Emerging Education Initiatives In Earth Law

Photo by Iñaki del Olmo on Unsplash

By: Whitney Richardson

Introduction from Earth Law Center

This is the first post in Earth Law Center’s education series. Each post in the series will focus on educational initiatives that the Earth Law Center has created or promotes to benefit the public intellectual conversation around rights of nature initiatives. In this blog post, Earth Law Center contributor Whitney Richardson speaks about her personal experience studying Earth Law as a graduate student, as well as two new Earth Law educational initiatives, an Earth Law master’s program in Ecuador and the Earth Law Center’s first ever Earth Law textbook. The next post in the series will cover Earth Law Society, a membership based program founded by the Earth Law Center that will host debate panels and guest speakers at colleges and universities.

EARTH LAW Advocacy & Education

Advocacy and education work in tandem. The philosophy underlying Earth law far predates its adoption into law and informs lawyers and advocates who translate them into the legal context. The next natural step in the evolution of the Earth law movement is to formalize educational programs as a means to further develop it. Education programs can tell us where Earth law has come from and why, as well as where it’s been and is going.

Education brought me to ELC in the first place. I discovered Earth law as a Master of Science student in International Environmental Studies at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. When discussing the intentions behind the term “ecosystem services,” I asked my professor if there was already a corresponding framework to communicate our responsibility to provide services to the Earth in return. He then directed me to the growing legal movement to recognize Nature’s rights to life.

This movement helps to formally consecrate our responsibility toward Earth; it does so by legally recognizing Earth’s intrinsic rights to exist and evolve. I learned that this rights-based legal framework protects and defends Nature for its intrinsic value and ensures harms done to Nature are considered by law.

From that day forward, I have centered my studies around this interest in emerging Earth law frameworks. I was drawn to this movement because it is value-driven – not in terms of economic value but, rather, in principles, ethics, and an innate desire to defend what matters most. Earth law recognizes the undeniable reality that human life has emerged from other life on Earth, and that it is our responsibility as humans to protect it.  By re-centering Nature’s intrinsic value in legal frameworks, we can begin to level the playing field against short-sighted profit interests that are harmful to human and non-human communities at large.

Earth law has been encoded in indigenous laws for millennia. A relatively recent codification of the law and the principles it contains can be found in Thomas Berry’s theory of ‘Earth Jurisprudence’ which argues that humans are a part of a larger ecosystem, wherein our welfare is dependent on the welfare of the earth as a whole.

One of the earliest practical applications of the law can be traced back to 2006 when Tamaqua Borough, Pennsylvania became the first U.S. municipality to adopt a local ordinance recognizing the rights of nature to exist in response to concerns over industrial toxic dumping in their community.  As momentum for Earth rights movements continues to build worldwide, educational initiatives that seek to develop knowledge of the movement continue to build as well.

In the year 2020, two major developments in Earth law education will hit the world stage -- an Earth rights-focused Master’s program that will begin in Quito, Ecuador and the release of the first Earth Law textbook.

Chimborazo, Ecuador; Photo by Fernando Tapia on Unsplash

OP-TIN Launches First Earth Law Master’s Program, Ecuador

For those familiar with Earth rights history, you may know that Latin America has paved the way for the development of Earth law worldwide. In 2008 and 2009, Ecuador and Bolivia became the first two countries to recognize Earth law, by placing the Rights of Mother Earth directly into their constitution and natio collaborative effort by 8 partner universities engaged in OPT-IN (The Intercultural Transnational law, respectively Shortly after, Bolivia pioneered a proposal to the UN to formally adopt a charter recognizing the rights of Mother Earth on a global scale.

Latin America continues to pave the way, as it prepares to host the first Earth law Master’s program – Interculturalidad, Paz y Derechos de la Naturaleza [Interculturalism, Peace and Rights of Nature] – at the Universidad Andina Simon Bolivar in Quito, Ecuador. The program will be led in Spanish, and the first cohort begins in October 2020.

The program is a product of an international, ational Operators Project). The mission of engaged universities is to defend Nature and build peace, by promoting cross-cultural exchange across academies and protecting diversity in its multiple expressions.

This year, I was able to travel to Colombia to investigate the emerging Earth law frameworks in the country. I had heard Adriana Rodriguez, Program Director of the forthcoming Master’s, present on a panel at the Foro Internacional de los Derechos por la Madre Tierra [International Forum of the Rights for Mother Earth] (read more about the conference here). In the panel, she discussed interculturalism, or the importance of cross-cultural dialogues, as a central component to Earth rights law.

Over coffee and fruit-drenched waffles one late afternoon, Adriana told me all about the program. I listened with delight, and I am excited to report what I learned from her. First, the basics: in 2017, Europe’s Erasmus network funded the development of the Master’s program. Ecuador was chosen as the host site, for being the first country to include Earth rights in the constitution. The Master’s invites participation from both lawyers and non-lawyers, by offering sociopolitical perspectives and context on public policy and litigative/legislative strategy.

The program serves a dual purpose in the context of Earth law in Latin America. First, it provides a much-needed platform to navigate juristic pluralism and strategies for intercultural cooperation in defense of Earth systems. Second, it recognizes the link between defense of Nature and defense of territory. Across Latin America, profit-driven extractivist models have spurred violence and conflict, causing grave harm to both humans and Nature.

In early September 2019, OP-TIN hosted two simultaneous 3-day-long seminars with course contents presented by participating professors from the forthcoming Master’s program. (Check out the link to the 3-day seminars to get a taste of what the Master’s program offerings will include.)

I sincerely hope those of you who are Spanish-speaking and Spanish-speaking hopefuls share information about the program with interested friends. It is open to students and professionals from a variety of backgrounds. Like many Master’s, the program will take place over a 2-year period and will admit up to 30 students per year. Admission to the program follows typical admission procedure to the host university.

ELC Advancing Earth Law Education, USA and Beyond

Earth Law Center drives Earth law education through a significant number of avenues.

First, ELC created mock trials for high school students centered on Earth law. These serve multiple purposes. Students become more familiar with Earth law and the American legal system’s structure and trials procedure. Students learn about Earth law in an applied sense and, in the process, practice vital communication skills – such as working effectively in teams and public speaking.  Also, mock trials provide insight into career pathways, inviting interest in the professional field of Earth law. Mock trials have taken place near ELC’s old home base in Brooklyn, NY, USA, with the Brooklyn College Community Partnership.

Secondly, ELC designed and has offered the ‘Earth Law’ course with Vermont Law School for the last 6 years; designed specifically for students engaged or interested in environmental law. Students learn how to discuss Earth Law, how to change the anthropocentric language of existing law to that which is ecocentric, the successes and challenges of the movement, and varying advocacy strategies and techniques to advance Earth law. Ocean Rights Manager at ELC, Michelle Bender took the class 5 years ago while at Vermont, and speaks highly of the experience. As a companion program to the Earth Law course, ELC also offers Earth Law Clubs as law schools – many of which have seen a spike in recruits as of late.

As Michelle Bender relays her experience, “I was taking all these classes on United States environmental law, and I was thinking that we just needed to better implement these laws. But the Earth Law course opened my eyes. I realized pushing for more implementation will not do the trick, the laws are flawed and not designed to have the Environment’s interests in mind. Not only did the course change how I thought about law, but it offered hands on practice in pushing for this paradigm shift. At the end of the course we had a project to participate in a mock community meeting on the Delta Tunnels in California. My group were fishermen advocating against the tunnels, and we decided to have one of our team members present as a coho salmon, and speak on behalf of the salmon. It seemed almost comical at the time-- but now that I am doing work to save the Southern Resident Orca’s in WA, I am consistently speaking on behalf of the salmon and Orcas and being their voice. It really comes full circle.”

ELC’s legal education initiatives continue to develop. Late this year, ELC will launch an Earth Law Society, similar in form to a Federalist Society. The Earth Law Society will advocate for an interpretation of the U.S. legal system aligned with Earth Jurisprudence. Subscribe to ELC’s newsletter and find out how to join the Earth Law Society when it launches.

Stowe, Vermont; Photo by Clay Kaufmann on Unsplash

First Earth Law Textbook

Inspired by the aforementioned efforts, Earth Law Center is getting set to launch the first ever textbook on Earth law with Wolters Kluwer in 2020! The textbook is geared toward law schools and universities across the US, but contains a wealth of knowledge for any audience regarding the Earth law movement globally.

As a basis, the textbook will review centuries of United States case law, legal precedents, and comparable legal components of Earth law, such as legal guardianship. It will review legal arguments to assign rights to Nature, including the rights of animals. It will also include arguments for the International Criminal Court of Justice to adopt ecocide law, and arguments for the rights of future generations (also known as intergenerational rights, or intergenerational justice). It  will also present case studies demonstrating the contemporary development of Earth law and Earth jurisprudence around the world.

From a conceptual standpoint, the textbook emphasizes an essential perspective shift – that Earth makes life possible, and that humans and Nature are interdependent. It is with this understanding that legal systems are to recognize the rights of Nature to exist, thrive and evolve. This legal transformation is seen as necessary to address growing environmental crises such as climate change.

Subscribe to ELC’s newsletter to get a pre-order link when it’s available!

Want ELC to participate in your education initiative? ELC regularly participates in speaking events at law schools and universities. Contact us (info@earthlaw.org) to schedule something.