A revolution in environmental law that recognizes Nature as a rights-bearing entity has been taking root. From rivers with legal personhood to constitutions that enshrine the rights of ecosystems, the movement reframes environmental protection as a matter of justice, not charity. But in July of 2025, when the International Court of Justice (ICJ) released its landmark advisory opinion affirming that governments are legally required to address climate change and curb emissions, one perspective was notably absent—the voice of Nature itself.
The ICJ ruling cited obligations for nations that have historically been heavy polluters to cut their emissions and enhance sequestration of greenhouse gases. The opinion stated that if governments were to breach these obligations, they could be liable to orders from the ICJ or other courts, requiring them to cease climate-harming activities or make compensation payments to climate-impacted people or countries. The court noted that “States have obligations under international human rights law to respect and ensure the effective enjoyment of human rights by taking necessary measures to protect the climate system and other parts of the environment.”
While the issued ruling of the ICJ is environmentally progressive, the language used and arguments made relay a heavily anthropocentric focus aimed at the benefits for humans, as well as violations of human rights if the obligations were disregarded. This ruling led me to question why the Rights for Nature were not included in the ruling’s language and arguments, and why international ecological jurisprudence is lacking in policy spaces as a whole.
Ecological jurisprudence and the rights of nature
Ecological jurisprudence is defined by Eco Jurisprudence Monitor (EJM) as “an approach to law that recognizes humans are part of Earth’s living systems, and challenges traditional legal models that treat nature as property. It encompasses Rights of Nature, environmental personhood, Earth Law, Wild Law, policy informed by ecological science and place-based governance, as well as Indigenous law, Traditional Ecological Knowledge [TEK], and other non-Western legal traditions.” Based on data collected from EJM, there are over 400 global legal provisions tracked as a “Rights of Nature” initiative.
The Rights of Nature movement recognizes the intrinsic value of and the right of natural beings to exist. The publication of Professor Christopher D. Stone’s 1972 article “Should Trees Have Standing? Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects” is often referred to as the foundation and origin of the movement, but the concept of Nature as an independent being with rights, personhood, and as existing with intrinsic value was not created by Professor Stone. Various cultures have worldviews grounded in this belief, and only in the past two decades has legislation around the movement truly started to gain momentum.
Famous examples include in 2008, when Ecuador became the first country to add the rights of “Pachamama” or “Mother Earth” to its constitution; in 2016, when a national court granted legal personhood to all rivers in Bangladesh; in 2018, when the White Earth Nation passed a resolution recognizing the rights of manoomin (wild rice); and in 2019, when New Zealand passed legislation to grant legal personhood to the Whanganui River. Despite the international span of Rights of Nature jurisprudence, similarity in the language used in legal documents has been observed, specifically the phrase, or rephrasing, of Nature’s right to exist, evolve, regenerate, and restore its vital cycles. This global consistency is remarkable and acts as a spotlight to a collective interest in reevaluating the relationship between humans and our environment(s).
Legal definition(s) of ecocide
Ecological crimes can be prosecuted during wartime under Article 8 of the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) Rome Statute, which prohibits the intentional launch of an attack in the knowledge it will cause “widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated.” There are two major issues with this policy: (1) ecological crimes of such Nature can only be prosecuted during wartime, and (2) crimes can only be prosecuted if the attack was launched intentionally, despite knowledge of the environmental consequences.
In 2021, after six months of deliberations, an independent expert panel of 12 international criminal and environmental lawyers unveiled a legal definition for the term “ecocide” as a potential amendment to Article 8 of the ICC’s Rome Statute, and to be declared the fifth international crime. The panel defined ecocide as “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts.” If passed, some question whether it would be appropriate for ecocide to be an international crime tried by the ICC, as the ICC is limited to prosecuting crimes of the 124 states that have ratified the Rome Statute. It’s important to comment that several nations have not ratified the Statute, including the world’s top emitters of greenhouse gases and, ‘coincidentally’, the world’s strongest militaries: the United States, Russia, India, and China.
Currently, 15 countries consider ecocide a crime, with varying definitions of what constitutes ecocide. Most recently, in February of 2024, Belgium passed an ecocide law to criminalize severe cases of environmental degradation and consider such actions at level six in their penalty code (of which there are eight levels). The law recognizes ecocide at the national and international levels, but the federal government of Belgium has a limited scope of application within its jurisdiction because domestic environmental legislation is primarily the responsibility of the three regional governments of Flanders, Wallonia, and Brussels.
Still, for the first time in Europe, Belgium’s law signifies that ecocide can and should be prosecuted as a crime in both national and international contexts. The increasing recognition of ecocide at the national level is yet another sign, alongside Rights of Nature policies and other forms of ecological jurisprudence, of an ecocentric paradigm shift.
Developing a symbiotic relationship between the rights of nature, ecocide, and other environmental movements
Ecocide laws are often seen as a policy tool that could build on existing Rights of Nature laws to heighten the consequences for violators of Nature. In other words, criminalizing ecocide is seen as an enforcement mechanism. Rights of Nature laws fill the gaps that ecocide laws cannot reach, as the proposed legal definition requires ecocide to be “severe” and applies only to “unlawful or wanton acts,” thereby restricting numerous acts of violence against Nature.
The two movements could grow towards a symbiotic relationship where ecocide laws function as a measure of enforcement in severe situations, and Rights of Nature laws protect against less severe, yet still threatening acts of environmental degradation. Rights of Nature laws could even serve as the basis and foundation for ecocide laws: because Nature has inherent and intrinsic value, to commit “severe” and “unlawful or wanton” acts against Nature is a serious crime (because A, B is true). The recent partnership between Youth for Ecocide Law (Y4EL) and the Youth Hub of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (GARN), which “aims to amplify the voices of young environmental leaders to foster the adoption of transformative environmental law,” is one example of this collaboration. If we truly seek to create relations of accountability and peace with our larger environment(s), jurisprudence needs to evolve beyond our current anthropocentric lens, and we can make it so by encouraging environmental movements to collaborate in developing ecocentric governance approaches.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chiara Grimes is a graduate of Georgetown University and a current second-year student at George Mason University, pursuing her Master of Public Administration with a concentration in Environmental Science and Public Policy. She believes we must cultivate and reimagine a culture that respects and finds immense value in our environment simply because it exists, not because of any resource or economic good it provides, and has a deep interest in eco-feminist studies.
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