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Does Nature Have an Inalienable Right to Exist? Santa Monica Thinks So, and It's Not Alone

Santa Monica's actions sit beside only a few trailblazing other efforts to make larger forms of environmental destruction a crime.
Photo: Ron Kroetz/Flickr

Recently Santa Monica, California declared that "natural communities and ecosystems" have a legal right to "exist, regenerate, and flourish." In other words, nature has legal rights. The measure passed by a vote of 7-0 in the city council. I'm unsure what effect this will have in practice, but this is pretty amazing.

Global Exchange has a good background summary of how the bill came into being, but let's focus on the text of the bill itself. Depending on how it's interpreted, this could have some far reaching effects, far beyond the borders of Santa Monica.

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The city's Sustainability Rights Ordinance states, after recognizing that all (human) residents have the right to clean water, air, food, etc., in section 4.75.040.b:

"Natural communities and ecosystems possess fundamental and inalienable rights to exist and flourish in the City of Santa Monica. To effectuate those rights on behalf of the environment, residents of the City may bring action to protect these natural communities and ecosystems, defined as: groundwater aquifers, atmospheric systems, marine waters, and native species within the boundaries of the City."

That's a pretty powerful statement. Though it's not entirely spelled out, broadly interpreted it could mean that actions that could potentially destroy an ecosystem can be stopped in court. And since pollution to aquifers, atmospheric systems (aka the climate), and marine waters is all trans-boundary pollution, there's wriggle room in the ordinance to think that a suit could be brought to prevent pollution and ecosystem destruction anywhere in an aquifer that in some way intersects with the city of Santa Monica, or the climate even more broadly.

For example: You could argue that since Santa Monica is directly on the Pacific Ocean that sea level rise will do x amount of damage to the natural community and ecosystem, and that failure to enact policies forceful enough to stop or limit sea level rise is in violation of this ordinance.

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If I were an environmental lawyer my legal mind would be spinning pretty quickly right now to figure out what's the best first test of the new law.

Proving the numbers that would necessarily be involved is much more complicated, but the principle is far less so—especially since the previous section states that all residents of Santa Monica have "fundamental and inalienable rights" to "a sustainable climate that supports thriving human life and a flourishing biodiverse environment."

Clearly there is enough scientific evidence to argue that continue emission of greenhouse gases at current levels will create climatic conditions that violate the thriving human life and flourish biodiversity parts of the ordinance.

This is one to watch with regards to how it's implemented and what comes of it. But if I were an environmental lawyer my legal mind would be spinning pretty quickly right now to figure out what's the best first test of the new law.

In a broader context, Santa Monica's actions sit beside only a few trailblazing other efforts to make larger forms of environmental destruction a crime.

Most recently, last September, New Zealand granted the Whanganui River legal personhood, making the river a protected legal entity, an "integrated, living whole." Eighteen months before that Bolivia granted legal rights to Mother Earth, including in a summary from the Guardian,

"The right to life and to exist; the right to continue vital cycles and processes free from human alteration; the right to pure water and clean air; the right to balance; the right not to be polluted; and the right to not have cellular structure modified or genetically altered. Controversially, it will also enshrine the right of nature 'to not be affected by mega-infrastructure and development projects that affect the balance of ecosystems and the local inhabitant communities."

On a global level, the movement to make ecocide an international crime against the peace has been discussed since the early 1970s. Today the primary group trying to popularize the idea is Polly Higgins' Eradicating Ecocide.

Somewhat amazingly, ecocide nearly made it into the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which was adopted in 1998 and came into force in 2002, and which established four core international crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. Until pretty late in the process creating the statute, destruction of ecosystems in times of peace was to be included as a fifth crime—and framed both as an issue of rights of nature, as well as a form of genocide as destruction of ecosystems could prevent people from maintaining their culture and traditional way of life.

Though phrased in less dramatic terms than genocide, Santa Monica's new ordinance sits squarely upon this philosophical framework. Crucially, it recognizes that assuming that the natural world is legal property, that can be exploited by humans without consideration of the long term effects that may have on non-human life, the ecosystem as a whole, as well as the human community, has created environmental destruction on a global, sometimes crippling, scale.