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rights of nature

Fifty Years After the UN’s Stockholm Environment Conference, Leaders Struggle to Realize its Vision of ‘a Healthy Planet’

Beyond the official proceedings, bold new proposals to make ecocide an international crime, grant nature legal rights and guarantee the human right to a sustainable environment dominated hundreds of side events.

By Katie Surma

Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate uses a megaphone while marching with environmental demonstrators through central Stockholm during a protest organized by Fridays for Future against perceived inaction by governments towards climate change last week in Stockholm. Climate activist organizations, including Fridays For Future, protested on the side-lines of the Stockholm 50+ climate summit, and the youth-led Aurora movement announced details of their legal action against the Swedish state in relation to their climate policies. Credit: Jonas Gratzer/Getty Images.
The woodland at dawn in Parambikulam Wildlife Sanctuary on Nov. 19, 2009 in Kerala, India. Credit: Phil Clarke Hill/In Pictures via Getty Images

Indian Court Rules That Nature Has Legal Status on Par With Humans—and That Humans Are Required to Protect It

By Katie Surma

A person stands on a dock on Lake Virginia in Orlando. Credit: Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Florida Judge Asked to Recognize the Legal Rights of Five Waterways Outside Orlando

By Katie Surma

Woolly monkey. Credit: Evgenia Kononova

Ecuador’s High Court Rules That Wild Animals Have Legal Rights

By Katie Surma

Tourists snorkel at a coral reef in Portobelo, Colon province, Panama in 2021. Reefs there have been damaged by climate change and pollution. Credit: Luis ACOSTA / AFP via Getty Images.

Panama Enacts a Rights of Nature Law, Guaranteeing the Natural World’s ‘Right to Exist, Persist and Regenerate’

By Katie Surma

Toreadora lake in Cajas National Park in the highlands of Ecuador. Credit: Martha Barreno /VW Pics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Can Rights of Nature Laws Make a Difference? In Ecuador, They Already Are

By Katie Surma

Maya van Rossum (second from left), the leader of the green amendment movement, attends the Walking 4 Climate rally outside the New Mexico State Capitol with New Mexico legislators and community members on Jan. 17, 2022. Credit: Green Amendment For the Generations

New Mexico Could Be the Fourth State to Add a Green Amendment to Its Constitution, But Time Is Short

By Aydali Campa

A young fingerling Chinook salmon leaps out of the water on May 16, 2018 in Half Moon Bay, California. Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

In the Latest Rights of Nature Case, a Tribe Is Suing Seattle on Behalf of Salmon in the Skagit River

By Katie Surma

View from the observation tower of rising mist from the rain forest canopy in the rain forest near La Selva Lodge near Coca, Ecuador. Credit: Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket via Getty Images

Ecuador’s High Court Affirms Constitutional Protections for the Rights of Nature in a Landmark Decision

By Katie Surma

Aerial scenes from the Northern Amazon from the town of Iqitos to the Amazon oil town of Trompederos, Peru, June 11, 2007. Credit: Brent Stirton/Getty Images

Indigenous Women in Peru Seek to Turn the Tables on Big Oil, Asserting ‘Rights of Nature’ to Fight Epic Spills

By Katie Surma

Sections of the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline on the construction site on the White Earth Nation Reservation near Wauburn, Minnesota in June 2021. Credit: Kerem Yucel/AFP via Getty Images

To Stop Line 3 Across Minnesota, an Indigenous Tribe Is Asserting the Legal Rights of Wild Rice

By Katie Surma

The Whanganui River near the entrance to Whanganui National Park, near Whanganui, North Island, New Zealand. Credit: Matthew Lovette/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Does Nature Have Rights? A Burgeoning Legal Movement Says Rivers, Forests and Wildlife Have Standing, Too

By Katie Surma

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