Earth Law Chronicles

Led by Ocean Program Director Rachel Bustamante, Earth Law Center (ELC) recently released a report entitled “Advancing Ocean Justice in the Global Plastics Treaty.” You can find more information, including links to the full report and a related press release, on ELC’s Ocean Plastics webpage. In this blog post, we break down some key terms and concepts related to plastic pollution, the Global Plastics Treaty, and plastics justice, ending with ways that anyone can get involved in this critically important issue.

Earth Law Center (ELC) celebrates an important victory obtained for the Marañón River on March 18, 2024. The Kukama Indigenous women of Santa Rita de Castilla, and legal nonprofit Instituto de Defensa Legal (IDL), obtained a historic ruling recognizing the river as a holder of inherent rights—the first such ruling in Peru. With ELC’s Latin America Legal Program having supported the case since its inception, we are thrilled to see this development.

In this interfaith and multicultural fable, eloquent representatives of all members of the animal kingdom—from horses to bees—come before the respected Spirit King to complain of the dreadful treatment they have suffered at the hands of humankind. During the ensuing trial, where both humans and animals testify before the King, both sides argue their points ingeniously, deftly illustrating the validity of both sides of the ecology debate.

Earth Law Center is proud to announce joining the Ríos Protegidos initiative, a space that seeks to strengthen the protection of Chile’s rivers by applying existing tools, recognizing gaps and opportunities in river conservation and restoration, and promoting new legislation on protected and restored rivers. ELC’s Latin America Legal Program recently participated in a workshop to promote the conservation and permanent restoration of rivers in the Aysén region—a huge, sparsely populated area in southern Chile that is home to volcanoes, massive ice fields, and other natural wonders.

Since Earth law highlights our moral and sacred obligation to prevent species extinction and catastrophic ecosystem degradation, it places paramount importance on the fact that free-flowing rivers are essential for maintaining healthy ecosystems and biodiversity.

The Utah state legislature has in recent months been advancing anti-Rights of Nature legislation in the form of H.B. 249, which now awaits the governor’s signature. The bill, known as the “Utah Legal Personhood Amendments,” would explicitly prohibit state governmental entities from granting legal personhood to bodies of water, land, plants, nonhuman animals, and other categories—including artificial intelligence.

You may be surprised to learn that federally, and within the majority of states, the human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment is not an essential right afforded to the people. What can be done to change that?

A major court ruling on a case against Peruvian state oil company Petroperu, as well as the Regional Government of Loreto and other state entities, is expected in the coming weeks. It has the potential to establish the river as a rights-bearing entity, which would make it the next in a growing list of rivers in South America to have been recognized as having rights.

The town of Nederland, Colorado, located in the mountains west of Boulder, has appointed two guardians on behalf of Boulder Creek and its watershed, whose rights they previously recognized via town resolution. This move is being celebrated as the first time people have been appointed legal guardians for Nature within the U.S.