What that means for granting nature rights.
Published on the Ecojustice blog by lawyer Sean Nixon.
Famous for its white-water rapids, the Muteshekau-shipu river (also known as the Magpie River) stretches 300 kilometres through Quebec.
The river is of profound cultural importance to the Innu of Ekuanitshit. And now, in a Canadian first, this waterway has been granted legal personhood.
In February, the Innu Council of Ekuanitshit and the Minganie Regional County Municipality (RCM) both adopted resolutions granting legal personhood to the Muteshekau-shipu river.
The resolutions grant the river nine rights, including the right to flow, to maintain its biodiversity, to be safe from pollution, and to sue. The resolutions also allow for the creation of legal guardians, people who would be responsible for ensuring the river’s rights are respected.
This new status could help protect the Muteshekau-shipu river from future attempts to dam it. According to a press release from the Muteshekau-shipu Alliance, previous efforts to protect the landmark were “thwarted for years” by Hydro-Quebec, which has long eyed the river’s potential for generating hydroelectric power.
On a broader scale, granting a river personhood is a historic and ground-breaking move that could have implications for how we protect nature across Canada.
Here’s a closer look at how expanding the rights of nature could revolutionize how we protect Canada’s species, ecosystems, and biodiversity.
The rights of nature: Introducing a new actor into environmental dramas
Up until now, environmental dramas in Canada have usually played out with humans and corporations as their sole characters. When it comes to legal standing, wildlife and the other non-human elements of the natural world have been absent from the cast.
Attend an environmental assessment hearing for a proposed mine, a court case about a marine oil spill, or a Parliamentary hearing about a proposed endangered species law and you likely find two camps of opposing human and corporate (or non-profit) players: one side favouring unhindered development, and one side urging caution and conservation.
The resulting drama then plays out as a quarrel among competing human interests. The natural world is discussed and valued only to the extent that it is of immediate use to human beings.
As a result, when an oil company’s powerful economic interest in accessing petroleum deposits collides with the value of the area to birdwatchers, hikers, or hunters, the former usually wins.
Enter “rights of nature”
But what if non-human beings and other elements of the natural world, such as the Muteshekau-shipu river, had rights, including the right to participate in environmental disputes to make direct arguments about their own needs?
The idea isn’t as far-fetched as it may appear at first.
We already allow non-human entities – namely corporations – to participate in legal disputes as full players. Corporations are artificial legal constructs designed to protect investors from potential liabilities for a company’s activities. And yet they are “persons” in the eyes of the law. We have granted them the right to participate in their own name in court cases, administrative proceedings and legislative hearings, where humans – usually lawyers or executives – speak on their behalf.
Around the world, many countries already recognize the rights of nature in law.
New Zealand granted legal recognition of the rights of Te Urewera National Park and the Whanganui River in 2014. Countries such as India, Ecuador, and others recognize rights and legal protections for nature in their constitutions…
See the rest of the post HERE.