They are fighting for nature to have rights

It is time for man to think and do right. One step on the road is to give nature legal rights. This is what proponents of the right-to-work movement are currently growing in Sweden.

- We all need to go to school and have nature as a teacher so that we can build communities that can imitate nature. If nature is to be a teacher, we need to accept nature as its own subject. Understand the exchange that is going on there and how we are part of it, says Nikolas Berg, eco-educator and one of the authors of the book Nature's Rights, when the law provides peace with the earth.

A sustainable future, according to Nikolas Berg, is only possible if humanity transitions to a so-called earth-centered worldview. This is an issue that now increasingly characterizes the academic world where many research fields, such as critical animal studies, environmental humanities and posthumanism, question the human-centered worldview.

- We live in a culture where man is at the center and everything else is inferior, but here there are not the same human-centered perspectives on nature and the outside world. Humans are part of a whole instead, says Kristin Halverson, PhD student in the history of ideas at Södertörn University.

- It's not easy to change how we identify with the outside world. We feel like a being at the center and that is part of our identity, she continues.

The global rights movement believes that today's environmental laws are created on the basis of human conditions and are not sufficient to protect nature. But it may be about to change.

In recent years, more and more parliaments and courts have actually recognized the rights of nature. In 2008, Ecuador became the first country in the world to include the rights of nature in its constitution and in 2017 both one of New Zealand's largest rivers, Whanganui, and Ganges in India gained legal status as a legal entity. Often, the new environmental laws are inspired by the countries' urinals.

However, it has turned out that it is not entirely obvious that the legal rights will have any effect.

- If we look at Ecuador, which has nevertheless changed the constitution to recognize the Quechua people's view of nature and nature, the government has nevertheless approved a mining project. How does it fit in with the rights of nature ?, says Kristin Halverson and continues:

- I think it's a way to start a change, but it also raises a lot of questions. How would we bring nature's action? And if we give people that mission - will they act on behalf of nature or on behalf of man ?, says Kristin Halverson.

Ingrid and Nikolas Berg, eco-educators and authors of Nature's rights, when the law provides peace with the earth, believe that the reason why more and more people are joining the growing right to freedom movement may have to do with a growing concern for the climate.

- It is a concrete way to deal with the anxiety, says Ingrid Berg.

- It is clearly possible to change a society, especially when we seriously understand the crises and that we need to change direction. That understanding is starting to take root now, says Nikolas Berg.

Ingrid and Nikolas Berg have written the book together with Martin Hultman, who researches technology, science and environmental studies at Chalmers.