LONG-SUFFERING LAKE ERIE GAINS PERSONHOOD RIGHTS

Just a quick link to a lovely piece of news from Toledo, Ohio. After decades of watching the waters of Lake Erie become more polluted, and after a series of devastating toxic algae blooms, the citizens of Toledo overwhelmingly voted for the Lake Erie Bill of Rights. The new law grants Lake Erie many of the legal rights of a person or corporation, and allows citizens or the city to act as the lake's legal guardians, and sue or take other legal actions to protect it.

Lake Erie toxic algae bloom

Credit: NASA/Landsat

The city of Toledo joins a small but growing growing number of governments that have granted personhood rights to natural features such as lakes and rivers. You can read a previous blog post about similar actions in New Zealand, India and Columbia here.

And you can read about an effort by a group of philosophers and scientists to draft a declaration on the rights of water. You read that correctly; not only the right of people to have access to water, but the rights of water itself.

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For other local legal action against unchecked pollution, check out this news from Exeter, NH.

And for an entire nation--Sweden--getting ready to give nature constitutional rights, click here.

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NEW ZEALAND'S ANSWER TO CITIZENS UNITED--GRANTING PERSONHOOD TO A RIVER

In January, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that corporations have the same constitutionally guaranteed free-speech rights as actual human beings. That infamous Citizens United ruling unleashed torrents of money that have distorted the electoral process and has given corporations and wealthy individuals even more control over U.S. politics. It certainly was influential in giving us President Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress.

In March, 2017, New Zealand took a very different step. Its parliament passed the Te Awa Tupua or Whanganui River Claims Settlement bill, which granted the Whanganui River legal personhood--the first time in the history of the world that this has been done. Chris Finlayson, the government official who helped negotiate the new law, announced that the river now has " . . . all the corresponding rights, duties and liabilities of a legal person."

In effect, the river now owns itself. It has innate rights and intrinsic value, and, through the people who have traditionally lived along it and relied on it for their livelihood, the Whanganui Iwi Maori, it can defend those rights in court.

The Whanganui River on the North Island of New Zealand
It runs for 180 miles from Mount Tongariro to the Tasman Sea

Credit: James Shook/Wikimedia

Within a week, a high court in northern India granted similar legal personhood to two rivers, the Ganga and the Yumana.

The Ganga River flowing through the Himalayas
Credit: Asdelhi95/Creative Commons

Just as we could not foresee all of he implications and ramifications of the Citizens United decision, we don't know what impacts granting human status and rights to rivers or other parts of nature will have. However, we can hope that this is just the start of a worldwide movement, and that not only rivers, but wetlands, forests, mountains, seashores, lakes, seas, the ocean, the atmosphere, or perhaps even Earth herself will gain personhood and legal rights.

This may be the first sign of a much-needed radical change in our relationship with nature. Now (6/3/17) a third country--Colombia--has granted similar rights to a river, in this case the Atrato River, which has long been a toxic dump for illegal mining wastes.

2/28/19:  The city of Toledo Ohio has just passed legislation giving long-suffering Lake Erie personhood rights, and allowing individuals, organizations or the city to sue or take other legal actions on its behalf. You can read about it here.

And a lawsuit has been filed in Federal District Court in Colorado to recognize the Colorado River and its ecosystem as a person.

Maybe Mother Nature will soon be more than a figure of speech, but instead an actual being with legal standing and guaranteed rights. I don't think that many corporations will like that--especially those that rely on wealth extracted from nature or benefit from dumping waste products back into nature--but at least Earth will be able to fight back on a level playing field.

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