All members of the Earth Community have rights as well as responsibilities for a healthy and resilient Earth.

As Thomas Berry explains, every being in the Earth Community has three rights: the right to be, the right to habitat, and the right to fulfil its role in the ever-renewing processes of the Earth community.

However, in current legal systems our living Earth is perceived as an object without rights. Yet fictitious entities, such as corporations, are granted rights similar to those of humans without reciprocal and enforceable responsibilities and accountability. As a result, destruction of our Earth continues, and without redress.

Our primary responsibility should be to stop depriving other members of the Earth Community of their rights.

In human history the need for rights has emerged when they are infringed. For example, it was when genetic engineering industry threatened to privatise seed through patents, which threatened the ancient practices of indigenous communities and farmers to save and exchange seed that the movement for indigenous farmer's rights began. The same now with the Rights of Nature. Nature - species, ecosystems, air, water, every aspect of life - is being threatened today by destruction, extinction and privatisation. No wonder why there is a welling up of concern from some members of the human community calling for sanity and justice.

Just as with indigenous peoples' rights, or any other group rights, what is required is for us to recognise, rather than grant, the inherent Rights of Nature. This has now become urgently necessary to stop injustices to all members of the Earth Community and of future generations. We have abused the inherent laws of Earth and we are now at a critical tipping point of ecological and social crises. Recognising Nature's inherent rights in human law as legally binding is essential to change the way we think of and respect Earth as a subject with rights, and not an object without rights.

Some may argue that recognising the Rights of Nature is controversial. For example, how can we represent the rights of Nature? How would we resolve potential conflict with human rights?

Regarding the nature of Rights, Thomas Berry explains that:

• 1. All rights are role-specific or species-specific, and limited. Rivers have river rights. Birds have bird rights. Insects have insect rights. Humans have human rights. Difference in rights is qualitative, not quantitative. The rights of an insect would be of no value to a tree or a fish.

• 2. Human rights do not cancel out the rights of other modes of being to exist in their natural state. Human property rights are not absolute.

Thomas Berry, Evening Thoughts

In practice, recognising Rights of Nature is not difficult. There are institutional bodies and processes, such as Guardians for the Earth in Bolivia, and Ombudsman for Future Generations. Many countries recognise locus standi/standing for the public to issue legal proceedings in the public interest (e.g. UNECE Aarhus Convention) - which could be expansively interpreted as including Nature, and even directly on behalf of Nature (e.g. Ecuadorian Constitution and local ordinances in the U.S.

The proposed crime of Ecocide, by UK barrister Polly Higgins, is another urgently needed tool to enforce the inherent Rights of Earth and of future generations, and hold directors and CEOs of companies accountable for mass destruction of ecosystems, such as Tar Sands development in Canada.See Earth Law Precedents for more information. These tools can amplify the voice of Nature in decision-making.

In resolving potential tension between human rights and the rights of ecosystems, the principle of mutually enhancing relations would prevail, in order to benefit the whole Earth Community and future generations.

Join the growing movement calling for the recognition of the Rights of Nature and a mutually enhancing relationship with the Earth Community. See the Map of the Earth Law Network for more information.

Thomas Berry calls for the recognition of the rights of Earth

Ten Principles of Jurisprudence

1. Rights originate where existence originates. That which determines existence determines rights.
2. Since it has no further context of existence in the phenomenal order, the universe is self-referent in its being and self-normative in its activities. It is also the primary referent in the being and the activites of all derivative modes of being.
3. The universe is composed of subjects to be communed with, not objects to be used. As a subject, each component of the universe is capable of having rights.
4. The natural world on the planet Earth gets its rights from the same source that humans get their rights: from the universe that brought them into being.
5. Every component of the Earth community has three rights: the right to be, the right to habitat, and the right to fulfil its role in the ever-renewing processes of the Earth community.
6. All rights are role-specific or species-specific, and limited. Rivers have river rights. Birds have bird rights. Insects have insect rights. Humans have human rights. Difference in rights is qualitative, not quantitative. The rights of an insect would be of no value to a tree or a fish.
7. Human rights do not cancel out the rights of other modes of being to exist in their natural state. Human property rights are not absolute. Property rights are simply a special relationship between a particular human 'owner' and a particular piece of 'property,' so that both might fulfil their roles in the great community of existence.
8. Since species exist only in the form of individuals, rights refer to individuals, not simply in a general way to species.
9. These rights as presented here are based on the intrinsic relations that the various components of Earth have to each other. The planet Earth is a single community bound together with interdependent relationships. No living being nourishes itself. Each component of the Earth commmunity is immediately or mediately dependent on every other member of the community for the nourishment and assistance it needs for its own survival. This mutual nourishment, which includes the predator-prey relationship, is integral with the role that each component of the Earth has within the comprehensive community of existence.
10. In a special manner, humans have not only a need for but also a right of access to the natural world to provide for the physical needs of humans and the wonder needed by human intelligence, the beauty needed by human imagination, and the intimacy needed by human emotions for personal fulfilment.

(Source: Appendix 2 in Evening Thoughts, pp. 149-50. A few words have been omitted to coincide with the List of Rights originally presented by Thomas at the conference on Earth Jurisprudence hosted by the Gaia Foundation at Airlee House, Washington in 2000.)