Earth Law Center, a nonprofit with global reach and the mission to give nature a voice in legal systems, has cemented its headquarters in Durango.
Founded in 2008 by Patricia Siemen, a Dominican Sister and civil attorney, Earth Law Center works in more than 30 countries and with the United Nations in its efforts to usher a paradigm shift in environmental law.
Earth Law Center speaks for nature because nature can’t speak for itself, and it strives to help communities domestic and abroad develop the skills to do the same.
It planted offices in Durango about three years ago, and officially designated those offices as its new headquarters in September with a celebratory hanging of a shingle above its address at 530 Main Ave.
Earth Law Center Executive Director Grant Wilson said hanging the shingle was the symbolic establishment of the nonprofit’s local roots with international ambitions.
The nonprofit is fueled by the idea that nature needs an advocate in legal systems, which all too often treat ecosystems as nothing more than property or resources to be exploited.
It is funded largely through grants from charitable foundations, as well as private and individual donations.
Wilson said Earth Law Center represents nature the same way a legal guardian might speak on behalf of a child who cannot defend his or her own rights. It advises courts and governments on how to designate legal guardians for rivers, waterways, forests and other natural systems.
“Earth Law Center is all about really implementing new and different ways of looking at rights for nature, and I thought that was an interesting concept because it was brand-new to me,” said Heather Robertson, Earth Law Center organizational strategist and partnership manager.
In Colorado, the nonprofit is working with another international group called Save the World’s Rivers, affiliated with Save the Colorado, in addition to communities that want to embrace the natural rights of rivers and watersheds, he said.
It has worked with municipalities such as Ridgway, Grand Lake and Nederland. He said Durango was a natural choice to set up a base because of the strong environmental ethics its community already fosters.
He hopes to start a local conversation considering how the Animas River could be given a voice, for example.
“Having a thriving community and housing and all these things are important to the community,” he said. “Let’s not lose sight of that. But let’s think about how we can do all that in harmony with the ecosystem in which we live.”
Wilson said nature’s rights are a foreign concept to many legal systems, such as the United States’ Eurocentric model that stems from colonization and holds certain human and property rights in high regard while being hostile to concepts like environmental rights.
But rights of nature are easy to spell out, although definitions differ between jurisdictions that have begun to acknowledge them, he said. Universal rights include the right to exist, the rights to thrive and be healthy, and the rights to restoration and regeneration.
“What does this watershed need to thrive or be healthy? You can use science to define that and put it into place,” he said. “… What rights does a river have? I would say it’s a right to flow and a right to adequate in-stream flows, and a right to biodiversity.”
Internationally, Earth Law Center has worked with the Panamanian government on what’s called the Leatherback Project to draft new national laws acknowledging the rights of nature.
It worked in Ecuador, protecting the rights of Los Cedros Cloud Forest in the face of mining efforts that threatened holistic impacts to surrounding bioregions.
In Peru, it worked on a case with the Kukama Women’s Federation to defend the rights of the Marañón River, which is a main stem that flows into the Amazon River, Wilson said, protecting it from oil pollution and other impacts. The plan, still unfolding, is to appoint Indigenous women as defenders of the river, who will speak on the river’s behalf.
Earth Law Center Operations Manager Matt Zepelin said earth law dates back centuries, and Western nature’s rights movements are still trying to catch up.
Wilson added the Navajo Nation codified its traditional beliefs in the rights of “Mother Earth” and “Father Sky” in 2002. But other nature’s rights advocates, including Earth Law Center, didn’t acknowledge that until just a few years ago.
The Navajo Nation’s code said, “All creation, from Mother Earth and Father Sky to the animals, those who live in water, those who fly and plant life have their own laws and have rights and freedoms to exist,” according to Eco Jurisprudence Monitor.
Globally, there are still only a handful of officially recognized “guardianship bodies” lending nature their voices, he said. But groups representing the Whanganui River in New Zealand, the Atrato River in Columbia and the saltwater lagoon Mar Menor in Spain are examples of success in Western or Eurocentric legal systems.
He said good guardians of nature typically have a cultural connection to the landscape in question. The guardians of the Columbian Atrato River, for example, identify with being interconnected and inseparable to the watershed.
“That’s similar to what’s happened in Aotearoa, New Zealand, where the Indigenous Whanganui Iwi people have said, ‘I am the river, and the river is me,’” he said.
But anyone can be an advocate for nature’s rights. After all, people are a part of nature.
“Maybe we don’t realize that as much culturally anymore or legally, but we are all nature,” he said. “Humans are part of ecosystems, and everyone has a stake.”
cburney@durangoherald.com
