Should trees have standing? This question was posed by legal scholar Christopher Stone in 1972, first as an article and later developed into a book of the same title, which inspired a global movement for the rights of nature. This prompt poses a profound shift from the dominant framework of humans over nature to the idea that nature has intrinsic rights in and of itself. That same year, Stone’s ideas were considered in the Sierra Club versus Morton case in the United States over the development of a forested mountainside area in California. Although the case was ultimately unsuccessful—the concept of Rights of Nature was still in its infancy and without legal precedent—it planted the seed for the idea that nature itself could hold legal rights.

Importantly, Stone’s philosophical legal questioning inspired Justice William O. Douglas, who, after the case, wrote a famous dissent arguing that natural entities should have the legal right to sue for their protection. These efforts lit the embers for the growing movement of Rights of Nature, as people began to realise that granting rights to nature was not so far-fetched but a reasonable step to address environmental destruction. 

Changing the worldview and legal systems is not an easy task. Despite interest, it took time for Rights of Nature to take hold. Finally, in 2006, Tamaqua Burrow (a small township outside of Philadelphia) set a precedent as the first municipality to pass a rights of nature ordinance, banning the dumping of toxic sludge into its watershed. Then, in 2008, there was the landmark win of the inclusion of Rights of Nature in the constitution of Ecuador, the first country in the world to incorporate do so. Article 71 states: ‘Nature or 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. Every person, people, community or nationality, will be able to demand the recognition of rights for nature before the public.’ This type of ‘public standing’ interpretation of Rights of Nature means that any citizen can bring a case of Rights of Nature to the court if they are being infringed upon. Soon after, in December 2010, Bolivia enacted the law on Rights of Mother Earth, adding greater solidity to the movement.

Currently, 697 laws, policies, and legal cases have been attempted under the umbrella of eco-jurisprudence in 66 countries worldwide, according to the Eco Jurisprudence Monitor, a global consortium of researchers, practitioners, and institutions that support Earth Law. Aside from the ‘public standing model’, other ways Rights of Nature are being implemented include ‘guardianship models’ where a person or group of people are given stewardship responsibilities to protect a natural entity—as in the case with Maori guardianship granted to the Wanganui River in New Zealand in 2017. Another model is through restoration mandates, as seen in the 2011 case for the Vilcabamba River in Ecuador and in the recent ones in Europe, granting Rights of Nature to Mar Menor in Spain in 2022, and for the protection of the Venetian Lagoon in 2025, to protect the lagoon against pollution and agro-industrial use. Despite the critical importance of nature and biodiversity for Nepal’s identity, wellbeing, and livelihoods, to date, there are no cases for Rights of Nature in Nepal. 

If Nepal were to decide to enact frameworks of Rights of Nature, what could this look like? Could the monal bird and the Himalayan yew tree be enshrined with their own rights? How about rights for endemic species like the Nepal meadow blue butterfly, the Nepalese mountain vole, the Himalayan field mouse, or other charismatic keystone species like the snow leopard, Bengal tiger, and one-horned rhinos? Could they be given their own right to thrive and exist as they have for millennia? Rights of Nature is a way to honour both the tangible and intangible heritage, culture, and relationships between people and the environments that sustain them—acknowledging that our place on the planet as humans depends on our peaceful co-existence within the balance of earth. 

Rights of Nature is a visionary worldview that allows nature to be protected for its own sake. Although we currently have environmental laws, the critique is that they operate from a premise that continues the exploitation, commodification and the commercialisation of nature. Environmental law, as practised, operates from an anthropocentric worldview in which human concerns dominate. When laws, policy, and public consciousness are framed through dominance, development regularly wins out over the considerations of nature. As the line from the famous Joni Mitchell song goes, ‘They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.’ Rights of Nature operates from an eco-centric worldview where the human role is to act as stewards of nature and biodiversity, to realise that we exist with and because of everything else in the natural world around us. There is a false assumption in the modern worldview that we operate ‘outside of nature’, but try to close yourself off from nature even for a few seconds and you realise that the oxygen you breathe comes from some of the smallest members of our web of life such as the phytoplankton in the ocean and the forests. We cannot go more than a few minutes without inputs from nature that are the result of a highly complex web of life that we—despite all our modern technical prowess— are far from ever being able to replicate. As such, Rights of Nature is a way to honour this complexity with humility, respect and reciprocity, rather than the arrogance and dominance that have been the downfall of environmental health worldwide. 

The progression of ‘rights-based’ frameworks has evolved through rights to be free from slavery, rights of women, human rights, and now the Rights of Nature. Proponents of rights of nature envision the framework as a new way to instil an ethos of respect and the protection of nature. Rights of Nature opens up a paradigm shift in the relationships between humans and the natural world, allowing us to coexist for generations to come. When we see elephants in Chitwan eating garbage; endangered river dolphins in the Karnali, Geruwa, Koshi, and Narayani rivers getting entangled; or biodiverse forests getting chopped down only for a short-lived profit, a healthy response includes feelings of care, concern, and wanting to do something not just to solve the immediate harm but to enact structures that will also prevent harm in the future. Although being hailed for biodiversity, Nepal could go further to reduce human-wildlife conflict, and human-ecosystem conflict, and Rights of Nature is one potential next step.

In 1968, at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, Senegalese forestry engineer Baba Dioum shared a sentiment echoed by Jacques Cousteau, Jane Goodall, and many other environmental activists: ‘In the end, we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand; and we will understand only what we are taught.’ Rights of Nature opens the door for understanding, relating to, and engaging with the world through a new paradigm—one that is not currently taught in our schools, embedded in our companies, or reflected in our courts—but could transform these institutions if we choose to take our obligations to current and future generations seriously.