What We Do
Environmental statutes adopted over a half century ago struggle to address the existential threats posed by climate change and biodiversity loss. This struggle occurs largely because the laws assume ecosystems and species are merely property, rather than rights-bearing partners. Their vision gap is not limited to nature, with the U.N. only recently recognizing the human right to a healthy environment. Environment Now and partners advance legal recognition of the fundamental rights of both people and nature to a healthy environment.
Challenges
While aging environmental laws have made progress addressing acute threats, like raw sewage releases and rampant old-growth logging, chronic environmental injuries are accelerating. California’s ecological challenges parallel those occurring globally. Though the American West has been facing its worst drought in 1,200 years, in substantial part to climate change, California continues to allow water over-extraction at levels that have pushed Delta smelt to functional extinction, with salmon runs next. And almost a million Californians still lack access to clean drinking water. Globally, wildlife populations have plummeted 73% in 50 years, and the U.N. now warns of a catastrophic, 3.1°C temperature increase.
Governments, ecological and social justice groups, scholars, and communities worldwide are taking action to assert fundamental rights to a healthy environment, and implement those rights where they have been recognized in law. The burgeoning rights of nature movement in particular is critical to both ending and reversing environmental degradation, towards thriving relationships between people and the natural world.
Our Partners
Environment Now’s partners work in two main areas to develop and promote Earth-centered and rights-based legal and governance systems:
- Advancement: Partners create and implement initiatives to advance environmental rights-based laws and policies, which then serve as models for broader change. One focus area is the Antarctic Rights initiative, spearheaded by nature’s rights advocates and leading Antarctica experts. Examples: Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature, Wild Law Institute.
- Knowledge: To support the evolution of new legal and governance solutions, partners compile and analyze information on existing environmental rights-based initiatives, amplify new voices and perspectives, and publish research and legal tools for advocates and decisionmakers. Examples: University of Oregon’s Eco Jurisprudence Monitor, NYU Law’s More Than Human Life (MOTH) Project, Inside Climate News.
In addition, Environment Now serves as a leader in the philanthropic space on nature’s rights, building coalitions that share information and funding opportunities.
Successes
The rights of nature movement has experienced “hockey stick” growth since its inception in the mid-2000s, jump-started in part by Environment Now, which gave one of the earliest grants to the movement back in 2008. Since then, the movement has secured rights of nature law in some form in at least 17 nations and over 60 U.S. cities and counties, with support for Antarctic rights rapidly spreading. Implementation has begun as well, with rights of nature law stopping massive mines in biodiverse areas of Ecuador and Panama, and prompting Ecuadorians to vote against widespread oil drilling in Amazon forests. The Eco Jurisprudence Monitor, housed in the University of Oregon, tracks these initiatives and links to official documents for research and modeling purposes.
Despite such progress, violations of the environmental rights of both nature and humans (especially Indigenous peoples) continue. International and Regional Rights of Nature Tribunals expose such “co-violations” of rights by industries and governments. A series of Tribunals is underway now, beginning with the recent Tribunal on the “End of the Fossil Fuel Era,” to daylight these serious threats in the context of climate change, and to demand law and governance changes needed to live in healthy relationship with the natural world.
