December 14, 2025
DAWN
ECUADOR is a small country, tucked away in the northwestern corner of South America. In 2008, it did something potentially transformative for the Earth’s future. It enacted a new constitution which, for the first time in human history, embodied the concept of the rights of nature. Nature was granted legal personhood.
“Nature, or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and occurs, has the right to integral respect for its existence and for the maintenance and regeneration of its life-cycles, structure, functions and evolutionary processes. All persons, communities, peoples and nations can call upon public authorities to enforce the rights of nature.” (Article 71)
The rights of nature movement has been advancing for some time now, quietly in the noisy global debate around the environment. The concept is deeper, more foundational than, for example, environmental laws which seek to protect nature for the benefit of the human race. Indeed, the debate need no longer be framed purely in terms of one species. To the pragmatic argument, we can add a higher ethical and spiritual argument. Nature is sentient, it lives and so has rights like other living things. If rivers, mountains and forests have rights, they do not exist merely as resources for exploitation.
The Ecuadorian constitution has been tested in subsequent litigation. In 2021, in the Los Cedros Cloud Forest case, their constitutional court upheld the forest’s right to exist and blocked a mining project. The court held that nature’s rights take precedence over economic interests. This progress from concept to constitutional reality and subsequent validation in law is vitally important. In law, precedence is of great importance.
Ecuador has inspired other jurisdictions. New Zealand took the legislative, not the constitutional, route. Their parliament passed the Te Awa Tupua Act in 2017. The Act recognised the Whanganui river and its ecosystem as a single legal entity called Te Awa Tupua. “Te Awa Tupua is an indivisible and living whole from the mountains to the sea, incorporating all its physical and metaphysical elements.” And: “Te Awa Tupua is a legal person and has all the rights, powers, duties, and liabilities of a legal person.” (Section 14)
Nature is sentient, it lives and so has rights.
Why does any of this matter? Let us see where the world stands today in terms of the environmental crisis. It has been 10 years since the Paris Agreement. The latest progress review at COP30 in Belém, Brazil, in November 2025, was sobering. The conference, held symbolically in the largest rainforest on earth, was noteworthy for a lack of binding commitments for the future. Most notably, there was no agreement on phasing out fossil fuels in the face of opposition from oil-producing countries. What stood out was the need for stronger consensus across nations. More concrete, urgent action is needed, something more fundamental than endless tinkering at the margins.
Arguably, the idea of the rights of nature should be central to the debate. It is fundamentally about respect for nature and how to reconcile the various strains and stresses amid human progress. Significantly, the movement globally is closely identified with local communities and indigenous peoples. These communities have been severely impacted, their livelihoods threatened, in some cases extinguished. But it matters more than in purely economic terms. These people, closer to nature, more sensitive to the environment, have a mindset of coexistence, not exploitation. The New Zealand movement was driven by the native Maori community. There is a saying among them “Ko au te awa, Ko te awa ko au” — “I am the river, the river is me.”
This symbiosis of humankind and nature is integral to most folklores and many of the major religions. The Quran, for example, places nature at the heart of creation: “And we have spread out the earth and have set upon it firm mountains and have caused it to bring out plants of all beauteous kinds.” (50:7) And: “Surely, in the creation of the heavens and the earth … there are signs for men of understanding.”(3:190). Further, the Quran speaks of our species as steward, khalifa, charged with protecting and preserving nature: “For He it is who has appointed you vicegerent over the earth… .” (6:165)
Regardless of religious belief, we would do well to ponder further, if only to understand the critical co-dependence. It is a cliché that there exists an existential threat. It manifests itself increasingly in climate change, every year bringing worse news. Future action must be grounded in fundamental change in our thinking on our relationship with nature. Progress will not be easy or quick. The example of Ecuador is startling in its irony — it remains a country substantially dependent on oil extraction and mining.
The writer is a member of the Economic Advisory Group.
eag.org.pk
Published in Dawn, December 14th, 2025
ECUADOR is a small country, tucked away in the northwestern corner of South America. In 2008, it did something potentially transformative for the Earth’s future. It enacted a new constitution which, for the first time in human history, embodied the concept of the rights of nature. Nature was granted legal personhood.
“Nature, or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and occurs, has the right to integral respect for its existence and for the maintenance and regeneration of its life-cycles, structure, functions and evolutionary processes. All persons, communities, peoples and nations can call upon public authorities to enforce the rights of nature.” (Article 71)
The rights of nature movement has been advancing for some time now, quietly in the noisy global debate around the environment. The concept is deeper, more foundational than, for example, environmental laws which seek to protect nature for the benefit of the human race. Indeed, the debate need no longer be framed purely in terms of one species. To the pragmatic argument, we can add a higher ethical and spiritual argument. Nature is sentient, it lives and so has rights like other living things. If rivers, mountains and forests have rights, they do not exist merely as resources for exploitation.
The Ecuadorian constitution has been tested in subsequent litigation. In 2021, in the Los Cedros Cloud Forest case, their constitutional court upheld the forest’s right to exist and blocked a mining project. The court held that nature’s rights take precedence over economic interests. This progress from concept to constitutional reality and subsequent validation in law is vitally important. In law, precedence is of great importance.
Ecuador has inspired other jurisdictions. New Zealand took the legislative, not the constitutional, route. Their parliament passed the Te Awa Tupua Act in 2017. The Act recognised the Whanganui river and its ecosystem as a single legal entity called Te Awa Tupua. “Te Awa Tupua is an indivisible and living whole from the mountains to the sea, incorporating all its physical and metaphysical elements.” And: “Te Awa Tupua is a legal person and has all the rights, powers, duties, and liabilities of a legal person.” (Section 14)
Nature is sentient, it lives and so has rights.
Why does any of this matter? Let us see where the world stands today in terms of the environmental crisis. It has been 10 years since the Paris Agreement. The latest progress review at COP30 in Belém, Brazil, in November 2025, was sobering. The conference, held symbolically in the largest rainforest on earth, was noteworthy for a lack of binding commitments for the future. Most notably, there was no agreement on phasing out fossil fuels in the face of opposition from oil-producing countries. What stood out was the need for stronger consensus across nations. More concrete, urgent action is needed, something more fundamental than endless tinkering at the margins.
Arguably, the idea of the rights of nature should be central to the debate. It is fundamentally about respect for nature and how to reconcile the various strains and stresses amid human progress. Significantly, the movement globally is closely identified with local communities and indigenous peoples. These communities have been severely impacted, their livelihoods threatened, in some cases extinguished. But it matters more than in purely economic terms. These people, closer to nature, more sensitive to the environment, have a mindset of coexistence, not exploitation. The New Zealand movement was driven by the native Maori community. There is a saying among them “Ko au te awa, Ko te awa ko au” — “I am the river, the river is me.”
This symbiosis of humankind and nature is integral to most folklores and many of the major religions. The Quran, for example, places nature at the heart of creation: “And we have spread out the earth and have set upon it firm mountains and have caused it to bring out plants of all beauteous kinds.” (50:7) And: “Surely, in the creation of the heavens and the earth … there are signs for men of understanding.”(3:190). Further, the Quran speaks of our species as steward, khalifa, charged with protecting and preserving nature: “For He it is who has appointed you vicegerent over the earth… .” (6:165)
Regardless of religious belief, we would do well to ponder further, if only to understand the critical co-dependence. It is a cliché that there exists an existential threat. It manifests itself increasingly in climate change, every year bringing worse news. Future action must be grounded in fundamental change in our thinking on our relationship with nature. Progress will not be easy or quick. The example of Ecuador is startling in its irony — it remains a country substantially dependent on oil extraction and mining.
The writer is a member of the Economic Advisory Group.
eag.org.pk
Published in Dawn, December 14th, 2025
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