ABSTRACT
This chapter examines, the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights that is the Earth Charter, a document that disseminates key points about environmental ethics. It also examines the core ideas of the Great Ape Project, which advocates personhood rights for higher nonhuman primates. Each of these documents probes the language of rights as it pertains to human beings, the living systems of the earth community, and high functioning primates. This rights approach will be juxtaposed with Asian views of personhood and the continuities between nonhuman and human animals. The chapter argues that the Asian view of life, which claims that humans have been animals and that animals might become humans in future lives, suggests the need to reconsider earlier definitions of rights. The Earth Charter has been described as a declaration of fundamental principles for building a just, sustainable global society in the 21st century for the well-being of the human family, the greater community of life, and future generations.
