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- A coalition in the Philippines is pushing for legislation of a “right of nature” bill, which would confer legal personhood on nature.
- The
bill, should it pass into law, will create a paradigm shift in existing
human-centered environmental laws and make individuals, governments and
corporations more responsible and accountable when dealing with nature.
- The
bill, currently in the drafting, adequately represents the connectedness
between indigenous peoples and their ancestral domains, an indigenous
women’s rights activist says.
- The
bill is part of a growing movement around the world to recognize
ecosystems and species as legal entities, as a way of boosting their
protection amid intensifying threats.
MANILA — Who speaks up in court for a dolphin or a turtle when
its habitat gets polluted? Does an animal even have the right to legal redress
in such a case?
Those are the questions underlying a push by environmental
activists and lawyers in the Philippines to expand legal protection for the
environment, strengthen indigenous people’s rights over ancestral domain lands,
and hold individuals, government and corporations accountable for environmental
abuses and lapses.
Initiated by the Philippine-Misereor Partnership Inc. (PMPI),
the “right of nature” bill is currently in the draft stage. Though it has yet
to be filed with either house of Congress, when it does it will be the first
bill of its kind to be considered for legislation in the Philippines.
Inspired by similar initiatives in Latin American countries such
as Ecuador and Bolivia, the RON bill’s main purpose is to grant nature legal
personhood. This would endow it with rights currently associated with humans,
including the right to exist and thrive; to habitat and diversity of life; to
water and clean air; to equilibrium; to restoration; to be free from chemical
trespass; to natural evolution; and to develop sustainably.
“We want to recognize nature as a distinct entity with legal
personality,” says Macki Maderazo, the PMPI’s legal counsel. “When you say it
has a legal personality then a person can represent nature before a court of
law and can seek damages or prosecute persons who committed violations under
the bill,” he adds.
The bill, touted as “revolutionary” among lawmakers, is expected
to create a paradigm shift in existing environmental protection perspectives.
Current Philippine laws on the environment are human-centered, Maderazo says,
focusing on protecting the environmental rights of individuals but not of the
environment itself. The RON bill presents a different perspective: nature gets
legal protection because it’s recognized as a distinct legal entity that
deserves legal representation.
Activists have previously tried to pursue the case for legal
personhood for the environment in court. In 2007, a group of environment
lawyers led by Benjamin Cabrido Jr. filed a case against the Japan Petroleum
Exploration Co. Ltd. (JAPEX) over its oil exploration, development and
exploitation activities in the Tañon Strait, the country’s largest marine
protected area, between the islands of Cebu and Negros.
Among the petitioners named in the case were “Resident Marine
Mammals,” including “toothed whales, dolphins, porpoises, and other [cetacean]
species inhabiting Tañon Strait represented by human beings in their capacity
as legal guardians of the lesser life-forms and as responsible stewards of
God’s creations.”
After an eight-year legal battle, the Supreme Court ruled in
favor of the petitioners and declared null and void the service contract
between JAPEX and the energy department. The court justified its ruling on
apparent violations of the 1987 Constitution, the National Integrated Protected
Systems Act (NIPAS) and the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) decree.
PMPI clamoured for a right of nature bill during President Rodrigo Duterte’s 2019 State of the Nation Address (SONA) last July 22. Image by PMPI (Photo from news.mongabay.com)
But the ruling held that animals have no “legal personality” and
thus could not be represented by lawyers.
“In our jurisdiction, persons and entities are recognized both
in law and the Rules of Court as having standing to sue and, therefore, may be
properly represented as real parties in interest. The same cannot be said about
animals,” the ruling stated. “There is no way that we, humans, can claim to
speak for animals let alone present that they would wish to use our court
system, which is designed to ensure that humans seriously carry their
responsibility including ensuring a viable ecology for themselves, which of
course includes compassion for all living things.”
According to Maderazo, the position of the Supreme Court
essentially means that nature, its ecosystems and animals are “not a subject of
the law and therefore not a subject of its protection.”
“What we protect are the people who will protect the dolphins,
not the dolphin itself,” he says. “But if you killed the dolphins, it will have
impacts on the ecosystem and eventually affect the people. We want to expand
the discussion with this bill.”
The framework also syncs with indigenous people’s perspective of
interconnectedness with nature, affirming that indigenous peoples are one with
and cannot exist without nature, says Arline Santiago of the Igorota
Foundation, a women’s community organization in the Cordilleras region.
She says the bill and its implementing rules and regulations
will also support the Indigenous People’s Rights Act (IPRA), particularly by
clarifying the process to acquire free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) — a
requirement for corporations when initiating projects within ancestral domain
territories.
“As of now … what’s lacking in the IPRA is the details of the
process of acquiring the FPIC,” Santiago says, adding that the law doesn’t
properly state the materials that corporations should prepare in obtaining the
consent. “In our experience, corporations fulfill the technical requirements
only while doing the FPIC. Some don’t even have any feasibility studies yet
they want an FPIC.”
Maderazo says he also believes the bill will complement and
strengthen environmental and indigenous people’s laws in the country, though
should it be enacted, the bill will require a thorough reassessment of existing
laws.
The bill also details a mechanism for just compensation for
environmental damages, which would be allocated for the restoration of damaged
areas, Maderazo says. “If there are monetary award for the damages on a coral
reef or mangrove area, then this money will go to the trust fund and this money
will ensure the restoration and protection of the area,” he says.
The Philippine right of nature bill is part of a growing
movement worldwide to recognize ecosystems and species as legal entities, as a
way of boosting their protection amid intensifying threats. In 2017, a
Māori tribe in New Zealand won unprecedented legal recognition of its
river, the Whanganui, as a living entity by
the state. In Argentina in 2014, a captive orangutan was granted “non-human person rights,”
and in 2016 a captive chimpanzee in Peru was similarly granted legal personhood.
In 2014, the Indian Supreme Court ruled that all non-human
animals have both statutory and constitutional rights in India. That was
followed by a 2015 decision from the Delhi High Court that birds have the
fundamental legal right to fly, and a 2018 decision from the Uttarakhand High
Court that identified members of the entire animal kingdom as persons.
Banner image of a turtle in the Tubbataha
Reefs National Park in the Philippines. Image by Gregory Piper/Coral Reef Image
Bank
Source and Original Article:>>> news.mongabay.com
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