Earth Defenders Warn Against Democrats Undermining ‘Rights of Nature’ Movement With Watered-Down Approach

By Jessica Corbett
Common Dreams
September 4, 2020

The fresh push for recognizing ecosystems as rights-bearing entities comes as the documentary film Invisible Hand premieres worldwide.

Ahead of the Friday night global premiere of Invisible Hand—which its creators are calling the world's first documentary film on the Rights of Nature movement—some U.S. campaigners fighting to grant ecosystems legal status as rights-bearing entities welcomed the Democratic Party's recent gestures toward their demands but warned against watering down the movement's vision.

As the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) explained in a recent video, “Rights of Nature is honoring and recognizing that nature has the right to exist, flourish, and thrive.” The movement advocates for fundamentally rethinking the current treatment of nature as property that landowners or corporations are legally entitled to pollute and destroy.

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