Rights of Nature

Rights of Nature seek to define legal rights for ecosystems to exist, flourish and regenerate their natural capacities. These rights challenge the status of nature as a legal entity rather than a property owned by humans. According to the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature, rights of Nature are the "recognition and honoring that Nature has rights. It is the recognition that our ecosystems - including trees, oceans, animals, mountains - have rights just as human beings have rights."

Many countries chose to protect the natural world by enacting environmental national laws and rights of nature law as for instance India or Bangladesh which recognized rights to rivers and other ecosystems.

Ecological awareness, as well as political mobilization, led Ecuador to adopt a new Constitution in 2008 enshrining Rights of Nature and raising Nature to the condition of a subject of rights, a rights-holder. Nature is elevated as the same rank as human beings instead of being treated as their property. Rights of Nature aim at respecting nature as a subject of rights at the same level as any human being unlike environmental law which aims at protecting nature as an object.

Countries
In August 2012, a treaty agreement was signed between the Crown government of New Zealand and the Whanganui River iwi recognizing the Whanganui River as a legal entity, an "indivisible and living whole" with its own standing. The agreement recognizes the river and all its tributaries as a single entity and makes it a legal entity with rights and interests, and the owner of its own river bed. Two guardians, from each party, are given the role of protecting the river.
 * New Zealand

The national Te Awa Tupua Act was enacted in March 2017 to further formalize this status. The river became the first water system in the world to be recognized as a rights-bearing entity, holding legal "personhood" status.

Ecuador is the first country to recognize in its Constitution rights of Nature.
 * Ecuador

Rights of Nature are laid down by Article 71 of the 2008 Constitution which states in its first paragraph: "Nature of Pachamama, where life is reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution." Moreover, the Constitution lists several fundamental rights and considers in its Article 10(2) that "Nature is subject to those rights given by this Constitution and Law."

The Constitution of Ecuador recognizes two basic constitutional rights which are the respect of Nature, including the nature processes, as well as the right of Nature to be restored. However, the Constitution does not define the content of these rights. Since the ratification of the new Constitution in September 2008, many cases were brought before national courts in order to enforce the rights of Nature. However, the content of those rights is vague and often confused with environmental rights.

Drafters of the Constitution decided, through a provision, to give direct power to the people to enforce all constitutional rights before the Courts and not only rights of Nature. Thus, pursuant to Article 71(2) "every person, people, community or nationality" is able to ask for remedies in case of a violation of any constitutional rights. When damage is caused to an ecosystem by human activity, the people of Ecuador can file an action to attempt to stop the harm and restore the ecosystem. The cases filed by the plaintiffs are often combining enforcement of rights of nature with enforcement of environmental rights or indigenous collective rights. It explains why the boundaries between rights of Nature and environmental rights are not clear.

The first case heard by the Provincial Court of Loja, featured the Vilcabamba River as a plaintiff. The river itself was able to defend its own rights to exist and be sustained, as it sought to stop a government highway construction project that interfered with the river's natural flow. The court ordered the project stopped.