Legal personality for the environment: be careful what you wish for

Good news!

My PhD has been passed, and I am now officially Dr O'Donnell!

The full thesis is available for download, and the short version is: 

In 2010, the Victorian government created the Victorian Environmental Water Holder (VEWH) to be ‘the single voice’ for environmental water rights in Victoria. The VEWH is one of many ‘environmental water managers’ (EWMs) operating around the world. EWMs use a variety of legal forms to establish legal personhood to participate in water markets to acquire and manage water for the aquatic environment. The creation and operation of EWMs raises the question: what happens when the environment is constructed in law as a legal person? I use the example of the EWMs in Australia and the USA to develop a new conceptual framework to understand how the environment is constructed in law, and how the multiple constructions can interact in unintended ways. In particular, I find that there is an apparent paradox in the creation and operation of the EWMs: they are a regulatory tool intended to increase the legibility of the environment to law, and increase the rights and powers of the environment in law, but in doing so, they reframe the environment as a mere participant in a market, which can weaken the cultural narratives that support environmental protection.

The even shorter version: be careful what you wish for. Granting legal personality to the environment is a powerful legal tool, but it fundamentally reshapes the relationship between humanity and nature. Whilst giving nature the power to stick up for itself, and to fight back against pollution and degradation, can be important and useful, it can also leave people feeling that now they don't have to look after the environment. Even worse, because the environment is now a competitor for access to resources, people start to wonder whether they have recourse against the environment when things go wrong.

One of the most common responses to my articles documenting the legal rights for rivers that have emerged in 2017 has been: great, so can we sue the river when it floods our land?

In fact, one of the reasons that the State Government of Uttarakhand appealed the High Court ruling that granted legal rights to the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers in India is that they were concerned that they, as guardians for the river, would be held liable for the actions of the river. They were worried that people would sue them when the rivers flood in future.

Legal rights for nature advocates have long thought that placing nature on a level footing with people in the eyes of the law would transform our understanding of nature, changing it from a resource to be exploited, into a partner and equal. Turns out, this may have been a bit optimistic. 

But all is not lost. I think the solution to this challenge is to keep talking about why environmental protection matters, and why it matters to all of us. We don't have to let legal rights undermine our willingness to protect nature, but as environmental advocates, or policy-makers, or new organisations who speak for the environment, we do need to actively keep building trust and support throughout the community.

Legal rights for the Colorado River?

Legal rights for rivers seems to be an idea whose time has come.

This week, Deep Green Resistance filed suit on behalf of the Colorado River, to establish it as a legal person with the ability to sue in court to protect its own interests.

In July, the Siletz River Ecosystem in Oregon, USA, also filed an action to prevent the aerial spraying of pesticides within the river catchment.

Both cases are arguing that granting legal standing to the river will enable it to protect its interests holistically, and proactively. In Colorado, the law suit is an action against the state of Colorado for violating the river's "right to exist, flourish, regenerate, be restored, and naturally evolve".

In Oregon, the lawsuit stems from a local ordinance, which gives the right for local ecosystems and communities to be free from aerially sprayed pesticides.This ordinance means that the river in this case is one of the defendants, as the plaintiffs attempt to assert their right to apply pesticides. The court documents state that the right to be "free from toxic tresspass" is "essential for nature - the physical world including human beings - to survive and thrive".

So far, US courts have been consistently unwilling to embrace legal rights for nature. However, in 2017, there is an emerging transnational jurisprudence supporting the creation of legal rights for rivers, as evidenced by legislation in New Zealand and the Constitutional Court ruling in Colombia (which specifically referenced the New Zealand examples). In India, the ruling of the High Court which granted legal personality to the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers has been stayed by the Supreme Court, pending the outcome of an appeal.

At the recent 20th International Riversymposium in Brisbane, Australia, a plenary session was devoted to the discussion of legal rights for rivers, with speakers from the Whanganui River in New Zealand, and Western Australia, where the concept is being developed by the Madjulla people for the Mardoowarra River.

Later this year, in October, the first US rights for nature symposium will be convened in New Orleans.

Will this growing momentum be enough to tip the balance in the US courts?