Rights of Nature in the Global South
A New Shield Against Extractive Agribusiness for
Indigenous and Peasant Communities?
By: Cindano wa
Gakuru
Introduction
Imagine
waking up tomorrow morning and there is no food available. Every piece of food
in the kitchen has vanished. No eggs, no bread, no butter, no milk, no fruits,
no vegetables, nothing. All gone! You rush to the grocery store and discover
there is no food. You take a beeline to the farms, and you find out that every
piece of cultivated land has been destroyed overnight.
Imagine
humanity has been thrust back to a world where the only way to survive is to
hunt wild animals and forage for berries in the wilderness. How long do you
think you'd last?
A week?
A month?
Introduction
The
terrifying reality is that without the agricultural revolution, 8 billion
people couldn't exist on this planet. We'd be lucky if a few million humans
could survive as scattered hunter-gatherer tribes.
But here's
the mind-blowing part. 10,000 years ago, that nightmare scenario was just
everyday life for our ancestors. Every single calorie had to be earned through
backbreaking labor, wandering vast distances, and competing with dangerous
predators for the same resources.
Then
something extraordinary happened. Something so revolutionary that it didn't
just change how humans lived, it fundamentally altered the trajectory of our
entire species and reshaped the face of the earth itself.
Introduction
The story of the agrarian revolution. The most
important transformation in human history. The epic journey from nomadic tribes
desperately searching for their next meal to the complex global food systems
that feed billions today. This isn't just about farming. This is about how a
handful of seeds planted in the fertile soil of ancient civilizations sparked
the rise of cities, governments, writing systems, social hierarchies, and
ultimately modern civilization as we know it.
Imagine traveling through 12,000 years of human
innovation, struggle, and ingenuity. You will witness the birth of agriculture
in multiple locations around the globe. You will watch as simple farming
techniques evolved into sophisticated irrigation systems and discover how the
green revolution of the 20th century saved over a billion lives from
starvation.
Agricultural Revolution
We would see the comprehensive transformation of
rural society, land ownership, and the entire agricultural economy, and not
just farming techniques.
It would include the Agricultural Revolution,
primarily the dramatic increase in agricultural productivity through new
technologies, crop systems, and farming practices. It is commonly associated
with the British Agricultural Revolution (roughly 1650?1850, peaking in the 18th
century).
We would see the introduction of the Four-field
crop rotation (e.g., Norfolk system: turnips, barley, clover, wheat), enclosure
of open fields into privately owned plots, selective breeding of
livestock (e.g., Robert Bakewell?s work), new tools and machinery (seed drill by
Jethro Tull, improved plows), and the use of new crops (turnips, clover,
potatoes) and soil improvements.
Agrarian Revolution
Agrarian Revolution is broader, social and technical
focus. It refers to the comprehensive transformation of rural society, land
ownership, and the entire agricultural economy ? not just farming techniques
[agricultural revolution].
For example:
-
The enclosure
movement (consolidation of small strips into large fenced farms)
-
Dispossession of
small peasants and tenant farmers
-
Creation of a
landless rural proletariat who migrated to cities
-
Major changes in
rural class structure and land tenure
-
And especially
the shift from subsistence/peasant farming to commercial, capitalist
agriculture.
Agrarian Revolution
The shift turned English agriculture into the most
productive and commercialized in the world, made the Industrial Revolution
possible by releasing labor and keeping food prices low, but at the cost of
destroying the old peasant society and creating a landless, often destitute
rural working class. That social trauma is why Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
saw the English Agrarian Revolution as the classic example of ?primitive accumulation? ? the violent process that created both modern capital and modern wage
labor.
-
Huge rise in agricultural productivity: Output per acre and per worker roughly doubled or
tripled between 1700 and 1850.
-
Agriculture became fully integrated into the market economy: farmers produced for profit, not
primarily for household consumption.
-
Capital intensification: large farms could afford drainage, marling, new
machinery, and pure-bred livestock; small farmers usually could not compete.
Social Consequences
Destruction of the traditional peasantry: Millions of
smallholders, cottagers, and commoners lost access to land through parliamentary
enclosure (c. 1760?1820 enclosed
>6 million acres, about 25 % of England?s cultivated land). Common rights of grazing, fuel gathering, gleaning,
were extinguished.
It also led to
the creation of three new rural classes:
?
Big landowners (aristocracy and
gentry) ? often absentee, living off rents.
?
Capitalist tenant farmers ? the famous ?improving? farmers who rented large consolidated
farms and ran them as businesses.
?
Landless agricultural laborers ? the new rural proletariat, paid daily or weekly wages, living in tied
cottages or open villages.
Rural poverty exploded in the late 18th and early 19th
centuries.
Environmental Consequences
The other
dark side was environmental destruction.
The global extension of the Agrarian Revolution ? from the 18th century to the
present ? turned local and regional
ecological damage into a planetary phenomenon. What began in Britain with
enclosure and high farming was exported, accelerated, and industrialized across
continents through colonialism, settler societies, cash-crop plantations, and
20th-century Green Revolutions.
The environmental dark side is now one of the
largest human impacts on the biosphere in all of history.
Environmental Consequences
Here are the
major global environmental consequences:
?
Deforestation at unprecedented scale 1700?present:
Approximately 1.5
billion hectares of forest have been cleared worldwide (one-third of all forest
that existed in 1700).
Americas: Amazon, Cerrado, Chaco,
and North American Great Plains lost forests and prairie for soy, cattle,
wheat, and corn.
Southeast Asia: 19th?20th-century
rubber, palm oil, and timber plantations destroyed 90 %+ of lowland rainforests
in Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines.
Africa: Cocoa belts in West
Africa and coffee/tea estates in East Africa replaced closed-canopy forest.
Environmental Consequences
2. Soil degradation and
desertification:
Between 24?40% of the world?s agricultural land is now moderately
to severely degraded (UN FAO).
? U.S.
Dust Bowl (1930s) was an early warning of what happens when deep-rooted prairie
is ploughed for wheat.
? Soviet
Virgin Lands campaign (1954?1963) turned Kazakh steppe into eroding wheat
fields.
? Sahel
and Horn of Africa: overgrazing and cash-crop monocultures contributed to
repeated desertification crises.
Environmental Consequences
3. Loss of global
biodiversity:
Agricultural
expansion is the #1 driver of terrestrial biodiversity loss (IPBES 2019).
? 75
% of all threatened bird and mammal species are imperilled
by agriculture.
? Examples:
? Near-extinction of the North American bison and conversion of 95 %+ of
tall-grass prairie.
? Collapse of Southeast Asian orangutan, tiger, and rhino populations due to
oil-palm plantations.
? 90 %+ decline of Madagascar?s unique dry forests for vanilla, cattle, and
charcoal.
Environmental Consequences
4. Wetland and
mangrove destruction:
Since 1700: ~50?70 % of global wetlands drained or
filled (mostly for rice, soy, oil palm, and sugar cane).
Mangroves: 35?50 % lost worldwide since 1950, mainly
for shrimp aquaculture and rice paddies.
5. Water
depletion and pollution
Agriculture uses
~70 % of global freshwater withdrawals.
?
Ogallala Aquifer (U.S. High Plains) dropping 5?10 metres since the 1950s.
?
Aral Sea catastrophe (1960?2000s): cotton irrigation
shrank one of the world?s largest lakes by 90 %.
?
Nitrate and phosphate pollution from fertilizers created
>400 coastal dead zones worldwide (Gulf of Mexico, Baltic Sea, etc.).
Environmental Consequences
6. Greenhouse-gas emissions from
land-use change Deforestation and peatland drainage for
agriculture account for ~20?25 % of all
historical human CO? emissions. Indonesia?s peat-swamp forests (cleared for oil
palm) are now the world?s largest single-country source of
land-use carbon emissions in some years.
7. Salinisation
and permanent loss of farmland
~20 % of the world?s irrigated land is salt-affected (1.5 million hectares abandoned every
year). Mesopotamia, Indus Valley, and Murray-Darling basin all show the same
pattern seen in ancient civilisations: irrigation ? salinisation
? collapse of productivity.
8. Monoculture and genetic erosion:
The global spread of hybrid seeds and Green Revolution
packages after 1960 reduced crop genetic diversity dramatically. About 75 % of
crop genetic diversity lost in the 20th century (FAO). For example, 1970 U.S.
corn blight destroyed 15 % of the crop because almost all hybrids shared the
same susceptible cytoplasm.
Environmental Consequences
The global agrarian revolution turned humanity from a
species that lived within local ecological limits into the primary force
reshaping the entire Earth system. It is the deepest root of the Anthropocene.
However, the same set of processes that ended hunger for
billions, also drove the sixth mass extinction, destabilized the climate, and
pushed planetary boundaries on nitrogen, phosphorus, freshwater, and land use
into the red zone.
The Benefits and the Burdens
The benefits and the burdens are distributed with extreme
inequality:
Who got the food security?
The Green
Revolution and global industrial agriculture ended chronic famine for hundreds
of millions in Asia, Latin America, and (to a lesser extent) Africa ? but the main beneficiaries of the
surpluses were urban consumers in rich nations and the emerging middle classes
in the Global South.
The Benefits and the Burdens
Who paid the ecological price?
The same communities that saw the least improvement in food security often bore
the heaviest environmental costs: Indigenous peoples and smallholders
displaced by soy and oil-palm plantations (Amazon, Indonesia, West Africa), Pastoralists
and fishing communities whose commons were privatized or polluted, Rural
women in the Global South who now walk farther for water and firewood
because of deforestation and aquifer depletion, Low-income urban neighbourhoods downstream of fertilizer runoff (e.g.,
cancer clusters near dead zones in India and the Philippines).
Ecological and Social Costs
Ecological debt is overwhelmingly owed by the Global
North and local elites to the poorest and most land-dependent communities of
the Global South.
The global agrarian revolution ? from the British enclosures of the
1700s to the soybean frontiers and palm-oil plantations of the 2020s ? was never a neutral, technical process
of ?feeding the world.? It was, from the beginning, a gigantic
act of externalization: a small minority (landed elites, colonial powers,
plantation owners, agribusiness corporations, affluent consumers) captured
almost all of the benefits while forcing the costs ? ecological destruction, cultural
erasure, bodily harm, and stolen futures ? onto everyone else.
Ecological and Social Costs
The global agrarian revolution succeeded not
because it was more efficient in any absolute sense, but because a small
minority was allowed ? through violence, law, trade rules,
and cultural narratives of ?progress? and ?improvement? ? to treat the bodies of the poor, the land and waters of the commons, the
cultures of indigenous peoples, and the stability of the climate as an
open-access dumping ground for its costs while privatizing every drop of
benefit.
That is the original sin of capitalist agriculture,
and it is why any serious project of ecological and social repair must begin
with ending the right to externalize.
Violence (the original enforcer)
Direct physical force cleared the way whenever people or
nature resisted.
British enclosures: gamekeepers, militia, and hired thugs
beat and arrested commoners who tried to keep grazing their animals on newly
fenced land.
Americas: indigenous nations exterminated or
removed (Trail of Tears, Argentine ?Conquest of the
Desert,? Yanomami
massacres in Brazil 1970s?1990s).
Colonial Africa: Belgian Congo?s rubber terror,
Mau Mau detention camps in
Kenya, German
genocide of the Herero for cattle ranching.
21st century: paramilitary killings of
land-defenders in Honduras, Colombia, and the Philippines (Global Witness
counts ~200 environmental defenders murdered every year, most over agrarian
conflicts).
Violence made the first act of dispossession irreversible.
Law(turning
theft into property)
Once the blood dried, law arrived to sanctify the new
ownership.
English Enclosure Acts (over 5,000 separate laws passed
by a Parliament of landowners).
U.S. Homestead Acts, Dawes Act, and land-grant railroads
that transferred 10 % of the continental U.S. from indigenous nations to white
settlers and corporations.
Roman-Dutch law in South Africa ? 1913 Natives Land Act ? apartheid Bantustans.
Contemporary ?legal? land grabs: governments in Ethiopia,
Cambodia, or Guatemala declare indigenous or peasant land ?unproductive,? reclassify it as state domain, then
lease it for 99 years to foreign agribusiness.
The law did not protect existing users; it rewrote history so that the
thief became the legitimate owner and the victim became the trespasser.
Law(turning
theft into property)
The Foreign Jurisdiction Act (1843 and
especially 1890), was an imperial statute that gave British courts
extraterritorial jurisdiction in territories where Britain did not claim full
sovereignty (protectorates, treaty ports, etc.). It was used in places like
Zanzibar, the Persian Gulf sheikhdoms, or parts of China. In the colonies and
neo-colonies, the mechanisms that sanctified theft were:
Waste Lands doctrines in India, Australia, New Zealand,
Canada, Kenya, etc. (any land not under European-style title or taxed
cultivation was declared ?waste? and open to seizure).
Crown Lands ordinances and Land
Acquisition Acts across the
British Empire.
Concession laws in Belgian, French, and Portuguese
Africa (millions of hectares signed away to chartered companies).
1890 Foreign Jurisdiction Act and similar statutes in other empires ? used to give legal cover to
extraterritorial land grabs in protectorates and spheres of influence.
So the pattern is the same ? first violence, then a law drafted by
and for the thieves
Trade Rules
keeping the terms of exchange
permanently unequal?
Unequal trade locked the externalization in place across
centuries. 19th-century British ?free trade? imperialism forced India and Egypt to
grow cotton and opium while banning protective tariffs ? deindustrialisation
and famine.
Post-WWII GATT and later WTO rules forbade the
very infant
industry protections and commodity boards that Europe and
the
U.S. had used during their own agrarian-industrial
transitions.
?
Structural adjustment programmes (1980s?2000s) forced
African and Latin American countries to remove maize and
rice subsidies while the U.S. and EU kept dumping
subsidized
grain.
?
Modern bilateral investment treaties and FTA contain ?investor-state dispute settlement? clauses that allow corporations to sue
governments for billions if land reform or environmental laws threaten expected
profits.
Result: the ecological and social costs stay
in the producing country; the profits flow out.
Cultural Narratives of ?Progress?
and ?Improvement?
Every act of destruction was wrapped in a story that made
critics sound backward or dangerous. 18th-century English ?improvers? called open-field farmers and
commoners ?slothful? and ?superstitious.?
19th-century doctrine of terra nullius portrayed
indigenous land as ?empty? even when densely inhabited.
?
20th-century modernization theory
labelled peasant agriculture ?traditional?
(i.e. obsolete) and celebrated
monoculture plantations as ?modern.?
Cultural Narratives of ?Progress?
and ?Improvement?
Today?s narrative: ?We must feed 10 billion people? is used to justify Amazon soy, African
mega-farms, and CRISPR [GMO] crops, while peasant agroecology is dismissed as
nostalgic or insufficient. These stories performed two crucial tasks:
?
They convinced
the metropolitan middle classes that the suffering was inevitable and even
noble (?the price of progress?).
?
They divided the
victims themselves: some peasants and workers came to believe that their own
traditions were the obstacle.
CRISPR crops are plants edited using the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing tool to
introduce desirable traits like improved nutritional value, disease resistance,
and climate resilience.
The Four Horsemen
[1] Violence [cleared the land] ? [2] Law [turned the
seizure into alienable private property] ?
[3] Trade Rules [ensured the surplus could be extracted
on permanently unfavourable terms] ? [4] and the ever-renewed gospel
of ?improvement,? ?modernization,? and ?feeding the world.?
This supplied the moral alibi that kept metropolitan
consumers and local elites from feeling complicit.
The Four Horsemen
The four horsemen are still galloping today. Every new
palm-oil plantation in Borneo, every new soybean frontier in the Gran Chaco,
every new ?smart agriculture? investment fund repeats the same
sequence:
-
a burst of
violence or intimidation,
-
a change in legal
classification,
-
a trade deal that
guarantees export access, and
-
a glossy
sustainability report that speaks of ?responsible intensification? and ?ending hunger.?
The Four Horsemen
Until those four horsemen are arrested together, the
externalization will continue ? and the bodies
of the poor, the land and waters of the commons, the cultures of indigenous
peoples, and the stability of the climate will remain the open-access dumping
ground for a system that privatizes every drop of benefit for the few.
What is Ecosocial Justice?
Imagine a river that can walk into court and sue a
soybean plantation for poisoning it. Imagine a maize seed whose evolutionary
integrity is defended in the constitution as a subject with rights.
Since 2008, more than 15 countries in the Global South ? led by Ecuador and Bolivia ? have granted legal personhood and
rights to nature.
What real impact is this having on
Indigenous and peasant communities facing the bulldozers, pesticides, and seed
patents of extractive agribusiness?
What is Ecosocial Justice?
What is Ecosocial
Justice?
Ecosocial Justice is the political and ethical
horizon that insists socialism and ecological integrity are inseparable. It
refuses to separate the ?social question?- exploitation, dispossession,
inequality, racism, patriarchy, colonialism - from the ?ecological question? - metabolic rift, extinction, soil
degradation, climate chaos.
Ecosocial justice asserts:
?
The root cause of
both social oppression and ecological destruction is the capitalist logic of
endless accumulation and commodification.
?
Any struggle for
justice that ignores the exploitation of nature will reproduce oppression; any
environmentalism that ignores class, race, gender, and colonial power will
remain elitist.
What is Ecosocial Justice?
Ecosocial justice asserts:
c) The subjects of liberation are not only human workers
but the whole web of life, peasants, Indigenous peoples, women, youth, rivers,
forests, seeds, and soils.
d) The goal is a democratic, de-commodified, de-colonial
society that re-organizes production and reproduction to restore the metabolism
between humanity and the rest of nature.
In the agrarian context, ecosocial justice means dismantling corporate monopoly over
land, water, seed, and knowledge, while building agroecological peasant
economies that regenerate ecosystems and guarantee dignified livelihoods, while
promoting degenderized agri- and agro-production.
What is the current context of indigenous and peasant
communities?
Quantifying the contributions and impacts of indigenous
and peasant communities in the modern agrarian landscape requires detailed
metrics across various domains, such as population data, land area managed,
biodiversity indicators, and agricultural value.
Unfortunately, the specific numerical data for some
aspects may not be directly available within the provided references, but
general insights and reports can still help frame the discussion.
The current context of indigenous and peasant communities
- Continued
Globally, around 2.5 billion people are dependent on smallholder
agriculture, which includes indigenous and peasant communities. These
populations often live in rural areas and rely on sustainable farming as their
primary livelihood.
Indigenous
peoples alone represent an estimated 476 million individuals worldwide, spanning over 90 countries. They
account for approximately 6% of the global population, yet manage 25%?28% of the Earth?s land surface, which coincides with areas holding 80% of the planet?s biodiversity.
?
Land Management:
Peasant and indigenous communities oversee a significant portion of
agricultural land. Customary and community-managed lands often exceed 50% in some regions, particularly in
Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa.
The numbers that matter?
?
Biodiversity
Conservation:
o
Indigenous
territories frequently align with biodiversity hotspots. Approximately 80% of the world?s remaining biodiversity is maintained within these lands under indigenous stewardship.
?
Contribution to
Food Systems and Sustainability:
o
Smallholders,
many of whom are peasants and indigenous people, produce over 70% of the world?s food and shape local food systems that
prioritize sustainability and resilience.
How did we get here?
500 years of
colonial land theft turned diverse Indigenous and peasant agricultures into
export monocrops.
The Green
Revolution (1960s?80s) addicted agriculture to chemicals
and hybrid seeds that only richer farmers could afford.
The neoliberal
turn + WTO-TRIPS (1995) patented life itself and criminalized seed saving.
The 2008
food-price and financial crises turned farmland into an asset class for pension
funds and corporations.
Result?
The world lost a
lot of terrain from 1980 to date. Today peasants and Indigenous peoples farm
close to 30% of the land but feed 70% of the world ? while living in the deepest rural
poverty and facing land grabs and transgenic contamination.
What are Rights of Nature?
Very simply:
Nature ? rivers, forests, ecosystems, sometimes
entire biomes or species ? is recognized as a subject of rights,
not an object of property.
Key rights usually include:
?
To exist
?
To regenerate
vital cycles
?
To evolutionary
continuity
?
To restoration
when harmed
?
And crucially:
Indigenous and local communities are often named as guardians who can speak for
nature in court.
Rights of Nature
Rights of Nature
Ways Rights of Nature Fight Agribusiness
?
Direct bans and moratoriums:
Ecuadorian provincial courts have blocked GMO crop
releases at least five times since 2019 citing violation of Pachamama?s rights.
Colombia 2021: Constitutional Court banned certain GMO?glyphosate packages in Wayuu territory
using Rights of Nature logic.
2) Flips legal standing:
Before: a peasant was a potential ?patent infringer.?
After Rights of Nature: the same peasant becomes the legal guardian of a
rights-bearing river or forest. See Monsanto vs Percy Schmeiser
where Monsanto sued the Canadian farmer for patent infringement.
Example: Atrato River judgment (Colombia, 2016) ? Indigenous and Afro communities
appointed co-guardians with power to veto polluting projects.
Ways Rights of Nature Fight Agribusiness
3) Creates
constitutional hierarchy over trade deals
In Ecuador, courts have ruled repeatedly that international treaties (including
WTO obligations or future FTAs) cannot override the Rights of Nature.
This is the only existing legal weapon that can trump TRIPS Article 27.3(b)
inside a national jurisdiction.
4) Shifts burden
of proof
Companies now have to prove their palm-oil plantation or soy mega-farm will NOT
damage nature?s integrity ? instead of communities proving harm
after the forest is gone.
5) Political and
symbolic power
Movements like CONAIE in Ecuador or the Zapatistas now frame every defense of
territory as defense of a living subject with rights.
This has made it much harder for governments to dismiss them as ?obstacles to progress.?
Real Wins
1. Los Cedros
Protected Area, Ecuador (2021?ongoing)
In December 2021 the Constitutional Court of Ecuador
revoked all mining concessions in the Los Cedros cloud forest (Imbabura
province) and ordered the government to apply the Rights of Nature (enshrined
in the 2008 Constitution, Articles 71?74).
Key precedent: The Court ruled that the state had
violated the rights of nature and the collective rights of local communities by
granting concessions without free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) and
without assessing harm to an entire ecosystem (not just individual species).
Ripple effect: 2022?2024: the same reasoning has been used
to suspend or cancel at least 12 other mining and logging concessions in Intag,
Choc? Andino, and Amazonian provinces.
2023?2024: peasant and Afro-Ecuadorian communities on the coast
are now using the Los Cedros ruling to fight industrial oil-palm expansion that
is draining wetlands and contaminating rivers. Several plantations have already
been halted by precautionary measures.
Real Wins
2. Mexico: Class-action lawsuit to
protect native maize (2013?ongoing) probably the strongest existing legal shield for an
entire crop species anywhere in the world.
Case: Demanda Colectiva Ma?z
(filed by 53 indigenous and peasant organisations +
22 scientists).
Legal tool: Rights of Nature + precautionary
principle + cultural rights of indigenous peoples.
Result so far:
? 2013:
Federal judge issued an indefinite precautionary injunction banning all
planting of GM maize in Mexico, still in force 11yrs later.
? 2021
Feb 2024: The Supreme Court upheld the injunction again, explicitly citing the
right of native maize to exist and evolve without transgenic contamination.
? 2024?2025:
The same collective is now preparing new actions against Bayer-Monsanto?s
attempts to patent native varieties collected in Oaxaca and Chiapas.
Real Wins
3. India: Rivers, glaciers, and
traditional seeds as legal subjects
2017: Uttarakhand High Court declared the Ganges and
Yamuna rivers, plus all glaciers feeding them, to be living entities with
rights (later stayed by the Supreme Court on technical grounds, but the
precedent lives on at state level).
Real wins at state level: Tamil Nadu, Punjab, and Himachal
Pradesh have passed state-level resolutions recognizing farmer varieties and
landraces as part of the ?living heritage? of the state, making it harder for
companies to patent them.
Maharashtra and Karnataka are using the Personhood of
Rivers precedents to block inter-basin transfer projects and sand-mining
mafias.
2023?2024: The Kerala
High Court cited RoN to cancel a mega-quarry project
and to protect the Western Ghats biodiversity hotspot.
Real Wins
4. Colombia:
Atrato River and Amazon region
2016: Constitutional Court declared the Atrato River basin a subject of rights (T-622).
Result: creation of a 14-member ?Guardians of the Atrato??
(7 government + 7
community representatives) with veto power over mining and industrial
agriculture.
2022: The entire Colombian Amazon recognized as an ?entity subject of rights? (Supreme Court STC-4360-2022).
Already used to suspend oil exploration blocks and to
force the government to produce a binding deforestation-reduction plan.
Real Wins
5. New Zealand /
Aotearoa
2014: Te Urewera (former national park)
declared a legal person.
2017: Whanganui
River ? world?s first river recognized as a legal
entity. The river?s interests represented by one M?ori and one Crown appointee.
2022?2024: Taranaki maunga
(mountain) granted personhood. These precedents are now invoked by M?ori iwi to stop dairy conversions and
irrigation mega-projects.
Real Wins
6. Spain: Mar Menor lagoon (2022)
Europe?s first ecosystem
with rights. After decades of agricultural nitrate pollution caused mass fish
die-offs, the Spanish Senate passed a law granting the lagoon legal personhood.
A guardians? committee (scientists + citizens +
regional government) can now sue polluters directly. Fertilizer runoff has
measurably declined since.
7. Bangladesh: All rivers declared
living entities (2019)
High Court ruling: every river in the country is a ?legal person?. Used immediately to demolish
thousands of illegal encroaching structures and to stop industrial discharge.
Enforcement is uneven, but the legal tool exists.
8. Panama (2023)
Law 287 grants legal personhood to sea turtles (all
species). Used within months to suspend coastal mega-tourism projects that
would destroy nesting beaches.
A Pattern Emerging
These are not isolated victories. They form a rapidly
growing jurisprudence of the living that does three crucial things:
?
Shifts the burden of proof: once an ecosystem or species is a rights-bearer, any
project that threatens it is presumed harmful unless proven otherwise.
2. Creates new veto players: indigenous communities, local
guardians, or scientific panels gain standing equal to (or above) corporations.
3. Blocks the old externalization trick: you can no longer treat rivers,
forests, maize, or turtles as ?free? dumping grounds for your costs.
A Pattern Emerging
In short, we have witnessed over 500 years when law was a faithful servant of dispossession. From Papal Bulls such as the Inter Caetera and Dudum siquidem of 1493, to the Doctrines of Discovery, through which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that indigenous peoples had only a ?right of occupancy?; true title belonged t