Sharing Rights with Nature on the Island of Ireland: Rights of Nature

Abstract

Inspired by a global rights-based movement, in June 2021 Derry City and Strabane District Council adopted a pioneering motion on the Rights of Nature. In the motion, the Council recognises that the Rights of Nature can act as a catalyst for a new kind of economic thinking, one that is post-extractivist and regenerative. Within days, a similar motion was adopted by Fermanagh and Omagh District Council, and there are plans for others, including Donegal County Council, to consider similar proposals. In doing so, councils in Northern Ireland have embarked on a significant challenge to the dominant paradigm of environmental law. The motion at Derry City and Strabane District Council is a sign of our times that has both intensely ‘local’ and ‘global’ significance. That is to say, progressive planetary activism is intimately connected to our sense of place and belonging, while simultaneously attuned to multiple conversations and transitions taking place across our imperilled planet. The Rights of Nature movement is capturing the imaginations of communities across the world because it helps to turn our narratives of transition towards the ‘more-than-human': that intimate web of nature and meaning in which we are all entangled and implicated. It also represents an expression of a ‘biocentric’ or ‘ecocentric’ turn in the law: a decentring of ‘the human’ in favour of protecting the intrinsic rights of other beings. This brief seeks to introduce readers to the Rights of Nature concept, in the hope that it furthers this important conversation on the island of Ireland. It outlines some of the key developments in practice, as well as the theoretical contributions Rights of Nature can make to the way we think about human relationships with our planet.