ABSTRACT
In Chapter 3, we considered instances in different jurisdictions where the environment or parts of the environment have been recognised as legal persons or, less contentiously, ‘entities’. This chapter engages further with these case studies by considering recurring themes arising from the attribution of legal personhood in pursuit of environmental strategies. The common themes are legal pluralism, universality and colonialism. Conversely, the challenges represented by environmental personhood are, most significantly, the coherence of the idea, ongoing issues of marketisation of natural resources and distributive justice, the basis for human representation of the interests of the environment and the challenge to conventional understandings of the legitimacy of law.
