The Rights of Mother Earth: A Nation Grants Legal Personhood To Nature

“We are many sets of eyes staring out at each other from the same living body”

Laguna Colorada, Bolivia, Photo by Valeria Dubrowina on Unsplash

Nature as a legal subject

In 2009, Bolivia created a new constitution that did something unprecedented. It not only recognized political autonomy and expanded rights to the country’s 36 Indigenous communities, transforming Bolivia into a ‘plurinational state.’ But Bolivia also included environmental conservation as a core constitutional principle of its government.

The radical statement — catching the attention of environmentalists around the world when the news got out — comes in Article 342:

“it is the duty of the State and of the popula­tion to conserve, protect, and use natural resources and biodiversity sus­ tainably and to preserve environmental balance”

And in article 383, it specifically includes the protection of biodiversity and threatened species:

“The State will establish partial or total, temporary or perma­nent restrictions on the extractive uses of biodiversity resources. These measures will target the needs of preservation, conserva­tion, recovery, and restoration of biodiversity that is at risk of extinction. Illegal keeping, handling…