Mari Margil discusses the necessary steps that some nations are taking to create and implement legal frameworks to enforce Rights of Nature principles. Ongoing environmental destruction continues to have catastrophic consequences worldwide, and Margil explains that conditions will not begin to improve unless nature is recognized as having a legal right to protection. Because the law currently draws a line between persons (who have rights) and property (which cannot have rights), the Rights of Nature movement has hit some major roadblocks in trying to create effective frameworks within existing legal structures. Margil argues that these legal structures – as they are currently written and understood — were not built to include nature as a rights-bearing entity. She proposes “legal naturehood” as a more useful category in cases where legal personhood is limited or does not apply. This new category would allow Rights of Nature principles to be legally enforced, granting nature its basic rights and needs and limiting further environmental destruction by holding major polluters responsible for the devastation they cause. Illustration by Sébastien Thibault
