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 [...]
This news story appeared as a headline on Democracy Now, and kicks off our new series that critiques existing single-issue activism through a lens analyzing corporate constitutional so-called "rights". Here's the brief story as written: Tens of thousands of people took to the streets for Pride marches on Saturday and Sunday in cities across the [...]
Court in New York rules in case of caged adult male chimps Tommy and Kiko that there is no precedent for apes being considered people. From The Guardian newspaper. Two chimpanzees that were caged at a trailer lot and at a primate sanctuary don’t have the legal rights of people in New York, an appeals [...]
This original editorial by Ken Ward appeared in The Hill on May 31, 2017 To the dismay of our allies, the White House could any day announce the U.S. will withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. But as a patriot and climate activist, I’m not dismayed. I actually want to pull out. MORE...
Grant Township, Pennsylvania, population 741, has became the front line of a radical new environmental movement – and they're not backing down. Rolling Stone magazine's first-ever major story about the Community Rights movement, with a focus on the courageous residents of Grant Township, Pennsylvania, who are continuing to make national history as they defend their right to [...]
This article originally appeared in DeSmog Blog, and is yet another illustration as to why we urgently need to pass laws in the US separating business corporations from the funding and ownership of any scientific research. Community Rights laws on this issue could begin to be passed immediately by municipal and county governments, prohibiting local [...]
Published in The Intercept on May 6, 2017. Massive and sustained civil disobedience is one of the few effective tactics we citizens still have to take on corporate rule. So no wonder corporate leaders are working overtime behind the scenes to criminalize these activities. A statute aimed at suppressing protests against oil and gas pipelines [...]
This article appeared in El Heraldo on May 3, 2017 In Colombia, it is the first time that rights are granted to a river, to resources as such, beyond people and communities. As a historical landmark, Ximena González described the ruling of the Constitutional Court that declared for the first time that a river “is [...]
This article by Ashish Kothari, Mari Margil, and Shrishtee Bajpai originally appeared in, The Guardian on April 21, 2017 Several geographically-distant but related events signalled a dramatic mind shift in humanity’s troubled relationship with nature last month. First, the New Zealand parliament passed the Te Awa Tupua Act, giving the Whanganui River and ecosystem a legal standing in its [...]
This news story appeared on France 24 TV on April 1, 2017. An Indian court has recognised Himalayan glaciers, lakes and forests as "legal persons" in an effort to curb environmental destruction, weeks after it granted similar status to the country's two most sacred rivers. In a decision that aims to widen environmental protections in [...]