On the Rights of Nature

Niels de Fraguier is an ecopreneur, coalition-builder, and expert in regenerative business working at the intersection of nature, governance, and future generations. He is the author of the books The Regenerative Enterprise and Cartography of Inner Worlds. The Regenerative Enterprise offers a visionary and practical pathway for entrepreneurs wanting to combine economic prosperity, positive social...

This episode I am joined by Mari Margil, the Executive Director of the US Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights, to talk about their pioneering initiative to develop new frameworks where land can own itself. Mari is one of those pioneers in the rights of nature movement. She has served as the Associate Director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF). In 2008, she acted...

This is a special episode, a conversation between Robert Macfarlane, Pella Thiel and Ingrid Rieser as Macfarlane's remarkable new book, Is a River Alive? , was published in Swedish. Robert Macfarlane is a British writer and academic, best known for his lyrical books about landscape, nature, place, and language. He is Professor of Literature and the Environmental Humanities at the University of Cam...

Klaas Kuitenbrouwer is the director of the Zoönomic Institute in the Netherlands, one of the organisations with most experience in designing structures for organisational governance from a more-than-human viewpoint. They tend to the roots of the Zoöp movement, supporting organisations to become regenerative by adding a person with a special function: a Speaker for the Living. Klaas studied history...

Dominique Hes is an author, educator and policy advisor with a PhD in Architecture and has been thinking about biomimicry, biophilia and regenerative development for a long time, publishing the award winning book 'Designing for Hope: Pathways to Regenerative sustainability', a decade ago. Her continued research centres on how to create a built environment that is good for people and the nature the...

In this episode, Christiane Bosman presents the Embassy of the North Sea. She talks about how the sea is often seen as empty space, where human activity can take place. Through using the frame of an embassy, she often gets access to spaces to represent the interests of the North Sea that would otherwise not be available. The Embassy began as an art project, which turned out to be a constructive po...

Nonhuman Nonsense is a research-driven art and design collective working in the realm of social dreaming and world-making. Their projects engage with the nonhuman: animals, objects, ecology, technology, and the spectres between and beyond categories. Nonhuman Nonsense sees nonsense as an antidote to "common sense" – embracing paradoxical stories to explore the ethical and metaphysical layers of ou...

Hugo Echeverria is an attorney who has worked in environmental law since 2001, with an emphasis on biodiversity conservation, the environmental rule of law, and the rights of nature. He is a member of the UN Harmony with Nature, as well as the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law. Ecuador is the first, and still the only, country on the planet to recognize rights of nature in the constitutio...

Yolanda Esguerra is a passionate environmental and social justice advocate from the Philippines. She is a leading voice in the movement to integrate ecological justice into Philippine legal and social systems, the National Coordinator of the Philippine Misereor Partnership Inc, a network of over 230 civil society organizations and church groups which is the leader of the RoN movement in the Philip...

Oliver Costello is a First Nations man from Bundjalung Country, now known as the Northern Rivers of New South Wales, Australia. He has a diverse range of personal and professional expertise in culturally connected stewardship. Oliver has extensive experience working within Indigenous land and sea management and conservation and has been particularly interested in empowering Aboriginal perspectives...

Alessandro Pelizzon is associate professor in the School of Law and Society at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia. He has been part of the movement for rights of nature since its inception as a co-founder of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature, the current chair of GARN's Academic Hub, and an expert member of the UN Harmony with Nature programme. Alessandros classical educa...

Eduardo Salazar Ortuño is an environmental lawyer. Together with professor of law Teresa Vicente Giménez, he supported the salt water lagoon Mar Menor in Spain to attain legal personhood, as the first ecosystem in Europe. Eduardo has been practicing environmental law for 20 years. He is an expert on the Aarhus Convention, which empowers citizens and NGOs to defend the environment using access to i...

Craig Kauffman is a professor of political science at the University of Oregon and author of the book The Politics of Rights of Nature together with Pamela L Martin. Craig is one of the first academics to engage with the rights of nature. He gives an overview of how rights of nature frameworks started to emerge simultaneously in different parts of the world as a response from common pressures that...

Welcome to On the Rights of Nature! In this podcast we will explore the emergence of expanding legal frameworks to include nature; rivers, lakes, mountains and land. We will hear from academics, activists, lawyers and indigenous voices who are doing this profound work. Pella Thiel, ecologist, author and teacher living in Sweden, will be your host. In my view, Rights of nature is a necessary founda...