Author: David Boyd | NaturArchy Catalogue Essay
It might seem fanciful to suggest that we humans are made of stardust but this is a fact that physicists can confirm. All of the elements that comprise our bodies—oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorous, and so on—were created in the big bang, 13.8 billion years ago.
It might also seem implausible to claim that as homo sapiens we are related to every other form of life on Earth. Not just the other great apes--chimps, gorillas, orangutans, and bonobos—although these thrillingly familiar yet distinctly different species are our closest relatives. In fact, from seahorses to sequoia trees, bacteria to blue whales, aardvarks to zebras, we are related to all of what Charles Darwin described as life’s endless, most beautiful forms.
Biologists have proven that we share DNA, the basic building block of life, with every other extant species. Every single living thing on Earth today evolved from the original single-celled organisms, which emerged 3.5 to 4.0 billion years ago. Meanwhile astronomers have to acknowledge that despite centuries of increasingly sophisticated searches, there is zero credible evidence that life exists anywhere else in the universe.
Brian Cox, a British physicist, in his book Forces of Nature wrote “there is no fundamental difference between inanimate things, such as planets, and living things, such as bacteria or human beings; all objects in the Universe are made of the same ingredients and are shaped by the same forces of nature” (Cox, 2017, p. 60).
If one reflects on these scientific facts, two essential conclusions can be reached. First, we are extraordinarily fortunate to be living on the Earth, this unique planet that provides not only everything we need to survive, but also far more that enables us to flourish. Air, with just the right amount of oxygen. Water, which comprises the majority of our bodies. Fertile soil that is the foundation of all terrestrial food chains. A distance from the sun that makes this planet a hospitable temperature. A stratospheric ozone layer that filters out ultraviolet radiation, which would otherwise destroy all life.
Second, life on Earth is a diverse community to which we are truly blessed to belong, not a warehouse of commodities for upright primates with foresight to exploit. Each and every one of us, human and non-human, is connected at some branch on the tree of life whose roots stretch back roughly four billion years. This is our most important community—not Christians or Jews or Muslims or atheists, not liberals or conservatives or greens. We are all part of the community of life on Earth.
Yet human greed, ignorance and fecundity have put life on Earth at risk. As our populations, economies and technologies advanced, our impacts grew from local to regional to global, creating an unprecedented planetary crisis. This was not widely understood in 1948 when some of humanity’s brightest minds drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, nor in 1966 when the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights were completed.
But today there are no excuses. The human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, recognized by the United Nations in 2022, is one of the most important human rights of the 21st century because, if taken seriously, implemented and enforced, it has the power to address the planetary environmental crisis (United Nations General Assembly, 2022). From Panama and Costa Rica to France and Norway, the right to a healthy environment has already served as a catalyst for transformative changes.
We’ve seen the power of rights revolutions in human history. The French Revolution. The abolition of slavery. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the end of apartheid in South Africa. The emergence of human rights is one of society’s proudest achievements. Sure, not all rights are being respected in all places, but rights have made a huge difference.
Moving from human rights to the rights of nature illustrates another remarkable development. Just decades ago, philosophers opined that suggesting there was such a thing as rights of nature was nonsense. Conventional wisdom was that all other species exist to be exploited for the benefit of human beings.
But today there are laws all over the world that explicitly recognize the intrinsic value of biological diversity, meaning that regardless of whether a species is perceived as useful to humans, it still has value. And intrinsic value is a stepping-stone to rights. Beginning with the US in the 1960s, governments across the globe have passed endangered species legislation. The US Supreme Court, in a case involving an obscure little fish called the snail darter, ruled that: "The plain intent of Congress in enacting the Endangered Species Act was to halt and reverse the trend toward species extinction, whatever the cost" (Supreme Court of the United States, 1978, p. 184).
The Supreme Court of India, in a 2012 case involving endangered Asiatic buffalo stated: “Laws are man-made, hence there is likelihood of anthropocentric bias towards man. Rights of wild animals often tend to be of secondary importance, but in the universe man and animal are equally placed” (Supreme Court of India, 2012, para. 9). In a 2013 case involving endangered Asiatic lions, the Supreme Court of India stated: “We are committed to safeguard this endangered species because this species has a right to live on this earth, just like human beings” (Supreme Court of India, 2013, para. 40).
Remarkably, the human right to a healthy environment is being interpreted in an eco-centric way, as having two aspects. First, Nature must be protected because it is a prerequisite to human well-being, but second Nature deserves protection regardless of whether there are tangible human benefits. For example, the highest court in Costa Rica used the right to a healthy environment to strike down a regulation that allowed fishing for hammerhead sharks, an endangered species.
Some of the most exciting stories about the rights of Nature come from New Zealand, a small country with a history of being open to big ideas about rights. For example, New Zealand was the first country in the world to recognize women’s right to vote. New Zealand is engaged in a lengthy process of reconciling the rights of Indigenous Peoples and the wrongs of colonial societies. Negotiations between the Crown and the Maori produced an agreement in 2012 that recognized the Whanganui River as a legal person. A new law creates a guardian to make decisions that place the river’s rights first in decisions that could affect it.
In 2014, New Zealand passed a revolutionary law that removed the national park label and designated Te Urewera, previously designated as a national park, as a legal person with a variety of rights. Most remarkably, title to these 200,000 hectares was transferred from the government to the newly created legal person. In other words, the land owns itself. From a lawyer’s perspective, this is mind-blowing.
In today’s interconnected world, ideas can migrate with startling speed. Following New Zealand’s recognition of the rights of the Whanganui River and Te Urewera, the Constitutional Court of Colombia cited these pioneering developments in ordering the government of Colombia to recognize the rights of the Rio Atrato. Courts in India, Bangladesh, Ecuador, Panama, and Costa Rica have made similar decisions. Governments from Spain to Uganda have enacted laws recognizing the rights of Nature.
Legal and cultural revolutions are underway. We are in a race against time. The existential question is whether these nascent revolutions will succeed in replacing the exploitative anthropocentric systems that have led humanity to the brink of disaster.
Bio: David R Boyd is a former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, author of The Rights of Nature, The Environmental Rights Revolution, and The Optimistic Environmentalist
References:
- Cox, B. and A. Cohen. (2017). Forces of Nature. London: William Collins.
- Supreme Court of India. (2012). T.N. Godavarman Thirumulpad v. Union of India and Others. I.A. Nos. 1433 and 1477 of 2005 in Writ Petition No. 202 of 1995.
- Supreme Court of India. (2013). Centre for Environmental Law and Others v Union of India and Others. I.A. No. 100 in Writ Petition No. 337 of 1995.
- Supreme Court of the United States. (1978). T.V.A. v. Hill 437 U.S. 153.