Natural Rights and Ecothought
By MU mentor, Christopher: Christopher is a 1st Class graduate of the University of Oxford, where he specialised in ecocriticism, researching British nature writing in particular. Christopher is particularly interested in current trends in ecological thought and how these have impacted ways of engaging with nature and, particularly, with legal thought around conservation and sustainable development.
Under almost any given country’s legal system, its citizens – its people – have rights: to exist freely, to be free from exploitation, to be safe from harm enacted by another. The same is not true, however, of the natural world. The Amazon rainforest is felled at an astonishing rate, the Great Barrier Reef suffers massive bleaching on a regular basis, and countless other small acts of pollution and degradation occur the world over, every minute of every day.
But what if these wonders of the natural world could be protected in the same way? What if a river, or a forest, or a whole ecosystem could become a person? In fact, this is happening – environmental campaigners have, in recent years, often used the granting of legal personhood to natural objects as a means of better protecting and enshrining their rights. In 2018, after the pollution in Lake Erie (the smallest of the American Great Lakes) had reached a crisis point, the people of Toledo, Ohio, drew up a document – part bill of rights, part manifesto – which argued that Lake Erie should be granted legal personhood, and benefit from full rights under American law, ‘to exist, flourish and naturally evolve’. On 26 February 2019, 61% of Toledo residents voted in a referendum to enshrine the document in law – The Lake Erie Ecosystem Bill of Rights.
This phenomenon is increasing – other natural objects which have been granted legal personhood include the Ganges River (although this decision was later overturned by the Indian Supreme Court), the Whanganui River in New Zealand, and the Colombian Amazon. The most famous example however is probably the 2008 decision to enshrine all nature within Ecuador as an entity endowed with full constitutional rights as ‘Pachamama’ or ‘Mother Nature’.
Yet this trend is not without its controversies. Some lawyers have noted that corporations also have legal personhood – so is it a good idea for Gazprom, a multinational energy corporation, and the Siberian tundra ecosystem to exist in the same category? There are also liability issues – if one can sue a company for breaching the rights of a river, could one sue the river for flooding someone’s house? There are also, of course, issues of definition – how does one delimit a whole ecosystem, how do you define a river or a forest that is, like all of nature, in constant flux. Individual humans and massive natural systems are so very different in their nature that many critics have questioned the value of conflating the two.
The natural rights movement does something wonderful though – it encourages a conversation about nature, and about the natural world’s wholesale destruction, and it can, if used well, change the way we think about nature. If one can think about nature as a living, breathing, complex person rather than, as we have for so many years, a standing resource ready to be exploited, then how might our relationship with our planet change for the better? Natural rights demands empathy, and asks us to open our minds and emotions to the more-than-human.
I have included here a short reading list which might help one think about the legal and philosophical ramifications (from the French ‘ramifier’, to ‘branch like a tree’) of the natural rights movement. Some are fiction, some factual, but all explore the idea of opening up to thinking about nature as more than something out there which humans can use, but as something we must live with and alongside, a system which we cannot fully understand, but which needs our help.
FICTION:
The Overstory by Richard Powers (2018): explores particularly the idea of legal rights, even legal personhood, for non-human entities - for example trees, rivers, even whole ecosystems
Ness by Robert Macfarlane (2019)
Fen by Daisy Johnson (2016)
Grief is the Thing With Feathers (2015) and Lanny (2019) by Max Porter
NON-FICTION:
The Great Derangement by Amitav Ghosh (2017)
Hyperobjects by Timothy Morton (2013)
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013)
Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology by David Abram (2010)
Journal of Human Rights and the Environment (2010 - )
Ways to further explore the exciting realms of sustainability:
Are you interested in learning more about the representation of nature in literature with Christopher?
Why not check out his masterclass on “ecocriticism” and British nature writing.
Or visit our “Sustainability & Our Planet” page for further exciting masterclasses.
This masterclass will give you an introduction to ecocriticism and the representation of nature in literature, both fiction and non-fiction. Ecocriticism as a field is gaining more and more traction due to the climate crisis, and the upsurge in ecological awareness coordinated by, for example, Greta Thunberg and XR. These studies become more and more relevant to the academic world and the world more generally. This is the time to explore literature in the age of extinction.
Host: Christopher is a 1st Class graduate of the University of Oxford, where he specialised in ecocriticism, researching British nature writing in particular. He has since continued to read widely in this field.
Suitability: Minds Underground™’s online World Literature & History masterclasses are aimed at, but not restricted to, students looking to study degrees in: English, History, English and History, Social Science courses.
Duration: Suggested 1-2 hour sessions dependent on the level of detail desired.