Rights of Nature: When Rivers Become Legal Persons

TL;DR: The Whanganui River in New Zealand has lawyers. The Colombian Amazon can take a government to court. Ecuador enshrined the rights of Mother Earth in its constitution back in 2008. This is not environmental philosophy — it is positive law, enforceable and already invoked in courtrooms.

In March 2017, in the town of Whanganui, at the heart of New Zealand’s North Island, a ceremony took place on the riverbank. Representatives of the Māori iwi Whanganui, ministers of the Crown, legal scholars. At the centre of everything: a river. Not as a symbol. As a party to the proceedings.

That day, the New Zealand Parliament passed the Te Awa Tupua Act — a law granting the Whanganui River legal personhood. The text designates it as “he awa whirangi” — a living person. Two guardians are appointed to defend its interests in court: one Māori representative, one from the Crown.

It marks the end of 140 years of struggle.

The Crumbling Paradigm: Nature as Property

In the Western legal tradition, nature has no standing as a subject. It is res nullius — ownerless property — or private ownership. A river is a water resource. A forest is standing timber. An ecosystem is an asset to be managed.

This conceptual framework has shaped environmental policy for centuries. It has also produced its own results: lawful pollution, authorised destruction, damages settled with derisory fines. The law allowed people to pay to destroy.

The limits of this system become brutally apparent when you notice that even the most ambitious environmental legislation protects nature for humans — not as nature with interests of its own. A polluted river opens avenues for redress if local residents suffer harm. But the river itself? Nothing.

Several countries have begun to crack this paradigm.

Ecuador 2008: The World’s First Constitution of Its Kind

On 28 September 2008, Ecuadorians approved by referendum a new constitution drafted at Montecristi. Articles 71 to 74 contain a text without precedent in constitutional history:

“Nature or Pacha Mama, where life is reproduced and realised, has the right to be integrally respected in its existence, maintenance and regeneration of its vital cycles.”

The Constitution of the Republic of Ecuador does not protect nature through human rights. It grants nature rights of its own: the right to exist, to be maintained, to regenerate. Any person, community, people or nationality may invoke them before a court.

This is not a symbolic proclamation. In March 2011, the Vilcabamba River, in the province of Loja, won a case against the local provincial government. The construction of a road had led to excavated material being dumped in the riverbed, altering its course and causing flooding. The court ruled in favour of the river — represented by local residents — and ordered restoration. It was the first judicial ruling in favour of the rights of nature in history.

The Ecuadorian political context is complex — implementation of articles 71–74 has been uneven under successive governments. But the legal precedent is set, and it will not disappear.

New Zealand 2017: 140 Years of Māori Patience

The Whanganui is no ordinary waterway. For the Māori of the Whanganui iwi, the river is an ancestor. “Ko au te awa, ko te awa ko au” — I am the river, the river is me. This spiritual and cultural relationship spent a century and a half running up against the indifference of the colonial legal system.

As early as 1873, the iwi sought recognition of its rights to the river. In 1903, in 1938, in 1962 — appeals came and went, and failed. The state exploited the Whanganui for navigation, irrigation, and hydroelectric power. Water quality declined.

What the Te Awa Tupua Act changes in concrete terms:

• The river can bring proceedings in its own name.
• Any harm caused to the river is legally comparable to harm caused to a person.
• The two guardians — Te Pou Tupua — have a legal mandate to speak on the river’s behalf in all proceedings concerning it.
• A fund of NZ$30 million is created for the restoration of its ecological integrity.

This is not a total victory. Ownership rights over the riverbanks remain complex. But the dynamic has shifted: for the first time, a New Zealand court can hear that a human action has harmed the river — and do something about it.

Colombia 2018: Twenty-Five Young People Against Deforestation

On 5 April 2018, the Colombian Supreme Court issued a ruling that would mark international environmental jurisprudence. It had been brought by twenty-five young Colombians aged between 7 and 25, who argued that the deforestation of the Colombian Amazon violated their right to a healthy environment and to a future for coming generations.

The Court went further than their claim. In its decision STC4360-2018, it recognised the Colombian Amazon as a “subject of rights” — holder of the right to protection, conservation, maintenance, and restoration. It ordered the government to halt net deforestation in the area by 2020, and to create an “intergenerational pact for the life of the Colombian Amazon”.

The ruling rests on a novel line of reasoning: if legal persons — companies, associations, states — can hold rights, there is no logical obstacle to an ecosystem doing the same. Nature is not a thing to be protected: it is an entity to be respected.

Implementation has been imperfect. Deforestation in the Colombian Amazon continued well beyond 2020. But the ruling exists, it can be invoked, and it has inspired similar proceedings in other Latin American countries.

What This Changes — and What It Does Not Yet Change

The Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature today records more than 40 countries that have adopted legal recognition of the rights of nature in various forms. In the United States, more than 200 local communities have voted ordinances to this effect, often to protect their groundwater or waterways from extractive industry.

But the movement is not linear.

In 2017, the Uttarakhand High Court in India granted the Ganges and the Yamuna — two of the subcontinent’s most sacred and most polluted rivers — the status of living legal persons. A few weeks later, the Indian Supreme Court suspended the ruling: too many practical questions without answers (who is responsible when the Ganges floods? can the state be sued by its own river?). The saga continues.

In Bangladesh, in 2019, all the country’s waterways were declared “living persons” by a ruling of the Dhaka High Court. The decision was welcomed in international media. Its application remains fragmentary.

What these examples reveal: the obstacle is no longer conceptual. The question is no longer “is this legally possible?” — that is now established. The obstacle is institutional: who appoints the guardians? Who funds the legal proceedings? How do the rights of nature articulate with existing property rights?

These questions have answers. They require time and political will.

Towards an International Law of Living Things?

In July 2022, the United Nations General Assembly recognised the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment as a human right (resolution 76/300). This is not yet international recognition of the rights of nature itself — but the direction is set.

Legal scholars, philosophers, and campaigners in many countries are today pushing for an international treaty that would grant ecosystems legal personhood recognised at world level — and allow states or multinationals to be prosecuted for damage to the integrity of a transboundary ecosystem.

This would be a revolution comparable to that of human rights after 1948: not the end of all conflicts, but a reference framework that alters the balance of power.

Rivers have names. In several parts of the world, they now have lawyers. What seemed utopian in 2007 is positive law in 2024. The trajectory of this idea — from a handful of Ecuadorian campaigners to national constitutions and supreme court rulings — looks less like a revolution than a self-evident truth that finally makes its way through.

What You Can Do

• Support organisations working on the rights of nature in your country
• Follow active cases: the Rivers Have Rights movement documents ongoing proceedings
• Engage your local representatives: several European cities have already incorporated ecosystem protection clauses into their planning documents

Sources

• Constitution of the Republic of Ecuador (2008), Organisation of American States — Art. 71–74 (Rights of Nature)
• Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Act 2017, Parliament of New Zealand
• Corte Suprema de Justicia de Colombia, STC4360-2018, April 2018 — Colombian Amazon as a subject of rights
• Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature — global survey of legislation
• Provincial Court of Loja, March 2011 — Río Vilcabamba v. Provincial Government of Loja (documented in academic literature on the rights of nature)
• UN General Assembly resolution 76/300, 28 July 2022 — right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment as a human right