My dream is that UN member states put forward the call for a Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, and then the signatures from our petition back up that call from member states as the voice of civil society.

Pelizzon demonstrates that it is the currently developing ecological jurisprudence—which he depicts more as a spectrum of theoretical possibilities than a single, unified approach—that provides our current legal institutions an alternative framework for engaging with Nature. This spectrum is broad enough to include the advances for Nature made by classic environmental laws, the additional protections afforded to other species through Rights of Nature initiatives, and the activism that has grown up alongside ecological jurisprudence. 

This article reviews international, regional, and domestic human-rights based climate cases, as well as those Rights of Nature cases that implicate climate change. These two litigation strategies offer contrasting, yet complementary, visions of climate-related harm. While human rights cases have paved the way for the RoN movement in some ways, the tradition of human rights can also come into tension with the ecocentrism embodied in RoN, and it remains to be seen whether that tension will prove productive or inhibitory to the RoN movement over time.

Marí Luz Canaquiri Murayari, a Kukama leader from Perú’s Loreto region, has won the 2025 Goldman Environmental Prize, often referred to as the “Nobel Prize of environmentalism.” As president of the Federation of Kukama Indigenous Women — Huaynakana Kamatahuara Kana (HKK) — Canaquiri has spent decades defending her people, their culture, and the sacred Marañón River that sustains them. “It's incredible to receive this news—and even more so for the value accorded to us as women,” said Canaquiri in an interview with Earth Law Center (ELC).

There are more than 23 Rights of Nature cases in Brazil that have been approved or are currently underway. Brazil’s Rights of Nature (direitos da natureza) movement includes such highlights as the recent approval for the rights of the Linhares waves and of the Amazonian Komi Memen River. This new blog post begins with a brief look at the history of environmental protection in modern Brazil. It then examines the current cases and approvals of RoN in the country, as well as the potential for a constitutional amendment to codify the recognition of Nature’s rights in the country.

Using international law obligations for this work and for the defense of the environment and human rights is a big opportunity, and it has systematically helped in a lot of situations. I've seen not only Indigenous Peoples and communities but also governments using international law to strengthen their arguments to be able to advance the control, monitoring, and protection of the environment.

Safeguarding Amazonian Stingless Bees is an internationally recognized ongoing project. Begun in Peru in 2023, it is led by Amazon Research Internacional (ARI) working collaboratively with the Earth Law Center (ELC), Instituto de Investigaciones de la Amazonía Peruana (IIAP), Reserva Comunal EcoAsháninka, and the Kukama-Kukamiria Indigenous communities of Loreto. The project integrates scientific, traditional, and legal knowledge and includes adopting a Declaration of Rights for Native Stingless Bees, collecting data to help create technical standards and regulations to support stingless beekeeping, mapping an initial 150,000 hectares of the Amazon, and recognizing the crucial role of Indigenous Peoples' traditional knowledge in enhancing our understanding of stingless bee populations.

On November 20, 2024, Spain’s Constitutional Court issued a pivotal ruling upholding the constitutionality of Law 19/2022, which grants legal personhood to the Mar Menor lagoon and its surrounding basin. This decision—the first in the European Union to establish Rights of Nature at the constitutional level—is a historic milestone for Earth law in Europe.