ECUADOR is a small country, tucked away in the northwestern corner of South America. In 2008, it did something potentially transformative for the Earth’s future. It enacted a new constitution which, for the first time in human history, embodied the concept of the rights of nature. Nature was granted legal personhood.

“Nature, or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and occurs, has the right to integral respect for its existence and for the maintenance and regeneration of its life-cycles, structure, functions and evolutionary processes. All persons, communities, peoples and nations can call upon public authorities to enforce the rights of nature.” (Article 71)

The rights of nature movement has been advancing for some time now, quietly in the noisy global debate around the environment. The concept is deeper, more foundational than, for example, environmental laws which seek to protect nature for the benefit of the human race. Indeed, the debate need no longer be framed purely in terms of one species. To the pragmatic argument, we can add a higher ethical and spiritual argument. Nature is sentient, it lives and so has rights like other living things. If rivers, mountains and forests have rights, they do not exist merely as resources for........

© Dawn