This year, Earth Day and UN World Environment Day both focus on restoration, for good reason; 97% of Earth’s land area may no longer be ecologically intact. If we don’t urgently make recovery and investment choices that change course, our ecosystems, and humanity itself are on a path to collapse. We’re facing multiple crises: a global pandemic,…
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By: Anna Maria Cárcamo, Legal Policy Advisor, Amazon Program Portugues abaixo To celebrate the importance of rivers and the movement for their protection, and to recognize actions of resistance and innovation in the different biomes of Brazil, the Coalition for the Permanent Protection of Rivers in Brazil invites you to participate in “O Canto das…
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By: Pier-Olivier, SNAP Quebec; Monti Aguirre, International Rivers; Grant Wilson Earth Law Center Lire en Français Keywords: environment, conservation, rivers, protection, law, Nature, Magpie, legal personhood, First Nations, municipalities On February 23, the Muteshekau-shipu Alliance, of which SNAP Québec is a member, announced that “legal personhood” had been granted to the Magpie River – a…
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 2, 2021 Contacts: Constanza Prieto Figelist (cpfigelist@earthlaw.org, +1-202-621-3877) Grant Wilson (gwilson@earthlaw.org, +1-510-566-1063) QUITO, ECUADOR—This week, a coalition of forest experts, river protectors, and law professors submitted an amicus brief to Ecuador’s Constitutional Court calling for a robust application of the “Rights of Nature” to protect the Upper Nangaritza River Basin Protected Forest…
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Poet Laureate Robert Hass is joining us live on December 16 at 5pm pacific for our 2020 end of the year event “Rivers Unite Us” for a live reading. A RIVER from “The State of the Planet” The people who live in Tena, on the Napo River, Say that the black, viscous stuff that pools in…
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By: Anna Maria Cárcamo, Legal Advisor Latin America and the Brazilian National Articulation for the Rights of Nature – Mother Earth Português translation below | Tradução de português abaixo Rights of Nature is a global movement which proposes a profound change in legal frameworks and society as a whole, from an anthropocentric to an ecocentric…
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By: Ayesha DSouza, South Asia Program Coordinator & guest writer Sarah Bardeen What is a river? The dictionary defines a river as “a natural stream of water of usually considerable volume” or, quite simply, a “watercourse.” But at our “Dialogue on the Rights of Rivers,” which took place in Delhi, India from March 6-7, 2020,…
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By: Ayesha DSouza, South Asia Program Coordinator & guest writer Melanie Scaife Mayalmit Lepcha grew up listening to the sounds of the Rongyoung River, which flows past her village in Dzongu, in the Indian state of Sikkim. This tiny state lies in the heart of the Himalayas between Nepal, Bhutan and Tibet, and is a…
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Rulings loom as UNGA meets on biodiversity OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA—A new report by the Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice, Earth Law Center, and International Rivers finds that a movement to grant legal rights to rivers and nature is rapidly gaining momentum globally. The report examines how the ancient notion that nature possesses basic rights…
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By: Bruce Shoemaker, Klamath Project Liaison The proposed removal of four aging dams on the Klamath River in far-northern California and southern Oregon is at a crucial juncture. Following sustained campaigning by tribal and environmental groups, what is likely the largest proposed dam removal project to date world-wide, one that has huge implications for the…
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By: Toon Bijnens, Save the Tigris and Iraqi Marshes Campaign Mesopotamia is one of the regions most severely affected by water scarcity in the world. It is currently seeing an increased competition over water resources, and the construction of disruptive megaprojects continues: Iraq, in particular, faces huge challenges. Ilisu Dam in Turkey and Daryan Dam in…
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