Standing for Nature

Legal Strategies for Environmental Justice

Dana Zartner, Fabian Cardenas, Mohammad Golam Sarwar

• Publisher: Island Press
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN: 9781642833805
• eBook ISBN: 9781642833812
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Environmental Law
• Index: Law

Rights of Nature laws are becoming a vital tool for addressing environmental injustice. From New Zealand and India to Ecuador and Bolivia, advocates have successfully secured legal rights for rivers, forests, and mountains. Granting rights to nature has the potential to expand environmental protections, strengthen indigenous rights, promote sustainable development, and alter how humans relate to nature. Despite these promises, rights of Nature laws have met with greater resistance in some countries than in others.  

Standing for Nature offers advocates a blueprint for creating, implementing, and safeguarding rights of Nature laws. This book looks closely at four examples—New Zealand, Colombia, Bangladesh, and the United States—to explain why these laws have been successful in some places but not others. Through this comparative exploration, the authors highlight key strategies for advancing rights of Nature laws in the United States and around the world. These lessons include an examination of different legal traditions to better understand which is the best form of law—judicial, legislative, or regulatory—for advocates to target; how to ensure effective implementation once a law is passed; and how to shift communal perspectives on the human-Nature relationship for better implementation and enforcement.     

This book is essential for environmental lawyers, policy makers, and advocates interested in gaining new knowledge and tools for championing rights of Nature laws in their own communities. 

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Subscribe to Island Press
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Understanding the “Rights” in Rights of Nature
• 2. Legal Tradition as a Tool for Environmental Justice Advocacy
• 3. From the Mountains to the Sea: Aotearoa New Zealand
• 4. Riverine Reflections and Responsibilities: Bangladesh
• 5. Rights of Nature for Future Generations: Colombia
• 6. Rights of Nature and the Challenges of Individualism: The United States
• 7. Thrive and Survive: Tools for Effective Implementation of Rights of Nature Laws
• 8. Moving Forward: Challenges and Change
• Appendix: Seventeen Directives from the Bangladeshi Court Decision
• Notes
• Bibliography
• About the Authors