Rights of Nature: A Coming Bureaucratic Nightmare

Key Takeaways

Nature rights could turn routine development into endless litigation, threatening investment, jobs, and economic growth.

The “nature rights” movement would grant personhood and the “rights to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution” to geological features, ecological systems, flora and fauna, and indeed all that is.

Enforcement would be a nightmare. Most grant universal court standing — meaning that anyone who believes that nature’s rights are being violated can sue. Other proposals appoint commissions to determine whether proposed or past human endeavors violate nature’s rights.

About the Author

Wesley J. Smith

Wesley J. Smith is an author and a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism.

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Key Takeaways

Nature rights could turn routine development into endless litigation, threatening investment, jobs, and economic growth.
Technical environmental standards risk transferring consequential economic decisions from accountable lawmakers to specialist lawyers and bureaucrats.
Growing international support makes nature rights a pressing challenge to human-centered governance, not merely an academic curiosity.

The “nature rights” movement would grant personhood and the “rights to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution” to geological features, ecological systems, flora and fauna, and indeed all that is.

Enforcement would be a nightmare. Most grant universal court standing — meaning that anyone who believes that nature’s rights are being violated can sue. Other proposals appoint commissions to determine whether proposed or past human endeavors violate nature’s rights.