By Michelle C. Pardo<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A controversial legislative effort to grant coral reefs and watersheds \u201clegal personhood\u201d in Hawaii has been voted down by the state legislature. The Na Aina no I\u2019a Act (NANI Act) sought to grant the respective ecosystems all \u201crights, powers, and protections of a legal person\u201d including \u201cthe capacity to be represented in legal proceedings\u201d and to \u201cexercise rights and protections under the law.\u201d Had the legislation passed, it would have joined a small but vocal \u201crights-of-nature\u201d movement to grant ecosystems inherent legal rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The environmental benefits of coral reefs and the threats to their vitality by climate change and other damage hardly need to be debated. These important ecosystems already are protected by environmental regulations. However, those advocating for \u201clegal personhood\u201d for reefs, rivers, and forests argue that environmental regulations are too weak or not enforced effectively to provide appropriate protections. The NANI Act would have allowed any individual to bring a lawsuit on behalf of a coral reef or watershed to seek an injunction to stop the harmful activity and order additional relief like restoration plans, monitoring and long-term stewardship obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While granting legal personhood to coral may sound offbeat and perplexing, it would not have been the first time that \u201cnature\u201d would have been recognized as legal persons. In 2017, the Whanganui River in New Zealand was granted legal personhood through the Te Awa Tupua Act, making it the first river in the world to be recognized as a living entity with the same legal rights as people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Environmental personhood laws typically emerge from indigenous or local community practices and cultural values about nature\u2019s role in society. The personhood status of the Whanganui River brought the \u201clongest running litigation in New Zealand\u2019s history\u201d to an end and paved the way for other countries to follow suit. In 2022, Spain recognized the Mar Menor lagoon in the Iberian Peninsula as having the rights of a legal person. Canada has done so for the Magpie River. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the United States, to date the movement has not been very successful, although the Klamath River in Northern California was granted personhood rights under tribal law. In 2019, the City of Toledo, Ohio voted to establish the Lake Erie Bill of Rights (LEBOR) which would have given personhood status to Lake Erie and granted the people of Toledo the right to sue on behalf of Lake Erie. A federal lawsuit defeated LEBOR, despite the law being recognized as a well-intentioned effort for environmental protection. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In holding that the law was unconstitutionally vague, a federal court stated: \u201cLEBOR\u2019s authors failed to make hard choices regarding the appropriate balance between environmental protection and economic activity. Instead, they employed language that sounds powerful but has no practical meaning.\u201d According to the court, this language could \u201ctrap the innocent [agricultural companies] by not providing fair warning\u201d and invited arbitrary enforcement by prosecutors, judges and juries. Drewes Farms P\u2019ship v. City of Toledo<\/em>, 441 F. Supp. 3d 551, 556 (N.D. Ohio 2020).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The unsuccessful Hawaii bill, likely suspecting that private citizens with their own ideologies and agendas could burden the judicial system, attempted to qualify the personhood right of action by requiring that any lawsuit brought on behalf of the coral reefs or watersheds be \u201caccompanied by a science-backed claim.\u201d NANI Act, SB 3323, \u00a7 4. Nonetheless, it also mandated that courts \u201cliberally grant standing to persons enforcing this chapter, in recognition of their kuleana (responsibility) as stewards of the affected ecosystem person.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Recently, a Minnesota state senator advocated for SF 3749, which would amend Minnesota Statutes 2024, section 1.148 — the state law governing wild rice — to \u201crecognize the inherent right of uncultivated wild rice to exist and thrive in Minnesota.\u201d\u00a0 The amendment would also require photographs of wild rice to be displayed in the office of the Minnesota Secretary of State.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For now, the rights of nature movement and those that seek to grant nonhuman animals legal personhood, have gained more headlines than legal victories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Michelle C. Pardo A controversial legislative effort to grant coral reefs and watersheds \u201clegal personhood\u201d in Hawaii has been voted down by the state legislature. The Na Aina no I\u2019a Act (NANI Act) sought to grant the respective ecosystems all \u201crights, powers, and protections of a legal person\u201d including \u201cthe capacity to be represented … <\/p>\n Continue reading “Coral Reefs Won\u2019t Enjoy \u201cPersonhood\u201d Legal Rights in Hawaii”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":318,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1107,1109,1113,638,175,42,1111,1104,1112,1105,1106,1110,1108],"ppma_author":[698],"class_list":["post-685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-coral-reefs","tag-ecosystem-persons","tag-environmental-activism","tag-legal-personhood","tag-michelle-c-pardo","tag-michelle-pardo","tag-minnesota-wild-rice","tag-nani-act","tag-personhood-movement","tag-rights-of-nature","tag-rights-of-nature-movement","tag-sf-3749","tag-watersheds"],"authors":[{"term_id":698,"user_id":318,"is_guest":0,"slug":"mcpardo","display_name":"Michelle Pardo","avatar_url":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/38\/2018\/06\/pardomichelle-125x150.jpg","author_category":"","last_name":"Pardo","first_name":"Michelle","job_title":"","user_url":"https:\/\/www.duanemorris.com\/attorneys\/michellecpardo.html","description":"Read Michelle's bio.<\/a>"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/318"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=685"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}