The rights of nature, legal personhood & other new ways laws can protect the planet
Release Date: 09/03/2024
Mongabay Newscast
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Neil Vora MD is a former epidemic intelligence service officer with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) with experience combating outbreaks of the deadly Ebola virus and running the New York City contact tracing program for COVID-19. He advocates supporting public health infrastructure to respond to diseases. He much prefers preventing outbreaks before they occur instead of rushing to respond to them, though, and the best way to do this, he says, is by investing in nature. On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, Vora shares his knowledge of why the “spillover” of ...
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The Mongabay Newscast recently traveled to San Francisco to join an event hosted by the popular radio show and podcast, , reflecting on both Mongabay’s 25th anniversary and Jane Goodall’s 90th birthday, for a live audience of 1,700. First, Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett Ayers Butler discusses the news outlet’s biggest successes and impact over a quarter of a century, and then Climate One founder and host Greg Dalton engages Butler and Goodall in conversation about the state of environmental news, the biggest issues they’re working on, their inspirations, and what Goodall wants...
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Drylands are vast and home to a wide array of biodiversity, while also hosting a large portion of the world’s farmland, but they face continued desertification, despite many of them recently experiencing increased vegetation levels. Five million hectares (12 million acres) of drylands, an area half the size of South Korea, have been desertified due to climate change since 1980, but elevated CO2 levels are also driving a regreening of some areas, which some argue is a positive effect of pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. However, our guest on this episode says this isn’t necessarily good...
info_outline“Legal personhood” and laws regarding the “rights of nature” are being trialed in nations worldwide, but whether they lead to measurable conservation outcomes is yet to be seen, says environmental economist Viktoria Kahui. Still, she says on this episode of the Mongabay Newscast that she’s very hopeful about them.
There’s a global debate surrounding these laws’ efficacy as a tool for conservation, and growing uneasiness about how they may impose a Western viewpoint upon something as inherently complex and extralegal as nature. Some critics argue that such a concept not only transcends the legal system but also cannot be subjected to it without harming the people and places these laws are intended to empower.
Yet Kahui argues that there’s potential for rights-of-nature laws to develop in context-dependent scenarios, where humans can advocate on behalf of nature in places like Ecuador, which she says is a particularly powerful example.
Read more about legal personhood and the rights of nature here:
Is ‘legal personhood’ a tool or a distraction for Māori relationships with nature?
New guidebook supports U.S. tribal nations in adopting rights-of-nature laws
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Image Credit: Blue water of the Quinault river, Olympic Rainforest. Image by Rhett Butler.
Time Codes
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(00:00) Introduction
(00:58) The global debate on rights of nature
(03:52) Can these laws protect biodiversity?
(07:58) Challenges for legal personhood
(14:10) The advantage of using rights of nature
(24:21) Philosophical qualms with anthropocentric laws
(28:55) How laws can shape our relationships with nature
(33:00) The 'big possibility'
(40:56) There's no silver bullet
(44:01) Credits