Learning Session 1: Rights of Nature & Earth Law
Online learning sessions using dialogue to explore the workings, developments, (im)possibilities, and emerging insights of diverse approaches and praxes for Co-creation with the More-than-Human world
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In March 2025, we launched the Co-creation with the More-than-Human sandbox with a learning session on Rights of Nature & Earth Law together with Elizabeth Dunne from the Earth Law Center.
The session explored how legal systems can begin to recognize ecosystems as rights-bearing entities, and what shifts when nature is no longer treated as property but as a subject with standing. Through presentation and dialogue, we examined both the practical applications of Rights of Nature and the deeper implications this has for how we relate to the more-than-human world.
What follows is a synthesis of key questions, insights, and emerging patterns from that conversation.
🌿 Learning Session 1 (March 2025) — Synthesis
Rights of Nature & Earth Law with Elizabeth Dunne (Earth Law Center)
1. What does it actually mean to give nature rights?
Legal and relational shift:
Giving rights to nature is not merely symbolic; it introduces a legal reconfiguration of relationships in which nature is no longer treated as property, but as an entity with standing within the system itself.
Change in status:
This shift means that ecosystems are no longer positioned as objects to be owned or managed, but as subjects that can, through guardians, participate in legal processes and be represented in court.
System boundary shift:
As a result, the boundaries of the legal system itself begin to expand, redefining who or what is recognized as a legitimate participant.
🌱 Seed:
Rights of Nature is less about protecting nature more effectively, and more about redefining who (or what) counts within the legal system.
2. How is this different from environmental law?
Different starting point:
Environmental law typically operates by regulating harm, asking how much damage can be permitted within existing systems and under what conditions.
Alternative baseline:
Rights of Nature, by contrast, begins from the premise that ecosystems have inherent rights to exist, to regenerate, and to continue evolving.
Shift in orientation:
This changes the legal logic: instead of asking how much harm is permissible, it asks what conditions are necessary for an ecosystem to exist, regenerate, and evolve. It reorients decision-making away from limiting degradation and toward enabling the conditions under which life can continue to flourish.
🌱 Seed:
Where environmental law manages acceptable harm, Rights of Nature reframes the question toward what it takes for life to thrive.
3. Who speaks for nature?
Necessity of representation:
For nature to enter legal systems, some form of representation is required, which immediately raises practical and ethical questions. Guardianship models assign individuals or groups to represent ecosystems in legal and governance processes.
Diversity of approaches:
In practice, this representation takes different forms, including Indigenous guardianship, community-based representation, and legally appointed guardians.
Indigenous guardianship
Community-based representation
Legally appointed guardians
Persistent tension:
Even when carefully designed, these models do not fully resolve the underlying issue, as the act of representing nature can still reproduce human authority over what is expressed. Although representation can make rights actionable, it also raises questions about legitimacy, interpretation, and accountability.
⚠️ Tension:
The challenge is not only to give nature a voice, but to ensure that this voice is not subtly shaped or constrained by human agendas.
4. Can legal systems really hold non-human perspectives?
Structural limitation:
Legal systems are historically and structurally anthropocentric, which limits their ability to fully accommodate non-human perspectives.
Capacity for evolution:
At the same time, they are not fixed systems; they can be stretched, adapted, and reinterpreted over time.
Mode of change:
Rights of Nature operates through this adaptability, working within existing legal frameworks while gradually shifting their underlying assumptions.
🌱 Seed:
This is less a legal rupture than a process of evolving the system from within.
5. Where is this already happening?
Existing practice:
Rights of Nature has been implemented in diverse contexts—from constitutional recognition to local ordinances and specific legal cases. Outcomes vary widely depending on political, cultural, and legal conditions.
Implementation gap:
Success often depends less on the legal text itself and more on the surrounding ecosystem of enforcement, advocacy, and institutional support. Existing cases consistently reveal a gap between recognition and enforcement, with legal acknowledgment often preceding the capacity or willingness to uphold those rights.
📌 Implication:
The effectiveness of Rights of Nature should be assessed not only by formal recognition, but by the extent to which those rights are actively enforced. A right on paper does not act on its own, but depends on the networks of people, institutions, and practices that bring it to life.
6. What role do Indigenous worldviews play?
Foundational influence:
Many Rights of Nature frameworks draw from Indigenous cosmologies in which humans are understood as part of an interconnected web of life rather than as separate from it.
Risk of misalignment:
When these perspectives are translated into Western legal systems, there is a risk that they are adopted at the level of language without corresponding shifts in governance or authority.
Condition for integrity:
The approach becomes significantly more meaningful when it involves an actual redistribution of power, rather than remaining at the level of conceptual inspiration.
⚠️ Risk:
Without this shift, the use of Indigenous concepts can result in appropriation rather than transformation.
7. Is this scalable—or inherently local?
Place-based emergence:
Most Rights of Nature initiatives arise from specific ecological, cultural, and political contexts, making them deeply rooted in place.
Limits of replication:
Because of this, they do not scale easily as standardized models that can be replicated across contexts.
Pattern-based spread:
Instead, what travels is a pattern of thinking and practice that is adapted and reinterpreted in each new setting.
🌱 Seed:
Rights of Nature spreads through contextual adaptation rather than replication.
8. What changes in practice when nature has rights?
Shift in decision criteria:
Recognizing nature as a rights-bearing entity introduces ecological wellbeing as a legitimate and actionable consideration alongside economic factors.
New forms of leverage:
This creates additional legal grounds for communities to challenge extractive activities, not only in terms of human impact but also in terms of harm to ecosystems themselves.
Broader system effect:
Over time, this changes what counts as a valid argument within decision-making processes.
📌 Practitioner takeaway:
Rights of Nature expands the field of legitimate claims, making ecological arguments structurally harder to ignore.
9. What are the limitations?
System dependency:
Legal recognition on its own does not transform underlying economic or political systems, and remains dependent on broader shifts to be effective. Despite its promise, Rights of Nature faces real barriers, including conflicts with existing property regimes and enforcement gaps.
Institutional inertia:
Existing legal and political systems can be slow to adapt, often resisting changes that challenge entrenched economic and governance structures.
Bridging principle and practice:
Turning abstract rights into actionable decisions also requires new tools, processes, and institutional capacities that are still evolving.
Risk of absorption:
Without these shifts, Rights of Nature can be integrated into existing structures without altering their core dynamics. This leads to symbolic adoption without substantive change—where rights are recognized but not meaningfully upheld.
⚠️ Key risks that emerge:
Tokenism, where rights exist formally but do not influence outcomes
Weak or inconsistent enforcement across contexts
Co-option by existing power structures
🌱 Seed:
Rights on paper do not guarantee change—what matters is how they are enacted, defended, and embedded in practice.
10. What does this mean for co-creation with the more-than-human?
Formal entry point:
Rights of Nature creates a formal recognition of relationship within legal systems, opening new pathways for engagement.
Limits of formalization:
However, legal recognition does not automatically lead to practices of attentiveness, reciprocity, or meaningful engagement with the more-than-human.
Ongoing practice:
Co-creation requires forms of listening and relating that extend beyond what legal frameworks can define or enforce.
📌 Practitioner takeaway:
Law can create the conditions for relationship, but it cannot substitute for the ongoing work of being in relationship.
Cross-cutting insight threads
Across the session, several deeper shifts become visible.
Object → Subject
There is a movement from understanding nature as an object to recognizing it as a subject, which fundamentally alters how it is positioned within human systems.
Management → Relationship
A shift becomes visible from managing nature toward relating with it, where control begins to give way—at least conceptually—to reciprocity and responsibility.
Harm reduction → Regeneration
The focus expands from minimizing damage to enabling the conditions under which ecosystems can actively thrive and regenerate.
Representation → Listening (unresolved)
Running through all of this is an unresolved tension: while legal systems can create mechanisms to represent nature, the question of how to truly listen to the more-than-human world remains open.
Closing
These sessions are not designed to arrive at fixed answers, but to surface how different approaches work in practice. Each conversation reveals not only how and where they hold, but also the tensions and questions that remain unresolved - and that continue to invite further inquiry.
Over time, these syntheses form a growing body of insights into what co-creation with the more-than-human world might require, across context and practices.
The Co-creation with the More-than-Human sandbox is a collaboration between The Repatterning Collective and Kincentric Leadership.
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