Rivers Get Human Rights: They Can Sue to Protect Themselves

In New Zealand and Ecuador, rivers with legal aspects of “personhood” open up new environmental battles

This article by Mihnea Tanasescu appeared in Scientific American , June 19, 2017.

In the early 2000s, the idea of giving legal rights to nature was on the fringes of environmental legal theory and public consciousness.

Today, New Zealand’s Whanganui River is a person under domestic law, and India’s Ganges River was recently granted human rights. In Ecuador, the Constitution enshrines nature’s “right to integral respect”.

What on earth does this all mean? MORE…