ABSTRACT
In a 1972 article, “Should Trees Have Standing,” legal scholar Christopher Stone proposed that legal rights be granted to natural objects, such as trees, forests, and rivers. Although Stone’s article was widely viewed as groundbreaking, efforts to implement this proposal languished until 2006, when the borough of Tamaqua, Pennsylvania invoked the rights of nature to prohibit dumping of toxic sewage sludge. Since then, rights of nature provisions have been developed in many parts of the world, including Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, India, Mexico, New Zealand, and the U.S. Focusing on scholarship in the law and social sciences, this chapter reviews recent literature on these developments, with attention to three key questions: 1) to what extent do legal and social science approaches envision the rights of nature approach as a paradigm shift, a pragmatic tool, or both?, 2) what are the central institutional and practical concerns that have emerged in relation to the rights of nature (e.g. “flooding the courts,” representation, relief, conflicting rights)?, and 3) how have diverse cultural, spiritual, and philosophical perspectives shaped rights of nature discourses, and to what degree does the existing literature present and address compatibilities and tensions between these perspectives and the discourse of rights?
