Editor’s notes: “A Washington state city has granted part of the Snohomish River watershed legal rights that can be enforced in court. In nearly all cases, state legislatures heavily lobbied by commercial industries have preempted the laws, rendering them unenforceable. But the Everett initiative could be the first to withstand such a challenge. Democrats, typically more open to stronger environmental protections than Republicans, currently control Washington’s Legislature and governorship.”
Efforts to apply the rights of nature in Ecuador have often failed. Legal challenges can become highly politicised and there is little legal infrastructure beyond general constitutional principles.
For example, in a case brought after road builders had dumped material into the Vilcabamba River, plaintiffs claimed to represent nature in court. However, they were not genuinely advocating for the river’s rights – their main concern was protecting their downstream property.
Ultimately, defending the rights of nature in court will be a struggle if the nature in question – the river, forest or lake – is not represented by someone with an ecocentric perspective. That means prioritising the intrinsic value of nature itself, rather than focusing on how it can serve human interests.
“According to the third Kawa, the people and the river are intrinsically linked, so Te Awa Tupua isn’t merely the river but also includes the surrounding communities — which challenges Western notions of property and human-made law. The relationship between the Iwi and the river goes beyond mere geographical proximity and includes spiritual and affective care for each other.”
Biodiversity is declining at rates unprecedented in human history. This suggests the ways we currently use to manage our natural environment are failing.
Many Indigenous peoples have long emphasised the intrinsic value of nature. In 1972, the late University of Southern California law professor Christopher Stone proposed what then seemed like a whimsical idea: to vest legal rights in natural objects to allow a shift from an anthropocentric to an intrinsic worldview.
Here’s what you need to know about one of the fastest-growing environmental and social movements worldwide—to secure legal rights for ecosystems and other parts of the natural world.
By Katie Surma
April 2, 2025
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.
“Rights of nature” is a movement aimed at advancing the understanding that ecosystems, wildlife and the Earth are living beings with inherent rights to exist, evolve and regenerate.
Legal rights are the highest form of protection in most governance systems. In the United States, humans and non-humans have enforceable legal rights, like corporations’ right to freedom of speech.
At the same time, most legal systems treat nature as rightless property that humans can own, use and destroy. That means the law views sentient species like elephants and bald eagles, as well as life-supporting ecosystems like forests and coral reefs, no differently than objects like microwaves or cars.
For the people behind the rights of nature movement, that way of thinking is deeply flawed. It’s also scientifically inaccurate.
Humans are part of nature and depend on ecosystems for survival—from the food we eat to the water we drink and air we breathe. Evolutionary biology shows that humans share a common ancestor with all other life on Earth. Forests, rivers and other biomes provide conditions for human life to thrive. And humans have always shaped the environment and have been shaped by it.
Understanding this interconnectedness is key to understanding that human flourishing ultimately depends on a healthy Earth. Rights of nature activists say most societies have forgotten that basic truth, harming their own wellbeing—and threatening their very survival—as a result.
When did this forgetting happen? Academics have traced the notion that humans are separate from, and superior to, nature back to Renaissance-era thinkers like René Descartes, who compared animals to machines. The idea is also woven into the Bible’s book of Genesis, with God giving man “dominion” over the Earth. Others point to the advent of cities, when masses of people lost regular contact with nature.
Modern legal systems have been shaped by these developments and ideas, thus institutionalizing the belief that nature is an object, or thing, beneath humans.
“Until the rightless thing receives its rights, we cannot see it as anything but a thing for the use of ‘us’—those who are holding rights at the time,” law professor Christopher Stone wrote in the seminal 1972 law review article, “Should Trees Have Standing?” Stone noted that the law has always evolved to extend rights to new groups: moving from white, property-owning men to include women, people of color and children.
In 2006, a rural, conservative Pennsylvania town plagued by industrial pollution enacted the world’s first rights of nature resolution. Since then, scores of countries—including Ecuador, Spain, Bolivia, Colombia, Panama, India, the United States and Uganda—have had court rulings or enacted laws at the national or subnational level recognizing nature’s rights.
The advocates behind these laws argue that if nature’s rights are respected, humans will benefit.
How Do Rights of Nature Laws Differ From Environmental Regulations?
In the course of human history, environmental law is a relatively young field. In the United States, it largely developed in the late 1960s in response to mass pollution wrought by industrialization. Rivers caught fire, pervasive smog blanketed cities and chemicals like DDT were sprayed indiscriminately.
Policymakers enacted legislation like the Clean Water Act and Toxic Substances Control Act to regulate human activity and limit impacts of industry on human health. Those laws did curtail pollution. But rights of nature advocates argue that those conventional laws haven’t stopped the severe environmental problems we face today, like climate change, biodiversity loss and mass pollution.
Advocates say conventional environmental laws have a central flaw: They’re designed to permit pollution. They only control how much.
Rights of nature laws start from an entirely different place. Ecosystems, wildlife and Earth itself are treated as living beings with inherent rights deserving of the highest form of legal protection. The central concern of rights of nature laws is to maintain and preserve the integrity of ecosystems, requiring governments to take a preventative, rather than a reactionary, approach.
Ecuador’s Constitutional Court has said this mandates government officials to respect what is known as the “precautionary principle,” or the idea that, absent adequate scientific evidence, it is better to avoid certain risks that could lead to irreversible damage of ecosystems.
How Do These Laws Work in Practice?
The laws do not give nature’s rights absolute primacy over all other rights and interests.
No legal right is absolute. A right to free speech ends when that speech is defamatory or incites violence. Judges balance competing rights in the decisions they make every day. Nature’s rights are no different.
Rights of nature jurisprudence is still a young field. Most countries with such laws on the books haven’t had lawsuits attempting to enforce them. It’s also important to note that not all rights of nature laws are the same—there is wide variation in how the laws are written and what rights are recognized.
But Ecuador, which constitutionalized nature’s rights in 2008, has seen dozens of cases. There, Mother Earth, or Pachamama, has a right to “integral respect for its existence and for the maintenance and regeneration of its life cycles, structure, functions, and evolutionary processes.”
The Ecuadorian Constitution also requires the government to prevent the “extinction of species, the destruction of ecosystems, and the permanent alteration of natural cycles.”
Not all cases have been favorable for ecosystems. Ecuador’s economy is still largely dependent on oil revenues and other extractive industries.
But Ecuadorian courts have ruled in favor of mangroves, cloud forests, rivers, endangered frogs and coastal marine ecosystems, thwarting mining operations, industrial fishing and other nature-damaging activities. In some cases, courts have ordered the government to restore damaged ecosystems. Cases decided in favor of nature usually have a compelling reason for why nature’s rights ought to prevail over competing interests, like a high risk of extinction for certain species.
In the cloud forest case, the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court explained the importance of protecting a sensitive ecosystem from mining impacts, saying: “[T]he risk in this case is not necessarily related to human beings … but to the extinction of species, the destruction of ecosystems or the permanent alteration of natural cycles.”
In deciding these cases, Ecuadorian courts have depended heavily on scientific experts and evidence. Judges have also looked holistically at the health of ecosystems, rather than at piecemeal levels of pollution—a departure from the way courts tend to evaluate conventional environmental laws.
Scientists have come to the forefront of the movement in other ways. In Panama, for instance, marine biologists were instrumental in the passage of that country’s national rights of nature law.
How Are Rights of Nature Laws Enforced?
Trees and wild animals can’t walk into a courtroom and make their case. But rights of nature laws give ecosystems and species the ability to act in their own capacity under the law with help from people, similar to other non-human entities like corporations, business partnerships, ships and nonprofits.
This is done through a longstanding concept called legal personhood. That legal construct is most commonly used to allow businesses to enter into contracts, sue, be sued, own property and, in the case of corporations, limit the liability of its shareholders.
Each of those nonhuman entities is represented by a human guardian. Similar arrangements are used for minors and incapacitated people in court proceedings.
Who Is Behind This Movement?
Indigenous peoples have been at the forefront of the movement in several ways.
The worldviews of many Indigenous cultures—that humans are part of nature and owe responsibilities to other living beings—are foundational for the movement.
Honoring and preserving those worldviews and related knowledge for centuries has been no small thing. Indigenous communities have faced a long, dark history of colonization and other attempts aimed at eradicating their culture and separating them from their territories. Today, people in many Indigenous communities are still harassed, attacked and sometimes killed for defending water and land.
Indigenous peoples have also been behind many of the laws and court rulings advancing the movement. In New Zealand, Māori people fought for a settlement with the national government, resulting in legal personhood for a river, national park and mountains.
It was Ecuador’s strong Indigenous movements that led to the country becoming the first in the world in 2008 to constitutionally recognize Mother Earth’s rights. Ecuador’s Constitutional Court has also drawn on Indigenous knowledge in deciding rights of nature cases.
Bolivia’s Indigenous movements were behind that country’s 2010 and 2012 laws recognizing the rights of Mother Earth. Enforcement of nature’s rights in Bolivia has proved difficult, however.
Across North America, many Indigenous nations have passed rights of nature laws.
And in Peru, a coalition of Indigenous women won rights for the Marañón River ecosystem, a place the oil industry has heavily polluted for decades. The fight for the Marañón River came at great personal cost for Mariluz Canaquiri Murayari, president of Huaynakana Kamatahuara Kana, and other women in the organization, who were harassed and threatened for their advocacy.
What Are the Criticisms of Rights of Nature Laws?
The biggest opposition to the movement has come from industry groups—developers, the industrial agricultural sector and other polluting industries—and politicians aligned with those interests.
Those opponents argue that giving nature a higher level of protection will impede development and lead to an explosion of litigation. In practice, that hasn’t happened. Barriers to pursuing lawsuits, like the high cost of attorney fees, are substantial.
But the laws do threaten the interests of industries and businesses that have made money off extracting from and monetizing the natural world in unsustainable ways.
Some critics of the movement have questioned whether, if nature has rights, it also has duties: Can a river be sued if it floods and harms humans? Rights of nature advocates respond to this by saying that legal rights, duties and liability are always tailored to the entity they are assigned to.
Corporations, for instance, don’t have a right to family. Nature doesn’t have the capacity to act with intent and therefore should not have legal liability for harm it causes, advocates argue.
Another prevalent charge is that the rights of nature movement is an attempt to force human societies to surrender modern comforts and technology. In practice, though, advocates have sought to rebalance human interests with the health of ecosystems by placing better guardrails around human activity, ensuring the integrity and sustainability of Earth is maintained now and into the future. Advocates argue that humanity isn’t harmed by that but benefits instead.
They also say nothing so quickly forces people to surrender modern comforts as a disaster that destroys their homes and communities, and megadisasters are far more common in a warming world.
Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’, and papal exhortation Laudate Deum, said humans have a moral duty to protect the Earth.
“For ‘we are part of nature, included in it and thus in constant interaction with it,’” Francis wrote in Laudate Deum.
Ecuadorian activists say the country’s constitutional recognition of nature’s rights has made their country more pluralistic by incorporating the worldviews of Indigenous peoples and is changing the way everyday people think about the Earth, their home.
“We now have a whole generation of young people who have grown up only knowing that nature has rights,” Ecuadorian political scientist Natalia Greene told Inside Climate News. “The law has influenced peoples’ understanding of nature and that is very powerful.”
Learn More
Follow our reporting at Inside Climate News. We’re the only newsroom we know of that has a dedicated rights of nature beat. Start here and here.
Books by Indigenous authors and ecocentric thinkers:
Our system of law and government was founded in racial-divisiveness and colonization and is dominated by corporations. The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) fights to build sustainable communities by assisting people to assert their right to a local self-government system and the Rights of Nature. Fight for a more just, Earth-centered tomorrow, today.
The Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature(GARN) is a global network of organizations and individuals committed to the universal adoption and implementation of legal systems that recognize, respect and enforce “Rights of Nature”
Banner: To protect it from mining and deforestation, Los Cedros cloud forest was awarded the same rights as people.
Editor’s note: For capitalism, “renewable” energy is a transition to green(greed) colonialism. Splinter colonization is still the policy of the day, divide and conquer the masses and corrupting local elites with bribery.
Capitalists benefit from business-friendly legal doctrines and a uniform regulatory system. They do not have to contend with patchwork prohibitions and restrictions enforced by sovereign communities that require FPIC and put their sovereignty into practice by persuasion or physical force, refusing obedience and cooperation. No justice, no peace, so the guerrillas will keep investors away.
“Municipalities are the white man’s reservations. The only difference is, we know we’re on reservations.” – Debra White Plume (Wioweya Najin Win).
People of the global north must look upstream to the damage they cause to communities whose resources are being extracted by outsourcing diminished health and welfare externalities associated with alternative forms of energy.
The Philippine government has approved 99 hydropower projects in the mountainous Cordillera region, part of a broader plan to rely on renewable energy sources for 35% of the country’s power by 2030.
The planned projects are dividing rural communities between those who believe the dams will bring in jobs and money and those who fear damage to water sources and cultural sites.
The Cordillera region, home to many Indigenous groups, has a deep history of activism against dams.
It’s also heavily militarized as one of the last bastions of an armed communist insurgency — a circumstance state security forces are apparently exploiting to coerce communities into compliance.
KALINGA, Philippines — On the mountainsides flanking the mighty Chico River in the northern Philippines’ Kalinga province, residents of once tight-knit villages have drifted apart in recent years. Hearty greetings between neighbors tending to farmlands have been replaced with avoidant looks or glowering stares.
“We don’t talk much like before,” says Gohn Dangoy, a 59-year-old farmer of the Naneng tribe in Kalinga’s Tabuk city. “If we do, we argue. Families and friends alike are at odds.” He says the “deep division” started because of the proposed dam on the Chico River.
West of Tabuk, locals in the municipality of Balbalan live in fear of the military operations that began around the same time the hydropower projects rolled into town.
They remember the first of the bombings happening in March 2023, as they were sound asleep on the night following their annual Manchachatong festival. Eufemia Bog-as, 30, recalls jumping from her bed at around 2 a.m. “It was like an earthquake. I heard a big boom six times. I went outside and the sky was covered with smoke,” she tells Mongabay. The government and military said they were targeting armed rebels, who were supposedly stirring up opposition against the dams.
“They told us, it’s because we’re against development,” Bog-as says.
Kalinga is one of six provinces in the northern and mountainous Cordillera region, populated by the Indigenous Igorot people. For more than 50 years, the government has been in conflict with armed communist guerrillas in the countryside. During that time, the military has often set up posts in rural villages to stifle dissent and support for the rebels.
Now, the government is eyeing the resource-rich region for a bevy of renewable energy initiatives.
A pivot to renewable energy by the Philippine government has led to a wave of hyrdoprojects projects across the Cordillera region. Image by Andrés Alegría / Mongabay.
Since 2015, the Department of Energy has greenlit 99 hydropower projects in the region, with total combined generating capacity of more than 4,000 megawatts. Of these, 52 are listed by their proponents as being in the development stage, 32 in pre-development, and 15 already operating commercially.
At every stage of development, the hydropower projects are breeding conflict and fracturing communities between those who favor them for ushering in modernity, and those who resent the potential damage to farms, burial grounds and water sources. Moreover, experts believe that the staggering amount of projects threatens to drastically reshape the region’s hydrogeography and economy for the worse. Throughout the Cordillera mountains, Igorot communities opposing the dams are frequently reporting militarization and even aerial bombings close to pasturelands and villages.
Both national and local governments have firmly backed the spate of projects.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has styled himself as something of a climate champion. In his 2023 state-of-the-nation address, he hyped his administration for “aggressively promoting renewables so that it provides a 35% share in the power mix by 2030.”
In the same speech this year, Marcos spoke of having approved projects with a combined more than 3 trillion pesos ($54 billion) in investments for four priority sectors, including renewable energy. He called it a “crucial step” in addressing climate change.
To that end, the Cordillera region is similarly crucial for the government’s renewables pivot. The region hosts the headwaters of 13 major river systems and can harness around 30% of the country’s hydropower potential, six times more than what the Philippines makes use of at present.
And in 2022, the Cordillera regional council announced plans to fast-track renewable energy projects. For local communities and activists, this raises the question of whether these changes jeopardize the natural landscape and livelihoods in one of the country’s most resource-rich and culturally diverse regions.
Dam disagreements
In the 1970s, Kalinga’s Indigenous communities, led by Macli-ing Dulag, now a national icon, famously resisted construction of a huge dam on the Chico River. Dulag was killed by state forces in 1980, but the project was shelved and the struggle blossomed into a discourse on safeguarding ancestral domains.
Since then, just a single 1-MW micro dam has been built in Kalinga, and its operations were suspended in 2021 after farmers complained of decreased water flow for irrigation. Now, however, the province is the proposed site of 19 hydropower projects across its rivers, with the famous Chico among them.
Australian-owned JBD Water Power Inc. (JWPI) heads four of these planned projects, two each on the Saltan and Cal-oan rivers. The Saltan River projects are still in the consultation stage, while the villages along the Cal-oan River have registered opposing views to the projects there.
In March 2023 and August 2024, Mabaca village filed petitions with the National Commission for Indigenous Peoples (NCIP), registering its disapproval of the 45-MW Mabaca 2 Dam on Cal-oan.
The latest petition intends to stall the free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) process required for the project to commence. It asserts the river as part of the community’s ancestral domain, thus giving it “legitimate claims to the watershed.”
Only initial talks have taken place. However, local leaders say the NCIP is forceful about the project, planning 12 further consultations with reluctant villagers.
Village captain Barcelon Badin says he’s seen the project blueprints and fears the dam will compromise their already scarce food sources since it “will clearly drown our rice fields.”
But downstream in Buaya, the next village over, locals are ready to sign a memorandum of agreement, a major step toward securing FPIC, with JWPI for the 40-MW Buaya hydropower project.
Hydropower projects have met with differening receptions in Cordillera villages such as Balbalan, Mabaca and Buaya. Image by Andrés Alegría / Mongabay.
Jermito Jacinto, an elder of the Buaya’s Butud tribe, is now a JWPI consultant. He says the project offers jobs, cheaper electricity, scholarships for children, and several million pesos in annual revenue for local authorities.
“Cal-oan River is full of honey and sugar but we don’t know how to use it,” Jacinto tells Mongabay.
He chides the villages that continue to hold out, calling their aversion to development a “hangover” from rebel rhetoric. Buaya and Mabaca villages are squabbling over these projects, as the former seeks revenue while the latter says any disruption to any part of the river risks the fields of all.
Having examined other dams in the region, former Balbalan mayor Eric Gonayon disputes any promise of growth associated with the dams.
“They will not develop the roads, only use them to relocate us from our heritage for the benefit of foreigners and businesses,” he tells Mongabay.
He scoffs at the potential revenue the projects could generate, saying “It’s not even worth 1% of the resources they’ll extract from us. It’s like they’re giving us candy but taking the whole shop!”
The Cal-oan River, also known as Mabaca River, where Australian-owned JBD Water Power Inc. (JWPI) has two planned hydropower projects. Image by Michael Beltran.
The Department of Energy mandates that companies allot village officials 0.01 pesos per kilowatt-hour, roughly 0.09% of average electricity sales.
Farther east in the provincial capital, Tabuk, the Karayan Hydropower Corporation, with ties to Singaporean investors, has secured memorandums of agreement with the three affected tribes this year for the 52-MW Karayan Dam on the Chico River.
Various tribal representatives allege the FPIC process was fraught with irregularities including bribery, withholding information, and excluding anyone against the dam from consultations.
Members of the Naneng tribe, who live in an area recognized by the province as a heritage village, say the dam will raise waters, drowning their coffee and rice fields and their ancestral burial sites.
“The ones who said yes were either bribed or unaffected!” says Dangoy, the farmer in Tabuk, who has rejected any financial assistance from the company in exchange for their consent. “What happens to our ‘rest in peace’ if we lose our tombs? We won’t replace that with a chance to be employees at the dam. The company won’t give jobs to all us farmers.”
Farmer Gohn Dangoy, of the Naneng tribe, says proposed dams have already caused deep divisions in his community. Image by Michael Beltran.
The NCIP has denied any wrongdoing, stating publicly that it consulted with all affected residents.
In Bagumbayan, one of the affected areas, village captain Andrew Cos-agom, says the dam’s critics won’t listen to reason. He swears by the project because it was twice surveyed by the city government and a third party and both gave assurances there would be minimal changes to the villages.
“It’s just a minority opposing the dam,” Cos-agom tells Mongabay.
However, Dominic Sugguiyao, the Kalinga provincial government’s environment and natural resources officer, refutes this. He says the surveys, which haven’t been made public, show that erosion and submersion are a distinct possibility. Sugguiyao says “misinformed politicians” are too blinded by the prospect of collecting taxes from these projects to see the negative impacts.
Because the Chico River is such a vital water and irrigation source, Sugguiyao says, the dam could inflict massive harm through siltation. “The fish and eels won’t be able to swim upstream!” he says.
Sugguiyao accuses the NCIP of brokering agreements with local communities on behalf of the companies and officials as though it were a one-sided middleman. “They just want to make money. Even without a consensus, they’ll make it seem like there is one,” he says.
When Mongabay raised these points with the NCIP’s regional office, it responded that “We would give no comments considering that issues are still being resolved.”
A man in Kalinga Province wears a shirt reading “No to Dam.” Image by Michael Beltran.
On the whole
Ariel Fronda, head of the Department of Energy’s hydropower division, says the surge in hydro projects is a good sign, a step away from fossil fuels and toward “energy self-reliance.”
The department has been tasked with speeding up project approvals with the help of a 2019 law, known as EVOSS (Energy Virtual One-Stop Shop), which guarantees that developers with a signed contract will be awarded approval in just 30 days. The law also enjoins the NCIP to standardize the release of FPIC approval in 105 days.
Additionally, the department updated its awarding and project guidelines in June, urging officials to troubleshoot complications for developers. Fronda tells Mongabay that he personally visited Kalinga earlier this year, speaking to officials about streamlining projects to meet their 2030 targets.
Fronda says not everything has gone according to plan, citing snags in obtaining community consent and political approval as the main obstacles — such as “when an elected official endorses a project, then, after elections, is replaced by someone who doesn’t.”
Fronda says the state must persist in explaining the benefits of hydropower. “We’ll save money with cheaper electricity!” he says.
Jose Antonio Montalban, an environmental and sanitation expert with the group Pro-People Engineers and Leaders (Propel), says pushing so many projects in such a small geographic area is “alarming.”
“It could have severe impacts on the Cordillera’s ecology and communities; altering basic features too quickly without understanding the area’s carrying capacity,” he says.
Abruptly altering rivers can choke water flows at several junctures, which Montalban says compromises supplies to communities that depend on them daily. “All these projects are intended to detain water,” he says.
Montalban adds that flash floods could become increasingly common during typhoon seasons, when dams have to abruptly release their load.
Lulu Gimenez, of the Cordillera People’s Alliance, raises concerns about the impact to food sources. “What about all the farms that depend on irrigation sources? They’ll either disappear or decrease their yield,” she says.
Rosario Guzman, research head at the Ibon Foundation, an economic think tank, calls into question the Department of Energy’s promise of cheaper electricity. The Philippine power sector is fully privatized, and because of this big businesses will reap the main benefits, Guzman says.
“Energy is a natural monopoly and demand for it is inelastic. By this nature, opening it up to other players in the guise of getting the best price that competition brings will only result in a monopoly price,” Guzman tells Mongabay.
Relying on renewables for more accessible energy will only work through “strong state intervention,” which will “redound to cheaper electricity and service and cheaper costs of production and commodities,” they add.
Locally, Sugguiyao laments how projects like the Karayan Dam will end the livelihoods of those who quarry sand and gravel. He says the industry is worth billions of pesos and its loss will “cost the locals millions.”
Residents of villages close to the Chico River meet to discuss plans to dam the river for hydroelectricity. Image by Michael Beltran.
Bombs follow
Since 2022, civil society groups have documented bombings and permanent military presence close to communities opposed to various renewable energy and mining projects.
Caselle Ton, of the Cordillera Human Rights Alliance (CHRA), brands the soldiers “investment defense forces,” adding that the heightened militarization is intended to “terrorize and coerce communities into accepting the projects.”
In March 2023, the military dropped bombs on Balbalan on two separate days, supposedly targeting armed guerrillas in the area. The CHRA documented bombs dropped on the provinces of Abra and Ilocos Sur on the same day in April this year. The latest bombs fell in June, in Balbalan once again.
In Abra, peasant and antimining leader Antonio Diwayan was killed in October 2023 by soldiers who claimed he was a guerrilla. The military also labeled a slew of prominent antimining and antihydropower activists as terrorists.
In October 2022, the military described Cordillera as the “last bastion” of a decades-long insurgency in the Philippines.
Kalinga Governor James Edduba likewise called on the entire region in August last year to support the efforts of the troops to weed out dissent. “Only peace and order will give us hope and development. If we have peace in our communities, the investors will surely come to Kalinga,” he said.
However, for Bog-as, the Balbalan resident and witness to the municipality’s bombings, the problem is the military makes no distinction between civilian dissent and insurgent activity.
“We hear it from the soldiers themselves, they blame us progressives who are keeping them here. Because we don’t want their dams or mines,” she says.
Johnny a farmer in Balbalan who asked to use a pseudonym for his safety, describes how the military’s once occasional presence turned permanent since the hydropower project was proposed.
Speaking in the Ilocano language, Johnny tells Mongabay: “The soldiers hold monthly and quarterly meetings. They force farmers’ associations to admit we’re supporting the guerrillas so that we can ‘clear our names.’ If we agree, it’s like we’re accepting their accusations. But we just want to fight for our community.”
Johnny says there are undoubtedly some rebels in the region, but the military paints civilians with the same brush. He also tells of how roving soldiers have disrupted their work in the fields.
“We don’t have any freedom to visit our fields. Children and adults alike would run away at the sight of a soldier!” he says.
The Philippine government’s continued press for renewables is causing friction among the villages of one of its most resource-rich regions. If all goes according to the state’s fast-tracking, Cordillera might never be the same.
Banner Chico River in Kalinga Province by Michael Beltran.
Editor’s note: While this article could have been written about any extractive industry, it has focused on offshore wind turbine farms. These destructive projects should require at least as much scrutiny as an offshore oil rig, but they are not. Because in the name of climate mitigation, they are rushed through without consideration for the damage they will cause, or even their effectiveness in serving this purpose and need for existence. Which is usually just based only on government mandates. And this is all done in the name of Big Environmentalism. DGR does not believe the Bright Green Lies of mainstream environmental NGOs.
People who believe that offshore wind turbines can help solve climate change are misinformed. Because the facts are that they will not. Even the companies building them make no such claim. And thetruth, based on facts, will always trump belief. I am not a climate denier, but you don’t have to be a climate denier to know that these things are bad and aredoomed to failure. And you also don’t have to belinked to the fossil fuel industry, the same people that knew they were causing global warming and therefore threatening the very existence of the planet. Yet, in pursuit of profit, fossil fuel executives not only refused to publicly acknowledge what they had learned but, year after year, lied about the existential threat that climate change posed for our planet. “Renewable” energy projects should require just as must scrutiny from regulators and environmentalists as fossil fuel projects.
Truth be told, most rebuildable “renewable” energy extractive companies are also liars, and have ties tofossil fuel companies. In reality what is really going on is aboondoggle, that you won’t hear about in mainstream corporate media because they only givedisinformation. After years of rebuildable energy – solar and wind infrastructure – the world used more fossil fuels in 2023 than it did in 2022, as it did the year before that and the year before that. We are in fact using more fossil fuel than ever before. From61 thousand terawatts-hours of primary energy consumption in 1973, which was the year of the OPEC oil embargo, when governments began to massively support research and development of large wind turbines and solar panels, to 137 thousand today. This is well over twice as much. In that same period, emissions grew from 17 billion metric tons of CO2 emissions to the37 billion metric tons today. A 20 billion metric ton increase in the last 50 years. And after all of that, 80 percent of our energy use still comes from fossil fuels. Thepercent of US energy use from electricity has remained the same, about 20 percent. Of that, wind turbines account for 7 percent and solar energy provides 2 percent of total US electricity used. So the dream of a 100 percent electric power supply is just that, a dream.
Why? Because theseenergy intense extractive technologies require massive amounts of fossil fuels to produce and those emissions areadding onto what is already being used, not reducing it (Jevons paradox). Thus spewing more planet-heating carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at a time when greenhouse gas emissions world wide must nosedive to stop extreme weather from growing more unpredictable and violent. The only reason CO2 emission may drop in countries installing rebuildable extractive energy and electric vehicles is because they have outsourced the mining and manufacture of these machines to other countries, thus increasing the CO2 emissions in those countries. LNG has replaced dirty coal to run power plants. Add on to all of this, easy access resources are gone. So theEnergy Return On Investment (EROI) has gone down sharply in that time. Instead of Jeb shooting for some food, we have to use fracking and offshore drilling, mountaintop removal and deep sea mining. In the foreseeable future, the energy needed to produce our energy needs could approach unsustainable levels, a phenomenon called “energy cannibalism.”
If this continues, the so called “green” energy transition will in fact be an energy correction, complements of Mother Nature, bigger and more storms, flooding, fire, drought and biodiversity collapse. These are no longer natural disasters, instead these more powerful weather events are man made.
Nature is not more complicated than you think, it is more complicated than you CAN think” ~Frank Edwin Egler
Rebuildable extractive energy capturing machines arenot clean except through greenwashing and are only making ourpredicament worse. The trillions in government subsidies given to this sector only makes therich richer. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) should more appropriately be called the 4th Industrial Revolution Act. This is government redistribution of wealth from the working class to offshore transnational state sponsored corporations and the wealthy financial class, which are also principally owned by fossil fuel companies. Ultimately any money that is offered by them as payouts for grants, agreements, promotion or mitigation will come from the utilityratepayer. This is ascam that is notfinancially feasible without trillions in government subsidies. This is what their balance sheet looks like. What is done to the natural environment is even worse.
Wildlife and wind turbines are an uncomfortable mix. Rotating turbine blades can make short work of anyone or anything unlucky enough to collide with them, but direct mortality is only part of the story. Having reviewed the available evidence from around the world,biologists in Finland have found that 63 percent of bird species, 72 percent of bats and 67 percent of terrestrial mammals are displaced from areas where turbines are installed. The same holds true for offshore wind farms, to include fish and marine mammals. Wind turbines are an invasive species to functioning ecosystems that took millions of years to create. The building process is a war zone. The noise and devastation are a disaster to fragile ecosystem habitats. Consider how you would feel if these massive monsters were put up next to your house in your town. The oceans, from which we came, are the lungs of the planet. Life can not exist if the delicate balance is disrupted. These projects are doomed to failure in more ways than one.
True resilience and sustainability comes by thinking globally and acting locally. The land base that people live on should be able to, on its own, continually feed, clothe and house the people who live on it. It makes no sense to destroy the sustainable food provided by the ocean in order to keep the lights on. It is preferable to eat in the dark than to starve in the light. Also know that fish farms are in the same league as wind farms. It is an enclosure of the commons for corporate control of our food supply, what they call “The Blue Economy”.
How do we know that offshore wind will be a “pain” now and into the future forfishing, tourism, cultural heritage, beauty, integrity, stability, sustainability, ecological balance and quality of life? Millions of dollars are offered up to mitigate (bribe) it. Money would better be spent to mitigate the already abandon mines, fossil fuel wells and habitat degradation. This is where our good paying jobs should be working, to protect the planet. Life on the planet can be saved, a modern industrial lifestyle cannot.
Step 1. Create an effective advertising campaign for Your Destructive Offshore Wind Project
Use a name that has a certain historical, cultural, or environmental value for the communities. Change the name from Pilgrim and Mayflower(tone deaf) to South Coast Wind or Vineyard Wind(more like Graveyard). Call it “clean”, “green”, “renewable” energy that is the solution to climate change and save our lifestyle. With the right branding, people will drink any poison, pinwheels for everyone.
Step 2. Get the Local Government on Your Side
Pay off the local politicians to agree and hand out licenses. Tell them there is nothing they can do to stop it, so they should just get the best Good NeighborHost Agreement possible or get nothing.
Step 3. Lobby as Much as Possible to Bend the Law in Favor Offshore Wind
Create legal loopholes and tax credits for corporations, behind closed doors. Speed up the “permit” your destruction process. Buy-off federal and state politicians and corporate capture regulatory agencies. Nobody wants these in their backyard, let’s just put them out to sea.
Step 4. Presents! Buy Off Public Opinion
Build a new school, library(Carnegie) or sewer system. Or just offer money as compensation to do with as you wish. The major ENGOs have entered intoagreement with offshore wind: Natural Resources Defense Council, National Wildlife Federation, and Conservation Law Foundation andtaken money; Audubon Society, The Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, Environmental League of Mass., Sierra Club, etc. along with aquariums, universities and the media.
Step 5. Offer a Compromise
Let us destroy this land/sea here and we will protect some other land/sea. Or agree with us and we will let you have a say in how the destruction will occur. This project has to be done to stop climate change, we have to destroy the planet to save it. There must be sacrifice zones. Sorry that your home is being destroyed but don’t be a NIMBY(Not In My Backyard). Actually when respondents of national surveys begin to think about ideas of what rebuildable energy entails, such as offshore wind, their support often diminishes. There will be painful trade-offs, trying to preserve comfortable lives. Most of that pain will come from other species. But if we acknowledge that our modern industrial lifestyle is causing the end of life on the planet, we must say NOPE(Not On Planet Earth).
Step 6. Threats Are Effective Deterrents
If you file a law suit against this project, we will file a lawsuit against you, a SLAPP(Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation). Focus on the leaders of the struggle. Scaring people works. This smear tactic was conducted by the prestigious Ivy League College Brown against the opponents to offshore wind. Attack the messenger. In the global south, this is done literally. Real nice place you got here, it would be a sham if something bad happened to it.
Step 7. Create Chaos and Conflict; Divide the Community in Two Camps
Tout the temporary “good paying union” jobs you will create over the permanent sustainable jobs, fishing andtourism, destroyed forever. Destroying a food source never makes good sense. What is truly needed, at this time of ecological collapse, is food sovereignty. Where jobs are hard to come by this is called poverty pimping. Then don’t forget to accuse those opposed to offshore wind of promoting “disinformation“. Push it as a choice in political values, Republicans against Democrats. There is a backlash against “renewable” energy. It’s turned Democrats into Republicans.
Step 8. Having Wrought Havoc, Now Frame It as a Successful Story of Growth and Prosperity
Welcome to the great big beautiful tomorrow, shining at the end of every day. Technology has fixed the problem that it has created! Too bad it is a dystopian science fiction. No one willingly wants to destroy their environment. It is done because of the Golden Rule: Whoever has the gold, makes the rules! Not to mention that these companies have gotten out of paying most of the taxes required of multinationals. And avoid putting emphasis on the fact that the jobs are short term, while the environmental damage is forever.
If you would like to help stop The Blue Economy of offshore wind, see Green Oceans https://green-oceans.org/
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:Ben Martin Steinreich Communications (212) 491–1600 bmartin@scompr.com
GREEN OCEANS LEADS35CO–PLAINTIFFSINLAWSUITALLEGINGU.S. AGENCIES ILLEGALLYAPPROVEDOFFSHORE WIND PROJECTS
LITTLE COMPTON, R.I. – Rhode Island-based Green Oceans, a non-partisan, grassroots not-for-profit organization dedicated to protecting the ocean and the ecosystems it sustains, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleging four federal agencies shortcut statutory and regulatory procedures and violated environmental protection laws by approving the South Fork and Revolution Wind projects. An additional 35 co-plaintiffs joined the litigation.
The suit alleges that the U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and their respective administrative leaders, issued permits for the two projects on the critical marine habitat known as Coxes Ledge, despite the acknowledgment of serious irreversible harm and without adequate environmental impact studies. The lawsuit asks the court to invalidate the approvals for both projects until the government complies with all relevant statutes and regulations.
“In a rush to meet state mandates, we cannot short-circuit our country’s most important environmental and natural resource policies. This suit will ensure the federal government follows its own rules and regulations,” said Green Ocean’s Co-founder and President Dr. Elizabeth Quattrocki Knight.
Filed under the Administrative Procedure Act, the suit intends to prove that the federal agencies violated eight statutes, including the National Environmental Policy Act, Endangered Species Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act, Migratory Bird Treaty Act, Coastal Zone Management Act, National Historic Preservation Act, Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, Clean Water Act, and their associated regulatory programs.
The suit highlights the alarming scale of proposed offshore wind plans – up to 1,000 turbines, each towering over 870 feet high. The closest turbines will reside just 12.9 nautical miles from the Rhode Island coast. Collectively, the nine projects planned for the waters off the coast of Rhode Island represent the largest offshore development anywhere in the world. The Green Oceans suit alleges that BOEM did not adequately consider the cumulative impact of the entire lease area, a legal requirement. No geographic boundaries exist between the nine different projects planned for the 1,400 square miles of coastal waters between Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
“Marine mammals will not appreciate whether any given turbine belongs to one project or another. Legally, BOEM must evaluate the collective impact, not just each project in isolation,” Dr. Quattrocki Knight emphasized. The projects threaten to permanently alter the environmentally sensitive Coxes Ledge, one of the last remaining spawning grounds for Southern New England cod and an important habitat for the North Atlantic right whale and four other endangered whale species.
Barbara Chapman, a Green Oceans trustee, added, “Even people who support the concept of wind power understand the threat to sea life. On the official NOAA site, they have granted the developer of Revolution Wind, just one project of many, permission to harm and harass over 13,000 marine animals, including 568 whales, during the course of a single year. We do not consider 13,000 a small number.”
“BOEM admits the projects will have adverse impacts on the health of our fisheries, navigation safety, historic resources, the North Atlantic right whale, and environmental justice populations, while having no effect on climate change. Why accept this irreversible environmental damage for no overall gain?” questions Green Ocean’s Co-founder and Vice President, Bill Thompson.
Co-plaintiffs to the suit include the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, Save Right Whales Coalition, New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association, Bat World Sanctuary, three former Rhode Island Fisherman’s Advisory Board members, along with local and regional recreational fishermen, sailors, boaters, pilots, conservationists, residents, and leading members of the business community.
Green Oceans is a nonprofit, non-partisan group of community members dedicated to combating climate change without jeopardizing biodiversity or the health of the ocean. For more information or to get involved, visit: https://green-oceans.org/.
Editor’s Note: This press release from CELDF (Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund) describes a gag order put against an activist, Tish O’Dell, for talking about her concerns on the use of an industrial byproduct in her community. The gag order was placed in 2012. Since then, tests have affirmed that not only was the product toxic, it is also high in radioactive elements. Lawsuits by big corporations against activists are one of the tools used to shut down any form of resistance. We have talked about it also in the context of the lawsuit against activists and tribal members involved in protecting Thacker Pass. After a decade during which new research has been conducted, Tish O’Dell has appealed for a termination on the gag order.
OHIO, Cuyahoga County – On Friday, June 16, a motion was filed in the Cuyahoga Court of Common Pleas for relief from judgment for Tish O’Dell to terminate the permanent injunction from a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) filed against her in March 2012 by Duck Creek Energy which claimed defamation and loss of business profits.
O’Dell had been active at the time, educating both her community, elected leaders and neighbors about the harmful effects of urban oil/gas drilling happening in her community of Broadview Heights and surrounding communities by sending emails, posting information online and attending community meetings. In the process, she had learned of Duck Creek Energy’s road de-icer, AquaSalina, which according to Duck Creek Energy President, Dave Mansbery, was a byproduct of oil/gas drilling. O’Dell’s concern increased upon learning, from test results reported to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR), about the high levels of substances like benzene, toluene and ethylbenzene contained within the supposedly harmless de-icer. These substances are known to be carcinogenic. She also continued to conduct more research on ODNR’s website and in other places in order to inform herself and educate others as to what takes place during the drilling process and fracking.
“When I learned that AquaSalina was being used on my community’s streets as well as in neighboring communities, I wanted to inform people about what I had learned,” said O’Dell. “I felt people needed to know what was being spread on the roads that they, their kids, and their pets were walking on. And common sense indicated to me that what is spread on our streets gets into our air and our lawns and goes down street drains to water supplies. I knew the oil/gas industry was powerful, but I also believed in my right and everyone’s right to free speech and the right to question the government and their decisions. I had never heard of a SLAPP lawsuit until there was a knock at my front door and the person asked if I was Tish O’Dell and told me ‘You’ve been served’.”
After a year of court filings, depositions, and much pressure directed against O’Dell’s inclination to go to trial, a settlement was signed in the fall of 2013. Part of the settlement involved granting a permanent injunction, an extraordinary remedy in a defamation case, against O’Dell, prohibiting her from using certain words to describe the product AquaSalina. During this time Mansbery began bottling and selling the product on store shelves in local hardware stores and even at several Lowe’s locations in Ohio. This afforded activists and scientists the opportunity to purchase the product and begin testing it. And in the decade since, there has been much research and testing of the product by the state agency ODNR, universities, Rolling Stone Magazine and other publications. The tests affirmed that not only was the product chemically toxic, it is also high in radioactive elements, Radium 226 and 228. In October 2021 the Ohio Department of Transportation stopped using AquaSalina in part because of the environmental concerns.
Because these recent test results and scientific research papers didn’t exist in 2012, O’Dell is filing this motion to dissolve the court order so she can again speak freely and warn people about the dangers of this product to both humans and nature. There have been several attempts over the past few years to pass a law at the state level which would make a commodity out of this drilling byproduct. And with the state opening up leasing of park land for fracking this year, there will be more brine produced.
“SLAPP suits are just another tool used by industry and corporations to silence and intimidate those who speak out against them and their activities,” stated Wyatt Sugrue, Chicago attorney. “The goal is not only to silence journalists, individuals and organizations, but to also make others afraid to speak up. In recent years there have been high profile cases of SLAPP suits against John Oliver and HBO, Mother Jones Magazine and recently Texas Gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke who was served with a SLAPP by the CEO of Energy Transfer Partners, Kelcy Warren.”
As stated in the motion:
The Ohio court system has in essence allowed a limited-purpose public figure, Duck Creek Energy, to immunize itself from public scrutiny, and the court system is acting as the personal police force for the company to stop such scrutiny.
“What I have learned over the past decade is how our system, controlled by an elite minority, is quashing the people’s constitutional rights. I witnessed this first hand working with so many great people across the state who were also attempting to protect their own communities and nature. They inspired me to do this,” stated O’Dell. “I can’t just tell others to stand up for their rights and what they believe in and to have courage even when it seems scary, and not practice what I preach.”
A recent article by EarthJustice, September 2022, sums it up, “We aspire for the courts to be an institution that upholds the rights of all, however, SLAPP suits are a way for the rich and powerful to abuse the court system and turn it into a tool that silences individuals and organizations. SLAPP suits disguise themselves as legitimate lawsuits, and while most end up being dismissed, their real goal is quashing legitimate dissent and protest in the process. Protesting is one of the cornerstones of our democracy, a right so important in the early days of our country that it is explicitly included in the first amendment. One thing is clear. Our courts must uphold this right for everyone and cannot become tools for the rich and powerful to abuse power and limit the ability of all of us to seek justice and speak out against issues impacting our communities.”
In the O’Rourke SLAPP, it has been discovered that Warren, the plaintiff, has also made campaign contributions to six of the nine Texas Supreme Court Justices that could ultimately hear the case.
According to CELDF Attorney Terry Lodge, “Ending the gag order on Tish O’Dell is important to our work as an organization. CELDF works with community members and activists throughout the state and country to assert their constitutional and democratic rights to expose harms and stand up for protecting the community and nature. If the wealthy and powerful can file lawsuits to silence their voices, those must always be opposed.”
Editor’s Note: The following events are not organized by DGR. We stand in solidarity with both of these and encourage our readers to get involved in these if possible.
Radical Resilience and Restoration for Wetland Rights
On June 28th CELDF’s Kai Huschke will be presenting at the Society for Wetland Scientists annual conference. Joining Kai on the panel Socio-Ecological Resilience and Adaptation: Implementing Rights of Wetlands will be Senior Ecologist/Natural Climate Solutions Specialist Gillian Davis from BSC Group, Inc. and Tufts University Global Development & Environment Institute, Matthew Simpon, Director from the UK based organization 35percent, and Bill Moomaw, Tufts University Professor Emeritus. The four have been active as part of a global collective working on the community and national levels for the legal rights of wetlands.
Globally for the last 200 years the prevailing directive governmentally, legally, economically, scientifically, and culturally has been to extract and exploit the natural world for the wants and needs of a single species – humans. Colonization has never stopped; it has merely changed its stripes and patterns of speech but behaviorally it continues to conquer into submission and extinction the life forces of the planet with wetlands receiving a disproportionate amount of abuse.
The emergence of legal rights of nature efforts over the last 20 years in North America and across the globe is a potent force for the cultural shift necessary to actualize living from, in, with, and as nature. Wetlands restoration efforts in the name of rights of wetlands can only occur if there is a restoration of the human species on a massive scale that would allow for the healthy and harmonious balance of living from, in, with, and as nature. Science along with other aspects of the culture must reject colonizing systems of law, economics, governance, and even science itself and develop methods and systems outside the dominant one.
Many books have been written about wealth, power and politics in the United States. Most of them make intuitive sense. Wealthy people use their power to influence and control politics. But Ben Price’s new book is often counterintuitive as he explores how wealth itself is imbued with power.
CELDF is making available, a serialization of Ben Price’s book. You can read this award-winning book in free installments of downloadable pdf files and join Ben Price for monthly webinars to discuss the book in the sequence of shared chapters.
A pivot to renewable energy by the Philippine government has led to a wave of hyrdoprojects projects across the Cordillera region. Image by Andrés Alegría / Mongabay.
Hydropower projects have met with differening receptions in Cordillera villages such as Balbalan, Mabaca and Buaya. Image by Andrés Alegría / Mongabay.
The Cal-oan River, also known as Mabaca River, where Australian-owned JBD Water Power Inc. (JWPI) has two planned hydropower projects. Image by Michael Beltran.
Farmer Gohn Dangoy, of the Naneng tribe, says proposed dams have already caused deep divisions in his community. Image by Michael Beltran.
A man in Kalinga Province wears a shirt reading “No to Dam.” Image by Michael Beltran.
Residents of villages close to the Chico River meet to discuss plans to dam the river for hydroelectricity. Image by Michael Beltran.
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