On October 10, 2017, CBC radio host, Anna Marie Tremanti’s presented a segment entitled “Colorado River: Should the river have the same legal rights as a person”. A lawyer, Jason Flores Williams, on behalf of an environmental group has asked a judge to grant to the Colorado River the same legal rights as a person. Mr. Williams stated in the interview with Tremanti, that states and corporations are legal “persons”. The Corporate “persons” use the finite resources for their own interests, these same resources upon which all of us depend. Existing laws to protect nature are inadequate to prevent degradation of the environment and loss of many species of plants and animals. If the Colorado River is deemed to be a legal person, entitled to be represented by a guardian, this ecosystem upon which the population depends can go to court to protect itself from injuries inflicted by all-powerful governments and corporations. Already, the overuse of the Colorado has been such that this former great river no longer reaches the Gulf of Mexico. Corporations have sufficient wealth to influence governments into issuing permits for fifty-million-dollar water bottling plants. But new forces are instituting change. Three dozen communities in the United States have statutes proclaiming the rights of natural entities. Similar laws in New Zealand, Equator, Bolivia, Columbia and India have been passed and upheld.
David Boyd, and environmental lawyer from Pender Island, BC, is the author of The Rights of Nature: A Legal Revolution That Could Save the World. Boyd notes that Indigenous peoples think of nature as having human qualities. In Manitoba, aboriginal people speak of Lake Winnipeg having a spirit which is crying for help. Boyd comments that we treat nature as property which is either privately owned or the property of government. Indigenous people speak of connections among all nature – "all our relations”. We are facing the meltdown of our planet with massive decreases in animals and plants. We are on the verge of the 6th mass extinction of earth in the four and a half billion years of our history. Concerns of communities about fracking and bottling water abound. Countries, such as Equator, have established that nature has constitutional rights as a legal person.
David Boyd states that unless we develop a different perspective in our relationship with nature the degradation will continue rapidly. We need to transform our view: “Nature is a community to which we belong, not a commodity which we own.”
The radio program hosted by Anna Marie Tremanti The Colorado River, can be accessed at CBC, “The Current”, October 10, 2017. The audio presentation is worth nineteen minutes of listening.
Pat McKeon, CSJ