Discovery News – Friday January 27
Tim Will of Discovery News speaks with Mari Margil, Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) and Linda Sheehan ,Earth Law Center, about Rights of Nature laws in the US, Ecuador and Bolivia.
Farmland in Vilcabamba, Ecuador. Bob Winsett, Corbis
Ecuador and Bolivia granted legal rights to the environment within the past few years. But what are those rights and can they really be enforced?
“The rights of nature laws recognize the rights of ecosystems and natural communities to exist, to flourish, to regenerate, and to evolve,” Mari Margill, associate director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), told Discovery News. CELDF helped Ecuador write the rights of nature into legal reality.
“The rights of nature laws move nature from being considered ‘property’ under the law to being recognized as ‘rights bearing’ under the law,” said Margill.
But laws are nothing but ink on paper if not enforced. A court case in Ecuador showed that these Earth friendly laws have claws and aren’t just idealistic public relations legislation.
“Even as these laws are just beginning to be enforced… they are still important because they play a significant educational role in raising awareness about the rights and needs of nature,” Linda Sheehan, executive director of the Earth Law Center, told Discovery News.
Giving Mother Nature her day in court isn’t limited to the Southern Hemisphere.
“Several dozen municipalities in the US have adopted rights of nature laws. This includes the City of Pittsburgh, in November 2010. CELDF assisted the city to draft the ordinance which also is the first in the nation to ban corporations from natural gas drilling within a municipality,” Margill said.
Sheehan recently worked with Santa Monica, California to develop a “Sustainability Bill of Rights,” which acknowledged the rights of nature.
For the full article visit Mother Nature Gets Her Day in Court …
