This blog post by Mari Margil, Associate Director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, was posted on August 14th, 2019.
We now know that July 2019 was the hottest month in recorded human history, with 2016 – 2018 the hottest years in recorded history. We know that more than 1 million species are at risk as human activities push “the planet towards a sixth mass species extinction.”
The climate emergency is growing, species extinction is accelerating, coral reefs and other ecosystems are dying. Humankind is causing these overlapping crises, as the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Climate warns of the “significant human influences on the Earth system as a whole.”
It is increasingly clear that humankind must rapidly move away from a relationship with the natural world based on “domination” toward one focused on protection and sustainability.
Action in Brazil
In March, Brazil’s Superior Court of Justice picked up this mantle, calling for a new legal paradigm that recognizes the intrinsic value of nature. The Court wrote that nature and species deserve respect and care, and that legal systems should afford them “rights and dignity.”
The Court further wrote of the need for humankind’s relationship with nature to move away from one of “domination” and the need to consider “a legal approach that is biocentric and not just anthropocentric.”
In its ruling, which focused on protecting wildlife, the Court acknowledged how the law is already changing in different places – advancing respect for and rights of nature. This includes several Brazil communities which have enacted rights of nature laws over the past several years, assisted by CELDF partner Vanessa Hasson, an attorney in Brazil.
(To read the rest of this Mari Margil’s blog post at its original source please click HERE.)