omniharmonicRights of Nature
Rights of nature is a legal and philosophical framework that recognizes ecosystems, rivers, forests, and other natural entities as legal subjects with inherent rights — including the right to exist, to regenerate, and to be restored when damaged. Rather than treating nature solely as property to be owned and exploited, this framework extends legal personhood beyond humans and corporations to the living systems upon which all life depends.
The movement has achieved landmark legal milestones: Ecuador’s 2008 constitution recognized rights of nature (Pachamama); New Zealand granted legal personhood to the Whanganui River (Te Awa Tupua) in 2017; Bolivia passed the Law of Mother Earth. These are not symbolic gestures — they create enforceable legal standing, meaning ecosystems can be represented in court and their degradation can be challenged as a violation of rights rather than merely an externality to be managed.
Rights of nature connects to decolonization because the framework often draws directly from Indigenous legal traditions and cosmologies that have long recognized the personhood and agency of non-human beings. It embodies the interbeing ontology in legal form — encoding the recognition that human well-being is inseparable from ecosystem health. It provides the legal infrastructure for bioregionalism, giving ecological entities governance standing within their own territories. And it is an expression of regeneration as a legal principle: not merely preventing harm but establishing the right of damaged ecosystems to be actively restored.