Standing up for Nature's Rights

I’ve been living in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula for the past two months. I’ve come here every summer for the past 50 years. The UP, as it’s called, is a sparsely populated region, mostly forest.  We’re on a small lake about 25 miles from town, with only a few other, usually vacant, homes on the lake. We’re out of cell phone range, though we do have satellite internet service. In the time we’ve been here we’ve not watched TV, but I’ve read several books that I would not have otherwise gotten to. I’ve walked nearly every day, on

sand roads and logging trails. I’ve heard the occasional crash of a falling dead beech tree or its limbs, sat at the shore of the lake watching a pair of trumpeter swans move majestically past. Now, in early October the leaves are falling; a rich palette of maples, beech, white and yellow birch, as nature moves into another season.  I’ve been happy here, because I'm with a beloved daughter and her spouse, and because I’ve been able to simply be in nature.  Every day brings something fresh.

 

I’ll be returning to Southwest Florida in a few weeks. There COVID-19 continues to inflict dangerous illness and death upon thousands. On a recent walk I found myself mulling over the irony that though humans are victims of COVID-19, there’s a sense in which we are analogous to it. Like an invasive pathogen, modern humans have inflicted damage and destruction on ecosystems all over the globe.  We’ve had the mistaken notion that the natural world belongs to us; it’s really all just property. Now, nature itself is telling us that we must change our outlook if we hope to thrive, perhaps even to exist. The legendary biologist and natural philosopher E. O. Wilson has written “The earth is our home. Unless we preserve the rest of life, as a sacred duty, we will be endangering ourselves by destroying the home in which we evolved, and on which we completely depend.” 

The journey back to the consensus that we must live in a sustainable balance with the natural world will be difficult. There is much to be relearned. Among the first things is this: that nature is not just property.  All of it—trees, waters, stones, rabbits and ravens, the atmosphere—has inherent rights to existence. Artists of all persuasions: poets, painters, sculptors, composers, have known and celebrated the truth that we are meant to be in commensal relationships with nature.

In 1972 Christopher Stone, a law professor, published an essay,

“Should Trees Have Standing? Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects”, which played an influential role in an important pending legal case. The essay became a book, now in its third edition; it's widely regarded as a classic in legal annals. Stone addressed the frustrations of citizens' efforts to obtain redress of injuries to public interests in the environment. He argues that natural objects—a tree or stream or the Everglades—should have legal standing on their own in the courts. At first blush, the notion of legal rights for natural objects in their own right seems a bit crazy. How can a tree or a stream have legal standing? But in the succeeding half-century the proposition has received serious attention in the courts. 

The difficulty we encounter in considering this proposition arises in part because it’s difficult to imagine a tree or stream pleading its case in court.  But all sorts of inanimate objects, for example, corporations, which exist only as objects of the law, mere pages of paper, are treated as having “rights” and the prerogatives of personhood. Corporations have lawyers who plead on their behalf. Stone tells us that, in a similar sense, trees must have guardians to plead for them. 

The Rights of Nature movement is founded on two principles:  

·       Nature in all its life forms has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles.

·      Humans are not apart from, but inextricably in nature.

The French philosopher/scientist Rene Descartes (1596-1650) is generally credited with formulating the concept of a mind/body dichotomy: “I think, therefore I am.” He worked diligently to separate the human person from a physical presence: “From this I knew I was a substance whose whole essence or nature is simply to think, and which does not require any place, or depend on any material thing, in order to exist.”  Descartes did western society a disservice by disavowing our embodied nature. In his view nature is something apart from us, we have no a priori obligations to it. Couple that with the human predilection to place itself at the top, and you have a species with way too much hubris.  Even today, referring to a high-achieving person as a Master of the Universe does not cause people to scratch their heads—they get it, there’s no limit to what humans can accomplish, right?  I’m sure that in the boardrooms of large corporations there sit people today who still think that’s a nifty byname. 

But those who worship before the charts of GDP and feed on the ever-increasing powers of technology goliaths have been driving us toward our collective doom. We are not Masters of the planet’s natural world.  In this era of climate crises and threats to the global social order, humans must accept a different job title: guardians of nature. It will take a long time and much discomfort to drive that message home.

Guardianship takes learning, and we will all have to learn it in the context of wherever our life situation places us.  Even today there are many indigenous cultures whose immersion in nature is much deeper than our own. As an important example, in the Amazon rainforest, spanning the borders of modern-day Ecuador and Peru, the Achuar people have lived and thrived for centuries. But their centuries-old ways of life have been threatened by developers who mean to strip away the forests in the pursuit of oil. The Achuar reached out to sympathetic people in the developed world for help.  Thanks to the work of John Perkins and Bill and Lynne Twist, and others, an international nonprofit, the Pachamama Alliance, was created to represent the Achuar people in their battles against powerful developers. The Alliance has been successful in representing the Achuar in the courts and in the halls of governments. Meantime, The Pachamama Alliance has been holding symposia around the world to discover the value of ancient wisdom in addressing our modern crises. They ask what personal roles individuals might play in bringing forth an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling, and socially just human presence on this planet. 

 

Emboldened by that noble aspiration, I’ll offer a few thoughts on what you and I can do: spend time in nature: in a park, in gardening, walking the beaches—embracing our role, reflecting on our duties as guardians of nature. If you’re not able to be about in nature, spend some TV time with PBS, BBC and National Geographic programs devoted to nature.  Even if you’re not naturally a joiner, consider that there is strength in numbers and sign up with environmental organizations committed to saving the environment and preserving what we have: friends of wildlife and forest, warriors going to court to represent nature, such as The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, Earth Justice, Natural Resources Defense Council on the national scene, many with local chapters.  In Southwest Florida, The Calusa Nature Center and Planetarium, The Calusa Waterkeeper, Citizen’s Climate Lobby, the Pachamama Alliance Community of Southwest Florida, The SWFL RESET Center (full disclosure: I’m on the Board)  and Florida Rights of Nature Network are steadily adding members. And there are many more. Listen to webinars to learn more about the environmental issues confronting us. Write your representatives at state and national levels. Not little chatty letters, but reminders of their obligations to preserve nature, not contribute to its destruction. Use social media for good by liking, tagging, and sharing sites and people who support the environment. 

Believe me, I know: this all takes time.  But as Mary Oliver writes,

"I don't want to end up simply having visited this world."

Photos by M.M. Coffield