https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/nature-rights-movement-increasing-visibility-acceptance/
While most people roll their eyes and laugh that “it can never happen here,” the “nature rights” movement is increasing in visibility and liberal establishment acceptance. The journal Science has favored the concept. So too has liberal activist Jim Hightower.
Now, that bastion of liberal respectability — NPR — has now done a big, friendly story on the movement, reporting that Bangladesh just proclaimed all rivers to be living entities with human-type rights. Yippee!
The problem, according to NPR’s story, isn’t that nature rights laws would thwart human thriving substantially by requiring that all of nature be given equal consideration with the needs, wants, and intentions of people. (Remember, “nature rights” isn’t about pollution.) Nor do the bounteous reasons for retaining “rights” exclusively in the human realm rate a single mention. In fact, no critics of the concept are quoted.
Rather, the only real downsides mentioned are difficulties in enforcement. From the story:
The idea of what these laws hope to accomplish is where the similarities stop, as their legal bases and the range of socio-environmental and economic problems they’re meant to solve vary from country to country. Many of the laws have also been met with resistance from industry, farmers and river communities, who argue that giving nature personhood infringes on their rights and livelihoods.
Imagine that! People want to thrive off the land and the development of resources.
