Research

The future of the Rights of Nature: An interdisciplinary scoping analysis

This research project explores the potential of the rights of nature, considering it from an interdisciplinary perspective, where people from various disciplines share their knowledge to help facilitate a more balanced relationship between humans and nature to address the ecological crisis. Our research highlights that despite its promising role to offer a truly transformative approach to our relationship with the environment, academic research and funding have yet to fully engage with this emerging field of research. Research projects still have largely fragmented and disciplinary approaches despite the tasks that require transcending the disciplines. Although new research projects have begun to explore the anthropological and political aspects of RoN focusing on specific case studies outside of Europe, further transdisciplinary research integrating environmental and social sciences is needed particularly to understand to what extent RoN can be useful and operationalised in the European context.

The report was written as part of the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Where Next? Scoping Future Arts and Humanities Led Research.

A Meeting of Rivers: Exploring the Rights of Nature in the UK

Within the UK, the rights of nature’s movement is inchoate but growing, with a specific focus on the rights of the rivers. Several civil society initiatives over the past three years – including community charters, motions in local councils, and community declarations – have recognised the rights of rivers. However, these initiatives face at least two serious obstacles. Firstly, the practices of these different initiatives are for the most part isolated from each other and from the global RoN movement. Secondly, there is currently littleacademic research into the conceptual foundations, legal plausibility, and ecological potential of the RoN movement in the UK. This project aims to resolve both problems.

This project has three main objectives:

To perform a definitive interdisciplinary investigation into the possibility and plausibility of awarding natural entities rights in the UK context.
To facilitate the development of a UK-wide network of local communities currently developing RoN initiatives.
To work with local initiatives involved in this network (Objective 2), to co-produce and implement research into the RoN in UK (Objective 1).

The main outputs to this project will be an academic examination of the possibilities of RoN in the UK, and the establishment of a UK-wide RoN advocate network.

AHRC Curiosity Grant Date: 2024-2028. Principal Investigator: Neil Williams

The Connected Waters Leverhulme Doctoral Programme: The evolving interactions between human agency and freshwater ecosystems

The Connected Waters Leverhulme Doctoral Programme is funding up to 18 PhD studentships to conduct multidisciplinary research on freshwater ecosystems, across two universities, Cranfield and Roehampton. The programme aims to develop a deeper, holistic understanding of the interactions between humans and the environment to support sustainable solutions to the environmental challenges affecting our river, lake, wetland, and groundwater ecosystems.

Leverhulme Trust PIs: Anne Robertson and Robert Grabowski

The relationship between the rights of nature and human rights

In recent decades, initiatives to recognise rights for nature have multiplied, giving rise to a global movement. There are numerous opportunities for synergies between this movement and human rights, as both are rooted in the same philosophical, ethical, and moral framework that recognises rights based on the inherent and intrinsic values of living entities—both human and non-human.

In this context, this research conducted for the French Agency for Development (AFD) examines the connections between three key legal frameworks: conventional human rights, the right to a healthy environment, and the rights of nature.

Its objective is to analyse the interdependence of these categories of rights and explore how development actors can integrate these issues from an ecocentric perspective. In this regard, the ambition of this research is to analyse how these links between different legal frameworks can contribute to a new model of truly sustainable development for all living beings.

This reflection is not merely theoretical—on the contrary. Human rights jurisprudence increasingly incorporates the rights of nature as part of the right to a healthy environment. This right highlights the link between human well-being and the rest of the natural world, emphasising the intrinsic reciprocity among all these elements. This approach fosters the emergence of a legal perspective that considers the natural world as an interconnected system, composed of diverse life forms in dynamic relationships with one another, encompassing the biosphere as a whole—both human and non-human.
However, this study also examines potential conflicts between human rights and the rights of nature, recognising that environmental protection measures may restrict individual freedoms and limit the enjoyment of human rights. The principle of proportionality—often central to human rights decisions—could serve as a mechanism to manage such conflicts. This principle places human interests and nature’s interests on an equal footing, rather than imposing a hierarchy between these sometimes-divergent priorities.
Finally, this research explores how the complementarity between human rights and the rights of nature can lead to a less anthropocentric approach to the right to development.

Drawing from the significant jurisprudence of several Latin American countries that have already integrated the rights of nature alongside human rights within their legal systems, this study demonstrates how an approach that recognises and respects both human rights and the rights of nature is essential to building a just, sustainable, and balanced society. Such a society would value and preserve the dignity and interdependence of all forms of life, breaking away from a predominantly anthropocentric and economic conception of nature.

Representing the Rights of Nature: Learning from the Maori

To combat the vast environmental problems which we face, we need to develop new strategies for protecting the non-human environment. One promising strategy has been to grant ecosystems such as rivers, lakes, and mountains, legal personhood. These entities then possess the legal rights to protect their interests from human exploitation. This strategy has been most successful in New Zealand, where since 2017 several ecosystems have been granted legal personhood. Indigenous Mãori groups are typically the driving force behind these changes, Mãori worldviews are reflected in the legal policies, and Mãori tribes stand as guardians of nature’s rights. This ground-breaking model of environmental protection combines Western legal frameworks with indigenous worldviews to decolonise dominant approaches to environmental governance. This project will undertake an interdisciplinary analysis of this model, to discover what drivers might be applicable to a European context, and what attitudes and institutions could support legitimate guardianship of nature’s rights.

BA Small Grant Award Date: 2022-23. Principal Investigator, Neil W. Williams.

Rights of Nature on the Island of Ireland: Scoping a Novel Research Agenda

In June 2021 Derry City and Strabane District Council adopted a pioneering motion on the ‘rights of nature’ (RoN). Within days, a similar motion was adopted by Fermanagh and Omagh District Council, followed by Donegal County Council in December 2021. Although local councils lack the legal power to enforce RoN without central governmental approval, the declarations set out pathways for the councils to explore with civil society what RoN might mean for local communities, and how the concept could be expressed across community and corporate plans, development objectives, and other strategic frameworks. Civil society organisations, activists, artists, and academics across the island of Ireland have connected the concept to the island’s history, drawing parallels with traditional folk-lore concepts and highlighting the value of RoN as a means of redressing the environmentally destructive legacies of colonialism, conflict, and the transition from conflict.

Bringing together experts on criminal, reparative and restorative justice responses to environmental harm (Rachel Killean), environmental governance and climate justice (Peter Doran), and human rights, indigenous rights, and RoN (Jérémie Gilbert), this small scoping study aims at developing a novel, collaborative research agenda oriented around the nascent RoN movement on the island of Ireland.

This project received funding from the Queen’s University Belfast Faculty Research Initiative Fund PI: Rachel Killean