ABSTRACT

Sustainability and the Rights of Nature in Practice is the much-needed complementary volume to Sustainability and the Rights of Nature: An Introduction (CRC Press, May 2017). The first book laid out the international precursors for the Rights of Nature doctrine and described the changes required to create a Rights of Nature framework that supports Nature in a sustainable relationship rather than as an exploited resource. This follow-up work provides practitioners from diverse cultures around the world an opportunity to describe their own projects, successes, and challenges in moving toward a legal personhood for Nature. It includes contributions from Nepal, New Zealand, Canadian Native American cultures, Kiribati, the United States and Scotland, amongst others, by practitioners working on projects that can be integrated into a Rights of Nature framework. The authors also tackle required changes to shift the paradigm, such as thinking of Nature in a sacred manner, reorienting Nature’s rights and human rights, the conceptualization of restoration, and the removal of large-scale energy infrastructure.

Curated by experts in the field, this expansive collection of papers will prove invaluable to a wide array of policymakers and administrators, environmental advocates and conservation groups, tribal land managers, and communities seeking to create or maintain a sustainable relationship with Nature.

Features:

  • Addresses existing projects that are successfully implementing a Rights of Nature legal framework, including the difference it makes in practice
  • Presents the voices of practitioners not often recognized who are working in innovative ways towards sustainability and the need to grant a voice to Nature in human decision-making
  • Explores new ideas from the insights of a diverse range of cultures on how to grant legal personhood to Nature, restrain damaging human activity, create true sustainability, and glimpse how a Rights of Nature paradigm can work in different societies
  • Details the potential pitfalls to Rights of Nature governance and land use decisions from people doing the work, as well as their solutions
  • Discusses the basic human needs for shelter, food, and community in entirely new ways: in relationship with Nature, rather than in conquest of it

Chapter 6 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9780429505959

section Section I|76 pages

Concepts and Overviews

chapter 3|19 pages

Rights of Nature: Myth, Films, Laws and the Future

ByEugen Cadaru

chapter 4|18 pages

Nature's Rights in Permaculture

ByW. D. Scott Pittman

section Section II|180 pages

The Struggle for Sustainability and the Rights of Nature

chapter 5|10 pages

Kiribati and Climate Change

ByHis Eminence Anote Tong, Cameron La Follette, Chris Maser

chapter 6|23 pages

‘When God Put Daylight on Earth We Had One Voice’Kwakwaka'wakw Perspectives on Sustainabilityand the Rights of Nature

ByDouglas Deur, Kim Recalma-Clutesi, Clan Chief Kwaxsistalla Adam Dick
Size: 2.85 MB

chapter 7|28 pages

Environmental Sustainability: The Case of Bhutan

ByDechen Lham

chapter 8|26 pages

The Restoration of the Caledonian Forest and the Rights of Nature

ByAlan Watson Featherstone

chapter 10|14 pages

German Energiewende : A Way to Sustainable Societies?

ByMichael W. Schröter, Dani Fössl

chapter 11|31 pages

Seasonally Flooded Savannas of South America: Sustainability and the Cattle-Wildlife Mosaic

ByAlmira Hoogesteijn, José Luis Febles, Rafael Hoogesteijn

chapter 12|20 pages

Ocean Rights: The Baltic Sea and World Ocean Health

ByMichelle Bender

section Section III|148 pages

Rights of Nature in the Law

chapter 14|15 pages

The Rights of Nature in Ecuador: An Overview of the New Environmental Paradigm

ByHugo Echeverria, Francisco José Bustamante Romo Leroux

chapter 15|15 pages

The Godavari Marble Case and Rights of Nature Discourse in Nepal

ByJony Mainaly

chapter 17|34 pages

Nature's Rights through Lawmaking in the United States

ByLindsey Schromen-Wawrin, Michelle Amelia Newman

chapter 18|19 pages

The Experiment with Rights of Nature in India

ByKelly D. Alley, Tarini Mehta

chapter 20|4 pages

Conclusion: Nature's Laws of Reciprocity

ByChris Maser