About

The global Rights of Nature (RoN) movement, which acknowledges and advocates for nature's inherent rights, is rapidly gaining traction worldwide. In Canada (Turtle Island), scholars, scientists, experts, legal practitioners, and Indigenous Peoples are actively participating to the discussion and the direction of the movement, from the local to the international. 

The RCEN Biodiversity Caucus is establishing the Rights of Nature Canada Hub. The Hub will bring together stakeholders, experts, knowledge holders, the public and rights-holders to advance RoN in Canada through dialogue, collaboration, and the sharing of best practices for action.

The movement to recognize various non-human relations, from animals to Mother Earth, as legal subjects rather than mere objects to be owned or resources to be exploited is rapidly gaining momentum globally under various guises including "Wild Law," animal rights, and legal personhood for rivers and ecosystems. Indigenous peoples and local communities are often at the forefront of this movement. The label "rights of nature" is often attached to this idea. The strength of this formulation is that it arises from ethical and legal concepts and practice that are well known and developed in now-dominant western cultures and engages them. At the same time, the movement transcends and, in some ways, challenges a "rights" paradigm. Another offered formulation is to talk about "respect for all relations". This engages the concepts of stance, of kinship, and of ecological connections.