Should Nature Have Rights?
b'If corporations can be legal persons, why can\\u2019t Mother Earth?\\xa0\\nIn 2017, New Zealand granted the Whanganui River the full legal rights of a person. India also recently granted full legal rights to the Ganges and Yamuna rivers, and recognized that the Himalayan Glaciers have a right to exist. In 2019, the city of Toledo passed the Lake Erie Bill of Rights with 61 percent of the vote, but then a year later, a federal judge struck it down.\\nAs Lindsey Schromen-Wawrin, an attorney who represented Lake Erie, explains, the problem stems from a 500-year history of Western property law. Our legal system grants rights to property owners, but not to property itself.\\xa0\\n\\u201cIf we\\u2019re treating ecosystems as property, then ultimately, we as property owners have the right to destroy our property and that fundamentally has to change,\\u201d Schromen-Wawrin says.\\nRebecca Tsosie, a law professor focused on Federal Indian law and Indigenous peoples\\u2019 human rights, says there are other rights frameworks to consider.\\xa0\\u201cIf we go into Indigenous epistemology, many times it\\u2019s a relational universe that comes with mutual responsibility.\\u201d\\nGuests:\\nLindsey Schromen-Wawrin, attorney at Shearwater Law, Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund\\xa0\\nRebecca Tsosie, Regents Professor of Law at the University of Arizona, Indigenous Peoples\\u2019 Law and Policy Program\\nCarol Van Strum, author of A Bitter Fog, activist\\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices'