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The idea for the dual amendments emanated from a March 2023 Citizens’ Assembly on Biodiversity Loss, which produced more than 80 recommendations aimed at addressing the mass extinction of plants, animals and other living beings. Human activity is driving the annihilation of other species at an unprecedented rate, with over 1 million on the brink of extinction.
In 2019, Ireland declared a national biodiversity emergency. More than 70 percent of Irish peatlands are damaged, 50 percent of its freshwater systems are in “poor and deteriorating condition” and more than one-third of Ireland’s protected species are in population decline, among other problems.
Mari Margil, executive director of the U.S.-based Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights, was one of several rights of nature advocates who told Irish lawmakers in October about the global rights of nature movement and how policymakers around the world are embracing the idea to change “how we govern ourselves toward nature, and how nature itself is treated under law.”
At least six countries—Ecuador, Bolivia, Panama, Uganda, New Zealand and Spain—have some form of national law recognizing the rights of nature or legal personhood for ecosystems. Many more nations have some form of court recognition or local laws recognizing nature’s rights. Those rules generally provide a higher level of legal protection to ecosystems or individual species, compared to conventional environmental protection laws.
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