ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a critique of rights of nature to understand why they have emerged as a prominent response to the Anthropocene and to understand the presumptions and preconditions that underpin the concept. Since the 1970s legal rights have emerged as the dominant language for articulating all manner of justice claims. In response to the dominance of rights, a critical scholarship has emerged. Advocates for rights of nature tend to ground their argument in ecological thinking and an expansion of human morality. In thinking about a critique of rights, it is important to first note that they have always had detractors. The political right worry about giving discretion to the courts and expanding privileges beyond a defined class. Like rights, obligations also come with their own history and set of contingencies. It is, for example, difficult to talk about obligations without invoking Christian notions of imperative.
