On Thursday, 20th February, Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI) helped to convene and participate in an engaging afternoon and evening of discussions on Nature and Rights, exploring the question: What legal frameworks and practices are needed to protect all life on Earth?

The centrepiece of what felt like a mini-festival on the topic was the Christ’s Kennel Climate and Sustainability Seminar, an annual event at Christ’s College held in collaboration with the Cambridge Centre for Science and Policy (CsaP).  

 The seminar featured a dynamic all-female panel:  

• Emma Lees, Professor of Environment and Property Law, University of Cambridge 

• Helen Dancer, Associate Professor in Law and Anthropology, University of Sussex  

• Laura Clarke, CEO, Client Earth.

The seminar attracted a large audience, with formal presentations and smaller roundtable discussions offering diverse perspectives. Several CCI partners contributed, including Rob Small (Fauna & Flora), Chris Sandbrook (CRI/Dept of Geography). Howard Nelson (Fauna & Flora/Dept of Geography), and Rob Fletcher (CRI/Dept of Zoology), alongside participants from across the university and from policy organisations. This group linked a wide range of academic disciplines with perspectives from policy and practice.

The panellists from left to right at the Christ’s Kennel Climate and Sustainability Seminar: Emma Lees, Helen Dancer, and Laura Clarke. © CsaP

 Why Nature and Rights Matter Now 

The focus on nature and rights is especially timely in our current context. Evidence abounds that nature underpins all aspects of our societies and futures – from food to health, economies to climate resilience. However, political-economic pressures, combined with new rounds of growth-focused policies and nationalism, often marginalise concerns about nature or relegate them to apparently distant risks. While market-based approaches often dominate contemporary environmental and conservation policy, this seminar presented an opportunity to consider how environmental law, regulation, and rights and justice approaches can complement and offer alternatives to these. 

Emerging approaches, such as the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment declared by the United Nations in 2022, or the expanding field of Earth Law and Rights of Nature, were also explored. 

The Role of Earth Law and Rights of Nature 

The Rights of Nature movement seems particularly exciting and relevant to our work at CCI. It broadens environmental justice theories from focusing solely on human rights and justice, to allow for justice for interconnected assemblages of the human and the non-human – such as a river and all its life, or a forest and its human stewards. This aligns with the philosophies and experiences of many local communities and Indigenous peoples, which recognise nature and people as inseparable and intertwined. 

The movement gives legal rights to specific animals, trees, rivers, and other natural entities, allowing them to be represented in legal cases. Some countries recognise these rights in national constitutions. For example, New Zealand has declared the Whanganui River and Mount Taranaki as living entities bearing equivalent legal rights to humans. Similarly, the Indian High Court of Uttarakhand ruled that the Ganges had similar rights, although this decision was contested by the Government of India. These cases build on the earlier decisions in Bolivia and Ecuador to grant rights to ‘Pachamama’ (‘World Mother’). 

There are also examples in the UK; for instance, in September 2022, a community festival in my hometown of Lewes, Sussex, led to a proposal for a charter for the Rights of the River Ouse. Lewes District Council approved the charter last week, on February 24, charting the course for it to become the first river in England to have its rights formally recognised. The charter adapts the Universal Declaration of River Rights, which mandates that rivers have the right to flow, be free from pollution, be nourished by sustainable aquifers, support native biodiversity, and the right to regeneration and restoration. Robert MacFarlane’s forthcoming book, Is a River Alive, promises to explore further examples, their underpinnings and implications.

The River Ouse, near Lewes, Sussex, in autumn. © Lemanieh from Getty Images

The Panellists’ Insights 

The panellists shared valuable insights on the intersection of law, rights, and nature. Emma Lees focused on more ‘conventional’ environmental law, which has established longstanding legal frameworks supplemented by protections like the EU’s Nature Restoration Law, passed amid significant opposition last year. She argued that the challenge is not the lack of legal protections but the lack of enforcement, as those with power and money often circumvent these laws. Rights frameworks, she argued, are valuable because they add to the number of enforcers.  

Helen Dancer examined Earth Law and Rights of Nature, noting that these are more than narrow legal tools – they represent an alternative moral framework that could complement existing legal structures. She discussed how rights of nature arguments have been successfully applied in New Zealand and Ecuador, often in the context of Indigenous land struggles.  

Client Earth, as Laura explained, represents the interests of Earth and nature in litigation, regulatory decisions and, increasingly, in corporate governance. For instance, Client Earth advocates for a ‘representative for nature’ on company boards. Combined with training and support for litigators and judges, her presentation highlighted the value of these legal approaches as a complement to market-based incentives, ensuring that long-term concerns about nature and climate are brought to the forefront in decision-making.

In 2017, the New Zealand government officially recognised the Maori iwi tribe’s relationship with the mountain by granting it legal personhood. © Phillip Richter from Getty Images

Key Themes and Reflections

Legal Tools and their Limitations

Several themes stood out to me across the set of discussions. One was the recognition that, while legal tools are important, they are also limited in tackling the interlinked crises of nature and climate. Legal frameworks are often too technical, narrow in scope, and embedded in slow-to adapt legal cultures and court decision processes, to respond to rapidly growing scientific evidence. To tackle the nature crisis, we must shift public perceptions and moral values, which law is poorly placed to do. Rights frameworks have more potential in this area, but we need to consider them not just as legal rights but as moral rights.

Inclusion and the Recognition of Rights

A second major theme was inclusion, and the extent to which different social groups can press their claims and have their rights recognised. Several policy organisations emphasised inclusion as core to their values, not least because marginalised groups are usually the most affected by ecological collapse. There was interesting discussion of young people’s rights, and inclusion in examples such as Wales’ Wellbeing of Future Generations Act, and the concept of ‘ancestral leadership’ – being good ancestors to the future. Examples were also discussed where different human rights may conflict with each other (e.g., the right to a healthy environment vs. the right to work in polluting industries). In some cases, rights of nature and marginalised people have conflicted, such as in Ecuador, where the state used ‘Pachamama’ arguments to expel artisanal miners from a forest area. In any given context, we must always ask, “Rights of whom, or what?”  

The Role of Power in Legal and Moral Rights Frameworks 

Third, it became clear that power is central to how legal and moral rights frameworks are constituted, how they operate, and who or what gains or loses from them. As Helen Dancer reminded us, law and power are intertwined. For rights to have meaning, we must address power, and what it takes to recognise rights and ‘make them real’. This might be material power – ‘money talks’ – but it might also be the power relations that prioritise some kinds of knowledge and ways of living over others.

The Role of Emotion and Connection in Nature Protection

A final theme connected these discussions around rights with emotion, and the feelings of connectedness that are often drive values shifts and action to protect nature. The influence of local community movements, everyday contact with the natural world, citizen science, children’s education and film all found a place in these conversations. Reflecting on the promises of Earth law and rights of nature, I found myself how these frameworks open up ways of recognising and respecting thinking and being based on reciprocity, relationality, emotional entanglement, and spiritual-material interconnection. These concepts resonate with many Indigenous worldviews and are relevant to all of us, even if often suppressed by mainstream scientific and economic paradigms. As a moral framework, could the rights of nature help to inspire greater care, respect, and harmony with the natural world?

These reflections capture only a small part of the incredibly rich set of discussions that will continue to inspire reflection for some time. Many thanks to the panellists, Rob Doubleday, CSaP, and Christ’s College for organising such an inspiring day. I look forward to continuing these conversations at CCI and beyond. 

Watch the full seminar below and learn more on the CSaP website.