Damages

A clause in most free trade agreements and investment treaties obligates countries to engage in a process known as international arbitration if there's a dispute with a foreign company. It was meant to assure companies that their investments in especially less developed countries were safe, but in recent years it's become a way to punish governments for passing environmental regulations.

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With an internationally accepted definition of this crime, advocates are pushing for international courts to recognize it as well, and they're making progress. In this episode we explore what that means, what an ecocide trial might look like, who's most likely to be hauled into court for it, and the overarching goal of the effort.

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In 2019, after a decade-long campaign, voters in Toledo Ohio voted to approve the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, effectively giving the lake personhood. It drew an incredible amount of attention. This wasn’t San Francisco hippies or Brooklyn hipsters talking about rights of nature, this was middle-aged moms in the Rust Belt, and that absolutely terrified any extractive industry. Agrichemical companies turned out in force against the bill, BP spent a fortune to try to stop it, and almost as soon as it passed it was being questioned in court. Then in 2020 the state smuggled a ban against rights-of-nature legislation into its annual budget bill. Similar preemptive bans on rights of nature have since been passed in Florida and Missouri. As one Ohio campaigner put it, “You know what you’re doing is working if they’re going around the country trying to preempt it.” In this ep we look at where the rights of nature movement is today, how the fossil fuel industry has responded, and what’s next.

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When Tūhoe negotiated legal personhood for their homeland Te Urewera, the global rights of nature community cheered. But in this conversation about how the case connects to rights of nature overall and to the global push for climate action, Tamati Kruger, Tūhoe negotiator and chairman of the board that now oversees Te Urewera, explains that for Tūhoe it's about responsibilities—of people to protect the land and each other—not rights.

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In New Zealand, after decades of negotiating, Tuhoe people won personhood for their ancestral homeland Te Urewera.

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Last episode we told the story of Ecuador's rights-of-nature journey, today Melissa Troutman and Joshua Pribanic, directors of Invisible Hand and co-founders of the journalism organization Public Herald, join to talk about what the landmark Los Cedros ruling means, not just for Ecuador but the world.

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Ecuador was the first country to adopt rights of nature into its constitution, but its Constitutional Court (Ecuador’s equivalent to the U.S. Supreme Court) has not heard many cases in the decade or so since the law was added. The new Constitutional justices made a point of picking several cases to test rights of nature, and in 2021 handed down a major judgement about the future of one of the world's most biodiverse cloud forests.

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A case argued at the Supreme Court this week—West Virginia v EPA—has potentially huge implications for regulating greenhouse gas emissions. NYU law professor Richard Revesz and Center for Biological Diversity attorney Jason Rylander join us to explain.

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A look at where rights of nature came from and how the concept has played out in the U.S.

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Welcome to our first season, The Forest for the Trees, a look at rights of nature cases all over the world. In this episode, we start with a case that's making its way through the courts right now, on behalf of wild rice, or manoomin in the Ojibwe language. The rights of manoomin case was originally filed in an effort to stop construction of the Line 3 pipeline. That pipeline has been built, but the case is still active, and it could have major implications for other pipeline fights.

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