We Grant Personhood to Companies. Why Not to Nature?
Giving legal rights to rivers, forests and mountains is a useful way to elevate consideration of the ecosystem.
Granting personhood to the Seine in Paris might help to protect the waterway from pollution.
Photographer: Aurelien Meunier/Getty Images EuropeIt’s a well-accepted quirk of law that corporations have the right to own property, enter into contracts and sue each other – just like an actual person. Ships also enjoy the perks of legal personhood. So it isn’t too much of a stretch to imagine that rivers, forests and mountains — ecosystems that support a vast range of lifeforms and are vital to the functioning of the world — should also be granted legal rights.
The idea that the natural world should have a statutory voice has been around in some form or another for millennia. Animism — the concept that all natural things possess a spirit — was a core principle of many belief systems, and still is among many indigenous groups. In 1972, the idea found a modern footing via an influential article Should Trees Have Standing? by law professor Christopher Stone, who argued that just as women and minority groups were eventually socially enfranchised, so the rights of the natural environment should be recognized.