Report: Conceptual Foundations for Rights of Nature Legislation

Today we are pleased to publish a new report titled “Realising Rights of Nature: Conceptual Foundations for Legislation” by Alex May. This is a follow on from a previous report titled “Realising Rights of Nature: Understanding the Variety of Legal Instruments”, which set out the different types of Rights of Nature legal change: Constitutional Change, Legislative Framework, Element Specific Subjecthood, Litigation and Common Law Principles. 

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The new report seeks to map out the breadth and depth of what Rights of Nature legislation could cover, including the different elements which a legislative framework would need, the different dimensions of rights and subjecthood, the different legal effects and areas of law which could be included, alongside some possible legislative models. Much of this is relevant for anyone thinking about how best to implant Rights of Nature.

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Alex explained that the germination of this project was the question: what could Rights of Nature legislation in the UK look like? This report does not set out to fully answer this question, but seeks to provide the groundwork for consideration of what form legislative frameworks could take and the contents they might have. There is not one way to bring about Rights of Nature – which is, ultimately, about transforming the breadth of a legal system and relationships with more than human life across society. Instead of one linear route, there are a few dimensions and directions which can be implemented to different intensities and degrees.

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For the most part, the work is more like different parts of a jigsaw puzzle which compliment each other, rather than competing choices. Ultimately, Rights of Nature seeks to change the dynamic of a legal system so as to cover the various social relations with the more than human. While this would require transformation and legal change on a huge scale, it can be done incrementally and programmatically, as shown in this report. There are various ways in which legislation could end up having little meaningful effect, being formal rights that have no substance, or no teeth, or nature-subjects cannot be meaningfully represented, or other such pitfalls. The report covers the foundations, legislative elements and effects, case studies and legislative models.

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During the course of writing this report, Alex became severely ill with acute post covid syndrome. The ‘Author’s Note’ (section 1.4) and ‘Methodology and Disclaimer’ (section 2.2) explain the impact of illness on Alex’s ability to work. As a result, the report represents a culmination of Alex’s years of research and writing, but is not complete. Particularly, sections 4 and 5 (‘Case Studies’ and ‘Comparative Analysis’) are incomplete, but have been left within the report. Alex explains that this was  for a number of reasons: it recognised

the unfinished nature of this report (and in a way honoured his life being interrupted by severe illness); it felt more cohesive to the structure and idea of the report; and it allows for others to feed into this part of the work. 

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Alex has expressed that anyone who wishes to work with this report is more than welcome to do so (with appropriate acknowledgement or credit), whether in blog posts, articles, chapters or in presentations. The report is published under a Creative Commons licence. We also encourage anyone who would like to work on Section 4 or 5 to reach out to operations@lawyersfornature.com with an expression of interest. This is an incredible piece of work and certainly worthy of further exploration. 

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We would like to thank Alex for his excellent work under such challenging circumstances. We hope this report will be useful to many of you and will contribute to the on-going discourse surrounding the Rights of Nature in the UK and beyond. 

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You can download the report here.