Frequently Asked Questions
What does ecocentric mean?
Language so shapes our world, that we often don’t even realize it. When we speak about our fellow species or natural ecosystems as property, it creates the kind of imbalance that we see today.
An ecocentric approach encompasses an increasingly diverse range of legal protections for nature and our fellow species. These include: Rights of Nature, ocean kinship, indigenous guardianship models, and animal rights governance, among others.
How is Earth Law connected to current environmental legislation?
Current environmental legislation has made great strides in banning the most toxic chemicals, protecting Nature and reducing pollution. However, increasingly urgent signs, such as climate change and COVID-19, are telling us that this progress isn’t enough. It’s time for the next evolution of the law. This is the area where Earth Law Center is squarely focused.
Legal systems have always evolved, as evidenced by abolition, suffrage, and marriage equality. They reflect growing awareness, shifting norms and a shared commitment to justice and fairness.
Earth Law represents the next evolution of environmental law. Rather than seeking to enforce current laws, Earth Law instead focuses on creating a body of new law from an ecocentric view of Nature. Earth Law moves away from sustainable damage to restoring ecosystem regeneration and balance, from property to fellow species.
Will Earth Law damage the economy?
Fisheries are collapsing, forests shrinking, soils eroding, rangelands deteriorating, water tables falling, sea levels rising, glaciers melting, and species disappearing. The economy cannot survive without an environment to support it.
Earth Law seeks to restore balance by ensuring that our economy supports the overall health of the planet and all living beings who call Earth home, rather than ecosystems being a subset of the economy.
How will Earth Law impact the world’s other problems?
Earth Law connects with an ancient worldview that recognizes humans and nature as belonging to an interdependent global community. In Ecuador, the Quechua know this worldview as "sumak kawsay." Sumak kawsay inspired the 2008 revised Ecuadorian constitution, which reads: "We ... hereby decide to build a new form of public coexistence, in diversity and in harmony with nature, to achieve the good way of living."
Earth Law represents a fundamental and systemic change to our current legal system. Under Earth Law every member of the global community, human and non-human, has inherent rights. This represents the next evolution of legal protection for Nature.
Legal change is always so slow, will Earth Law arrive soon enough to help the planet?
Earth Law Center aims to catalyze a global movement to rebalance the human-Nature relationship. Technology enables and accelerates the mass mobilization of an ecocentric conversation.
All of us acting in concert can effect changes fast enough to address the environmental challenges of our day. Norms are already shifting, from the rise of veganism/ plant-based eating to initiatives around the world to reduce water consumption, minimize plastic use/ waste, or simply to buy less. Together, we can accelerate the rebalancing of the human-Nature relationship.
Will Earth Law put human rights at risk?
With Earth Law in place, there will be times when Nature’s rights conflict with other rights, including human rights. The legal system has experience of resolving such problems because rights conflict happens all the time.
The first step is to eliminate fake conflicts by asking if both sets of rights are supportable. A river may be able to supply a human population while retaining enough water for adequate flow. We can also ask if the conflict is real. In some cases desires, such as verdant golf courses, are confused with rights.
The second step is to balance conflicted rights. With genuine conflict, the custom is to compromise, putting minimal restrictions on both sets of rights. This happens in human rights conflicts, with governing bodies deciding how to treat all parties fairly. Under Earth Law, when balancing the rights of people and nature, part of treating people fairly will be remembering that they need the environment in order to live.
Nature’s rights benefit human rights. Where the environment is harmed, people suffer from disease, violence, and land loss. ELC has published two reports highlighting the deep connection between nature’s rights violations and human rights violations.
HOW CAN EARTH LAW BE ENFORCED?
People must enforce nature’s rights. Governments and active citizens detect threats and bring issues to court. Guardianship bodies also have a role. For the Whanganui River in New Zealand, for example, the court has appointed guardians who have a responsibility to protect the River and act as its voice.*
Management boards comprised of court-appointed specialists can ensure that activities or proposed projects do not violate nature’s rights. These boards aim for a holistic approach, weighing the costs and benefits to all affected parties and basing decisions on what is best for the whole.
Enforcement will become easier as communities increasingly act on their right to input into decisions affecting their environment. In Ecuador, the courts granted a Constitutional injunction in favor of the Vilcabamba River against the Provincial Government of Loja. Lawyer Carlos Eduardo Bravo González advised the plaintiffs and presented the case.
* The Whanganui River court decision included a financial award which will pay for enforcement activities in the future.
“Rights for dolphins makes sense as they’re intelligent like humans, but why should sea slugs and barnacles have rights?”
Rights for dolphins capture the popular imagination because we recognize that they are smart. Rights for mice are less often called for. Who decided that a certain level of cleverness earns a creature more rights?
If rights depend on intelligence, are smarter humans more deserving of rights than others? Of course not. Earth Law comes from a worldview that respects life for itself, and does not judge humans and other creatures by what they can do.