ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at developing ecosystem rights, frequently known as Rights of Nature, in the United States through legislative lawmaking. Social movements for system change usually start from the grassroots, developing new policies through working for local, then state, and ultimately federal laws that institutionalise a social movement's goals. When a social movement seeks deep structural change, like the Rights of Nature, that grassroots policy work fuels – and is itself fuelled by – cultural changes that create societal recognition for the legitimacy of the new system, and the illegitimacy of the old. 2
