Skip to content

Giving Nature Constitutional Rights

Giving Nature Constitutional Rights

March 5, 2010 SVadmin Comments 1 comment

Published by Yes! Magazine on March 2, 2010

Simply regulating pollution will never really stop it. Mari Margil of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund discusses why we need a fundamental change in the way we use law to protect nature.

The environmental movement, with its army of professional advocates, lawyers, grassroots campaigners, and dedicated funders, has been around for decades. Yet nearly every biological indicator shows a planet in crisis—and poised to unravel faster as climate change disrupts already-shaky ecosystem functions.

Mari Margil, associate director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) believes it’s time for different tactics. The nonprofit agency used to work within the body of existing environmental law—helping impacted residents file lawsuits or appeal corporate permits—to protect communities from environmental damage. But a series of blocked efforts, often made worse by the very agencies meant to protect the environment, convinced the group that more fundamental changes were necessary.

“Our system of environmental laws and regulations don’t actually protect the environment,” says CELDF’s Mari Margil. “At best, they merely slow the rate of its destruction … We weren’t helping anyone protect anything.”

The organization has since changed its goals, working with citizens from all over North and South America to literally rewrite local laws in ways that allow people to speak up for their communities, watersheds, forests, and air.

According to Margil, anemic environmental laws spring from the fact that nature has no constitutional rights. CELDF has taken a local approach to reversing this structural blind spot, drafting ordinances for townships from New England to Pennsylvania to Washington State that:

  • Give communities legal authority to say “No” to unwanted corporate activities;
  • Recognize the rights of nature;
  • Strip corporations of their constitutional rights.

In one landmark victory, the town of Barnstead, New Hampshire, voted 135 to 1 to ban the privatization of their freshwater by encroaching corporate interests—the first community in the nation to do so. Other towns have followed, stripping corporations of the rights of personhood and recognizing the rights of communities to self-govern. In 2008, with legal advice from CELDF, Ecuador recognized the right of nature to exist and persist in its national constitution.

Mari Margil Addresses Bioneers Conference

This video was produced by Bioneers, a nonprofit organization that provides a forum and hub for social and scientific innovators.

Interested?
Communities Take on Corporate Power
People across the country are taking our founding documents at their word, declaring citizens’ right and duty to protect nature and community.

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons License


Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Articles, Environment, Politics
Corporate_Personhood, Local_Rights, Reprinted_From_Yes!

Post navigation

PREVIOUS
Want the Good Life? Your Neighbors Need It, Too
NEXT
Benefit Concert for Woolman and the Peace Center

Join Our Mailing List

One thought on “Giving Nature Constitutional Rights”

  1. depelton says:
    March 7, 2010 at 4:51 am

    After hearing water-warrior Maude Barlow mention the concept of “wild law” in an interview with Laura Flanders for GritTV, I found this essay:

    “Wild Law: the New Jurisprudence”
    http://www.wildethics.org/essays/wild-law.html

    Excerpts:

    “Wild Law, the acknowledgement in law and governance that nature and all its elements have rights, is a concept whose time has come, and you’ll likely be hearing more about it from now on. Remember how suddenly the Iron Curtain came down, despite how solidly it had been in place for almost 50 years? And remember how the entrenched apartheid system in South Africa ended so abruptly? Many people struggled for decades, but when the world was finally ready for a paradigm shift, it happened quickly.

    With global warming waking up even those previously in deep denial about the dire state of the environment, the embrace of wild law may be the next paradigm shift.”

    …

    “Wild law recognizes the rights of rivers to flow unimpeded, the rights of mountains to remain intact instead of having their tops blown off for coal mining, the rights of old growth forests to remain unlogged, and the rights of all humans, animals, birds, insects amphibians and other beings to a habitat that supports their existence. Wild law requires that decisions made by communities, governing bodies, courts or other social or cultural authority adhere to, rather than violate, these rights. Wild Law does not place humans above other members of the “Earth Community,” as visionary Thomas Berry puts it. It is ecocentric (Earth-centered) rather than anthropocentric (human-centered). If we make the paradigm shift, we will enter what Berry calls the “Ecozoic Era,” taking our rightful place in the Earth Community instead of attempting to rule it.”

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.

DONATE TO THE FOOD BANK OF NEVADA COUNTY

(CLICK IMAGE)

DONATE TO NEVADA COUNTY RELIEF FUND (click image below)

Erika Lewis, Shaye Cohn, Craig Flory – Got A Mind To Ramble

Jack Kornfield: A Steady Heart in Time of Corona Virus (Part I)

Tara Brach: A Steady Heart in Time of Corona Virus (Part II)

Subscribe to Sierra Voices Journal

Recent Posts

  • The Most Urgent Issue in U.S. Politics is Not Biden or Trump, Not Who is President This Time
  • How can America heal from the Trump era? Lessons from Germany’s transformation into a prosperous democracy after Nazi rule
  • We Need More in Congress Like Jamie Raskin
  • After the Desperate Ignorance of the Trump Years, Biden’s Words About Science Make Me Weep With Gratitude
  • Mask News We Can All Use

Recent Comments

  • The Most Important Issue in US Politics is Not Biden or Trump, or Even Who is President This Time on How to stop an Insurrection Caucus: These reforms could reduce GOP extremism and save our democracy
  • (Posted by) Don Pelton on GOP Warns Dems About Court Packing (Cartoon)
  • Criminal Incompetence, Malignant Ignorance Will Lead to Hunger and Violence on A Nice Depression Now Benefits the GOP in 2022 and 2024
  • togel singapura hari ini on How Wall Street Has Turned Housing Into a Dangerous Get-Rich-Quick Scheme — Again
  • Ao Corrente on How Wall Street Has Turned Housing Into a Dangerous Get-Rich-Quick Scheme — Again

Archives

  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • November 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • December 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • January 2014
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009

Categories

  • Aging
  • Articles
  • Atlas Obscura
  • Authoritarianism
  • Black Lives
  • Black Lives Matter
  • Blog
  • Buddhism
  • Cartoon
  • Climate Change
  • Constitution
  • Corona Virus
  • Corruption
  • Depression
  • Disenfranchisement
  • Economics
  • Education
  • Election Fraud
  • Environment
  • Farming
  • Fascism
  • Fire!
  • Food Insecurity
  • Foreign Policy
  • Forest Management
  • Gender
  • Health Care
  • History
  • Humor
  • Hunger
  • Ignorance
  • Labor
  • Local
  • Masks
  • Medical Care
  • Men
  • Mental Health
  • Middle Class
  • Mining
  • MMT
  • Modern Monetary Theory
  • Music
  • Native Americans
  • Pandemic
  • Parenting
  • Poetry
  • Police
  • Politics
  • Press
  • Race
  • Reviews
  • Revolution
  • Right-wing terrorism
  • Russiagate
  • Science
  • Technology
  • Trump Virus
  • Tyranny
  • Uncategorized
  • Voting
  • War
  • War on Government
  • Water
  • Watersheds
  • Wildfires

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org
© 2021   All Rights Reserved.