In November 2022 the Irish Citizens’ Assembly on Biodiversity Loss recommended to government that protecting the environment should be recognised in the constitution. If successful, Ireland will follow Ecuador in recognising rights for nature at the highest level. Meanwhile in the United States, dozens of communities have ratified rights of nature at local government level and New Zealand recognises the Whanganui River as a "indivisible and living whole" with its own personhood.
It is not difficult to understand the appeal of rights of nature. For many advocates it is an “idea whose time has come” and it inspires us to think about what form a radical shift in our legal relationship to nature may take. The best example is from Christopher Stone whose 1972 article “Should Trees Have Standing?” was almost single handedly responsible for planting the seed of the idea.
According to Stone, it first came to him in the final moments of a lecture on property law. He noted that, like human culture, property law is evolving and has progressed through different stages of development. Some humans were once considered property; the types of things that can be owned and what ownership means has changed over time.
