The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) recently published a do it yourself guide on how to advance Community Rights laws in your state. You can learn all about it and download it HERE! Description of the publication below. Are you interested in advancing Community Rights laws in your state? Community Rights includes Rights of [...]
The push for more local control upends the typical pattern of Westerners fighting against regulation. This article by Carl Segerstrom was published in High Country News on October 23th, 2019. With both hands in the pockets of his khakis, Loren Wand wavered nervously on a small stage at Bier One Brewing in Newport, Oregon. A gathering [...]
The action is the first of its kind by a state political party in the United States. This media statement was published by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) on October 15, 2019. On Saturday, the Florida Democratic Party approved a new party platform which includes the Rights of Nature. This is believed to [...]
We're still treating a living, life-sustaining, crucial being as property: the ecosystem. And in the process, we’re choking our own habitat—that is to say, ourselves—to death. This article by Robert C. Koehler was published on Common Dreams on October 10th, 2019. "When the U.S. Constitution was ratified, women, indigenous peoples, and slaves were treated as [...]
This letter to the editor by Diane St. Germain appeared in The Laconia Daily Sun on October 9th, 2019. To The Daily Sun, Mindsets are evolving to understand our place in nature as embraced by the indigenous people of the land we occupy. The catastrophic consequences of nature existing as “property” under the law have [...]
"When we're in the beginning of an ecological and climate collapse," said the lawmaker who introduced the measure, "I hope we can re-think our relationship with Nature." This article by Jon Queally was published in Common Dreams on October 8th, 2019. Heralded as the first of its kind in Europe, a proposed constitutional amendment in [...]
This article was posted by the Pachamama Alliance on October 4th, 2019. Trouble in the Water For several years, many communities in Florida have encountered toxic cyanobacteria, a result of toxic agribusiness runoff, in their local bodies of water. Florida residents have reported several adverse effects of cyanobacteria on their communities. The local economy, which [...]
A Yurok Tribe resolution allows cases to be brought on behalf of the Klamath River as a person in tribal court This article by Anna V. Smith was published in Mother Jones magazine on September 29, 2019. This story was originally published by High Country News and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. This summer, [...]
This Op-Ed by Lisa Kochheiser was published in TruthOut on September 17, 2019. For weeks, a legislator’s identity was kept secret by the Ohio General Assembly. When constituents asked who inserted language denying the rights of nature into the 2020-2021 House budget bill, their elected representatives simply shrugged their shoulders and told those of us [...]
Efforts to add legally enforceable rights for rivers are being advanced in at least five Florida counties. This press release was published by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) on September 11, 2019. In the face of state and federal inaction amidst mounting ecological devastation, grassroots groups in Alachua, Orange, Lee, Brevard, and Osceola [...]
