Rights of Nature or Wrongs to Nature? The Denial of Legal Personhood to Nature in the UK

By Charlotte Dent

In February 2024, a British government official told the United Nations (UN) that the United Kingdom (UK) would never give rights to Nature.

During a debate on preliminary negotiations for the UN Environment Assembly in Nairobi, the British delegate from the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (Defra) said, “The UK’s firm position is that rights can only be held by legal entities with a legal personality. We do not accept that rights can be applied to nature or Mother Earth. While we recognise that others do, it is a fundamental principle for the UK and one from which we cannot deviate.”

Defra’s statement is both misleading and ill-judged. It wrongly suggests that the category of bodies with a legal personality cannot be extended. In fact, there is nothing immutable about rights; legal personhood has developed over time to reflect societies’ understanding of who or what is deserving of rights under the law. 

The creation of modern Human Rights law gave all human beings legal subjecthood. Marginalized groups such as women, however, have historically been denied this right. In the UK, the common-law doctrine of “coverture,” brought over by the Norman Conquest in 1066, meant that married women could not enjoy legal personhood separate from their husbands. Coverture was not challenged until the Married Women Property Acts of the 1870s to 1890s, which changed the status of women from legal objects to subjects under the law.

Human beings are not the only legal entities with legal personalities recognized in the UK. Non-human entities, such as companies, have enjoyed personhood since 1844. In fact, ships were granted personhood in the nineteenth century even as they were transporting human cargo denied this right: slaves. 

Defra’s “firm position” that rights cannot be given to Nature thus falsely conceives of the law as a static entity bound by predetermined “fundamental principles.” On the contrary, the UK’s uncodified constitution gives lawmakers a great deal of flexibility to enact statutes that reflect the evolving understandings of who or what has intrinsic value and deserves rights.

Government stance runs counter to majority opinion, including King Charles’s support for “fundamental rights and value of Nature”

Defra’s statement is also ill-judged because it turns a blind eye to the fact that the UK’s current environmental laws are not working, a fact of which the British public is well aware. According to a YouGov poll from September 2022, 81% of UK adults believe Nature is under threat and that more needs to be done urgently to protect and restore it. Even the former Prince of Wales (now King Charles) has recognized “the fundamental rights and value of Nature” in the foreword to Terra Carta: For Nature, People, & Planet, his roadmap for sustainable business.

Defra’s opposition to granting Nature rights is not just flawed; it is materially concerning. This is because the UK’s current environmental laws are failing spectacularly. 

Under UK law, Nature is a legal object with a limited range of interests, which are afforded protections through statutes and by the regulatory agencies that enforce them. This system is inherently flawed and deeply unsuccessful. 

The statutes that were created to protect Nature have in actuality vested regulatory bodies with breathtaking authority and discretion to issue permits that allow the very harms that the laws were designed to prevent. Moreover, regulations are weakened by corporate interests, and subject to the changing priorities of governments. The problem has been compounded by government cutbacks, which have left the regulators unable adequately to prosecute polluters, who cause destruction without fear of legal consequences. 

One only has to glance at the state of the UK’s waterways to appreciate this alarming system failure in practice. The law only allows untreated sewage discharges in exceptional cases, such as during periods of unusually heavy rainfall. However, in 2022 there were 1.75 million hours of raw sewage discharges. This has left only 14% of rivers in England with a “good” ecological status, and none with a “good” chemical status. Despite the Environment Agency’s reports decrying the pollution in rivers as “shocking” and “unacceptable,” there have only been an average of seven prosecutions a year between 2015 and 2021. 

A September 2023 investigation conducted by the Office for Environmental Protection into sewage overflows suggested the UK government, the Environment Agency, and the Water Services Regulation Authority loosely interpret the law that limits dumping. These regulatory bodies are therefore complicit in the water companies’ pollution. Unsurprisingly, the report also condemns Defra for failing in its duty to make enforcement orders against non-compliant sewage companies.

The problem is underpinned by the privatization of the water companies. England is one of only two countries in the world to fully privatize water. The result is that water is treated as a product with instrumental value, sold by companies beholden to investors, who pay out profits to shareholders instead of reinvesting in better infrastructure to limit damage. Over the three decades in which water has been privatized, the nine main water and sewage companies have run up net debts of almost £54bn and paid out dividends of £65.9bn, while overseeing a lack of investment. 

The fate of the UK’s waterways points to the greater truth that statutes protect corporate interests over the protection of Nature, and treat our most vital natural resources as assets to be traded and squandered for financial gain.

The current system of environmental law in the UK is a monumental failure. Rather than organizing an emergency response to an existential climate threat, regulations and regulators protect the interests of industries that rely on the destruction of Nature for their business, bringing the ecosystems to the edge of the climate precipice. The UK’s “protective” laws now serve as the rope to which it grips as it walks the plank toward destruction.

The system failure demonstrates that the UK needs a new approach to the protection of nature. As long as it is a legal object, afforded lackluster protections so it can be exploited for human gain, the natural world will not be safe. It is time to afford Nature rights through legal selfhood so that it can protect itself against harms. 

Toward Rights of Nature in the UK

Photo credit: Sam LeGrys

The Rights of Nature movement aims to bestow fundamental rights and safeguards upon ecosystems and natural entities within the environmental sphere. It encompasses a range of principles, from advocating for the right of natural entities to flourish to seeking formal recognition of Nature as a legal entity in its own right. This stands in contrast to the current paradigm wherein ecosystems are typically viewed as human property or resources devoid of their own rights or autonomy.

The Rights of Nature movement seeks to address the underlying causes of ecological decline—particularly the widespread commodification of nature. While traditional environmental laws are frequently reactive, intervening only when a species or ecosystem is on the brink of collapse (such as with endangered species legislation), giving nature legal personhood recognizes its right to exist, thrive, and regenerate. Such legal recognition enables the defense of the environment in judicial settings—not solely for human benefit, but also for the intrinsic value of Nature itself.

When Nature, or a part of it (such as a river, forest, or species) is declared a “subject of rights,” it has the right to legal representation by a guardian—much like a charitable trust designates a trustee—who will act on its behalf and in its best interest. This guardian is typically an individual or a group of individuals well-versed in the care and management of the ecosystem. This gives Nature a voice through a legal representative that can protect its interests. 

Rights of Nature is not just a concept, it is also enshrined in law in some countries and communities, such as Ecuador, where it has been part of the constitution since 2008. In Ecuador, the Constitutional Court to date has found that rights exist for forests, mangroves, beaches, and a wild monkey in captivity. Other countries, such as New Zealand, Columbia, and most recently, Peru, have granted rights to rivers under the law.

Establishing legal rights for Nature will help us transform the legal system into one that can be used to protect and improve ecology. Adopting this legal framework will move us toward a system wherein Nature is valued and protected for its own sake, and can protect and defend itself, rather than relying on limited statutory protections enforced by toothless regulators. Contrary to Defra’s assertion, giving Nature rights under the law is surely our best chance of securing its enduring protection.