This page collects resources on more-than-human stakeholders, legal personhood for nature entities, and the rights of nature movement.

Organizations

• Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature
• Nonhuman Rights Project
• High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People
• Australian Earth Laws Alliance
• Stop Ecocide International
• ClientEarth

Company Actions

• Faith in Nature Appoints Nature to Board of Directors
• RiverSimple: Environment as “Custodian”
• Willicroft Cheese: Mother Nature as CEO
• Patagonia: Earth as Shareholder

Legislation

• 2022: Proposed Chilean Constitutional reforms included Rights of Nature, along with many other changes. The proposed reforms failed to pass a popular vote.
• New Zealand (2017): Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Act 2017
• Bolivia (2010): Bolivia – national rights of nature legislation

Litigation

• Climate Arbitration Database
• United States (2021): Manoomin vs Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR)
• Pakistan (2021): G. Khan Cement Company v. Government of Pakistan
• Argentina (2020):  Asociación Civil por la Justicia Ambiental v. Province of Entre Ríos, et al.
• Peru (2019): Alvarez et al v. Peru
• Colombia (2018): Future Generations v. Ministry of the Environment
• United States (2017): Colorado River Ecosystem v. State of Colorado

Scholarship

• Kelly, D., & Nicholson, A. (2022). Ancestral leadership: Place-based intergenerational leadership. Leadership, 18(1), 140–161. https://doi.org/10.1177/17427150211024038
• Kortetmäki, T., Heikkinen, A., & Jokinen, A. (2022). Particularizing Nonhuman Nature in Stakeholder Theory: The Recognition Approach. Journal of Business Ethics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-022-05174-2
• Jiren, T. S., Schultner, J., Abson, D. J., & Fischer, J. (2022). A multi-level assessment of changes in stakeholder constellations, interest and influence on ecosystem services under different landscape scenarios in southwestern Ethiopia. PLOS Sustainability and Transformation, 1(5), e0000012. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pstr.0000012
• Johnson-Cramer, M. E., Phillips, R. A., Fadlallah, H., Berman, S. L., & Elms, H. (2022). What We Talk About When We Talk About Stakeholders. Business & Society, 61(5), 1083–1135. https://doi.org/10.1177/00076503211053005
• Sayers, J., Martin, L., & Bell, E. (2022). Posthuman Affirmative Business Ethics: Reimagining Human–Animal Relations Through Speculative Fiction. Journal of Business Ethics, 178(3), 597–608. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-021-04801-8
• Guayasamin, J. M., Vandegrift, R., Policha, T., Encalada, A. C., Greene, N., Ríos-Touma, B., Endara, L., Cárdenas, R. E., Larreátegui, F., Baquero, L., Arcos, I., Cueva, J., Peck, M., Alfonso-Cortes, F., Thomas, D., DeCoux, J., Levy, E., & Roy, B. A. (2021). Biodiversity conservation: Local and global consequences of the application of “rights of nature” by Ecuador. Neotropical Biodiversity, 7(1), 541–545. https://doi.org/10.1080/23766808.2021.2006550
• Author Collective, K. I. N. (2021). Manaakitanga and the academy. Hospitality & Society, 11(1), 9–26. https://doi.org/10.1386/hosp_00028_1
• Banerjee, S. B., & Arjaliès, D.-L. (2021). Celebrating the End of Enlightenment: Organization Theory in the Age of the Anthropocene and Gaia (and why neither is the solution to our ecological crisis). Organization Theory, 2(4), 263178772110367. https://doi.org/10.1177/26317877211036714
• Kelly, D., & Woods, C. (2021). Ethical Indigenous Economies. Engaged Scholar Journal: Community-Engaged Research, Teaching, and Learning, 7(1), 140–158. https://doi.org/10.15402/esj.v7i1.70010
• Pollman, E., & Thompson, R. B. (2021). Corporate Purpose and Personhood: An Introduction (SSRN Scholarly Paper No. 4046998). https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=4046998
• Pollman, E. (2021). Corporate Personhood and Limited Sovereignty (SSRN Scholarly Paper No. 3897831). https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=3897831
• Wesche, P. (2021). Rights of Nature in Practice: A Case Study on the Impacts of the Colombian Atrato River Decision. Journal of Environmental Law, 33(3), 531–555. https://doi.org/10.1093/jel/eqab021
• Ergene, S., Banerjee, S. B., & Hoffman, A. J. (2020). (Un)Sustainability and Organization Studies: Towards a Radical Engagement. Organization Studies, 017084062093789. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840620937892
• Laastad, S. G. (2020). Nature as a Subject of Rights? National Discourses on Ecuador’s Constitutional Rights of Nature. Forum for Development Studies, 47(3), 401–425. https://doi.org/10.1080/08039410.2019.1654544
• Chen, J., & Burgess, P. (2019). The boundaries of legal personhood: How spontaneous intelligence can problematise differences between humans, artificial intelligence, companies and animals. Artificial Intelligence and Law, 27(1), 73–92. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10506-018-9229-x
• Sajeva, G. (2015). Rights with limits: Biocultural rights – between self-determination and conservation of the environment. Journal of Human Rights and the Environment, 6(1), 30–54. https://doi.org/10.4337/jhre.2015.01.02
• Bavikatte, S. K. (2014). Stewarding The Earth: Rethinking Property and the Emergence of Biocultural Rights. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198098669.001.0001
• Torres-Spelliscy, C. (2014, April 8). The History of Corporate Personhood. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/history-corporate-personhood
• Totenberg, N. (2014, July 28). When Did Companies Become People? Excavating The Legal Evolution. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2014/07/28/335288388/when-did-companies-become-people-excavating-the-legal-evolution
• Pollman, E. (2011). Reconceiving Corporate Personhood. Utah Law Review, 4, 1629–1675. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1732910
• Marcus, J., Kurucz, E. C., & Colbert, B. A. (2010). Conceptions of the Business-Society-Nature Interface: Implications for Management Scholarship. Business & Society, 49(3), 402–438. https://doi.org/10.1177/0007650310368827
• Banerjee, S. B. (2003). Who Sustains Whose Development? Sustainable Development and the Reinvention of Nature. Organization Studies, 24(1), 143–180. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840603024001341
• Banerjee, S. B. (2000). Whose Land Is It Anyway? National Interest, Indigenous Stakeholders, and Colonial Discourses: The Case of the Jabiluka Uranium Mine. Organization & Environment, 13(1), 3–38. https://doi.org/10.1177/1086026600131001
• Starik, M. (1995). Should trees have managerial standing? Toward stakeholder status for non-human nature. Journal of Business Ethics, 14(3), 207–217. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00881435
• Stone, C. D. (1972). Should Trees Have Standing? Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects. Southern California Law Review, 45, 450.

News

September 2022

• Faith in Nature Appoints Nature to Board of Directors
• Eco beauty company ‘appoints nature’ to its board of directors
• Brand appoints ‘Nature’ to its Board of Directors
• It Was War. Then, a Rancher’s Truce With Some Pesky Beavers Paid Off.
• Chile Says ‘No’ to Left-Leaning Constitution After 3 Years of Debate
• Chile Votes on Constitution That Would Enshrine Record Number of Rights: The constitution also states explicitly that “nature has rights” and “the state and society have the duty to protect and respect them.” It also orders the state to protect animals, “recognizing their sentience and their right to live a life free from mistreatment.” Constitutional law experts said that such provisions are probably intended to push Chile’s Congress to adopt environmental protection laws, but that they could also allow lawyers to file lawsuits on behalf of a forest or a threatened species.

August 2022

• Octopuses Don’t Have Backbones — or Rights

July 2022

• Media Release: IPBES Values Assessment – Decisions Based on Narrow Set of Market Values of Nature Underpin the Global Biodiversity Crisis
• Environmental justice is only the beginning

June 2022

• When Is a Bumblebee a Fish? When a California Court Says So

May 2022

• Happy the Elephant Has Lawyers Arguing to Free Her From the Zoo: Lawsuits also argue that lakes and wild rice have legal rights, too
  • Missouri bill seeks to block people from suing on behalf of ecosystems
  • Idaho passed a bill that bans environmental elements, artificial intelligence, nonhuman animals, and inanimate objects from gaining personhood
  • Orange County, Florida voters approved a county charter amendment in Nov 2020 giving rights to local bodies of water. State of Florida now argues a bill signed into law in June 2020 prohibited local government entities like counties from granting legal rights to plants, animals, or bodies of water. Proponents of the county amendment plan to argue the Florida constitution empowers local government entities to pass laws to protect nature, which includes the rights in the Nov 2020 amendment.

April 2022

• Ecuador’s Highest Court Grants Rights to Wild Animals

March 2022

• Press Release: Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe Brings First “Rights of Salmon” Case
• Not going with the flow: salmon ‘sue’ US city over harm to population
• Ecuador’s High Court Rules That Wild Animals Have Legal Rights

February 2022

• Panama Enacts a Rights of Nature Law, Guaranteeing the Natural World’s ‘Right to Exist, Persist and Regenerate’

January 2022

• Press Release: Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe Brings First “Rights of Salmon” Case

September 2021

• Wild rice sues to stop oil pipeline

May 2021

• A river in New Zealand legally becomes a person

April 2021

• The Rights of Nature — Can an Ecosystem Bear Legal Rights?
• A special kind of CEO: Mother Nature

December 2020

• This river in New Zealand is legally a person. Here’s how it happened

November 2020

• Ecocide: Should killing nature be a crime?
• Can Spain fix its worst ecological crisis by making a lagoon a legal person?

August 2018

• The return of nature worship

April 2018

• Colombian Supreme Court Recognizes Rights of the Amazon River Ecosystem

July 2014

• When Did Companies Become People? Excavating The Legal Evolution