ABSTRACT
The United States has done little toward implementing a nationwide Rights of Nature legal system. The country's environmental protection statutes are based on meeting human necessities and merely trying to curb harm those results from development projects. Ohio's Highland Township passed a Rights of Nature ordinance in January 2013. The new ordinance not only banned the injection of fracking wastewater but also created the rights of human and natural communities to a healthy environment, including ecosystems' right to exist and to flourish. In June 2014, the elected officials of Grant Township passed a Community Bill of Rights Ordinance, joining scores of municipalities in Pennsylvania that have passed similar ordinances. The most radical and farsighted of all is the new, constitutional prohibition on development, ownership, marketing, and use of biological and nuclear weapons, organic pollutants, agrochemicals, and genetically modified organisms that are harmful to human health or that jeopardize ecosystem integrity.
