Legal Rights to Non-Humans

Why there is a Need for Legal Rights to Non-Humans

• Legal Rights to Non Humans: Concerns with the bio age
  • Environmental concerns: Uncontrolled gene flow from GMOs to wild populations will result in gene pollution there by affecting the whole environment.
  • Ethical concerns: Bio age also brings with it concerns over safety, consent, justice, equity, genome-editing research involving embryos and concerns over ‘eugenics’.
• Accountability: As the bio age brings with it significant concerns for humanity, it will require legal intervention to hold researchers responsible for their actions.
• Recalibration of human-environment relationship: Granting legal rights and protection to non-human systems – flora, fauna, rivers, ecosystems and landscapes – would recalibrate human-environment relationships and bring ethical conduct to the field.

Where does India Stand for Legal Rights to Non-Humans

• Fundamental duty:
  • Article 51-A (g) of the Constitution of India lays down that it is the fundamental duty of every citizen to protect wildlife and have compassion for all living creatures.
  • However, such duties are not enforceable by law.
• Legal right to the Ganga and the Yamuna:
  • The Uttarakhand High Court, in 2017, granted the river Ganga and its longest tributary Yamuna the legal right to be protected and not be harmed.

What is the “bio age”?

• The increased integration of biotechnology in human life will bring in the bio age.
• Integration of life sciences with modern technology through the production of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), engineering of genes indicate that biotechnology is most likely to spread into our lives in the future. It will mark the end of the digital Information Age.

Legal Rights to Non Humans: Bringing Laws into the Natural World

Countries that have Taken Steps in Bringing Laws into the Natural World:

Ecuador: The first country in the world to recognize the rights of nature

• In 2008, Ecuador approved a Constitution that grants tropical forests, islands, rivers and air, legal rights to “exist, flourish and evolve”.
• In April 2022 Ecuador became the first country to grant legal rights to individual wild animals.
• The judgment states: “wild species and their individuals have the right not to be hunted, fished, captured, collected, extracted, kept, retained, trafficked, marketed or exchanged.

Bolivia: Establishing the Law of Mother Earth

• Bolivia granted all nature rights equal to that of humans in 2011.
• It provided legal status to Mother Earth and all its components, which includes human beings, entitling them to inherent rights recognized by law.
• This includes: the right to life and to exist; the right to continue vital cycles and processes free from human alteration; the right to pure water and clean air; the right to balance; and the right to pollution-free living.

New Zealand’s Whanganui river: First in the world to be given legal status

• In 2017, The New Zealand parliament passed the Whanganui River Claims Settlement Bill, which granted legal personhood to river Whanganui and its surrounding ecosystem, in North Island.
• The Maori people had been fighting for the river to be recognized as a living entity for about 160 years.

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