a person.
1:44.2	India also granted full legal rights to the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers and recognized that the
1:49.1	Himalayan glaciers have a right to exist. In the United States, those efforts have been more
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