Exploring Environmental Law, Activism, and the Rights of Nature

In April 2022, the Irish Citizens’ Assembly on Biodiversity Loss (“The Assembly”) held its inaugural meeting in Dublin Castle. Since then, the Assembly, which is made up of 99 randomly-selected members of the public and an independent Chairperson, has been examining how the state can improve its response to biodiversity loss. On completion of its work later this year, the Assembly will make a number of recommendations to the Government in this regard.

Under advice from Lawyers for Nature, cruelty-free and vegan cosmetics company Faith in Nature appointed a Nature Director to their board.

We’ve covered Denial, Gratitude, Facing Reality, Climate Grief. This post covers Stage 5 and Stage 6.

In the first post, we covered Stage 1, Denial, and Stage 2, Gratitude. This post covers Stage 3 and Stage 4.

I know that the urgent state of the climate crisis can seem too painful to fully contemplate. I’ve felt this for a while, and it comes in waves. Towards the end of last year we had the international climate conference of COP26, which gave some potential for progress.

The previous blog posts in this series looked at what it means to be ‘for nature’ and how we conceptualise society, covering social ecology and relational/holistic models of society and nature. Now, we in the final post in the series, we look at what this means for law.

This is the second blog post in a series of three. The first blog post looked at what it means to be for Nature, in particular the idea of social ecology. This second blog post will look at how we understand society. The third in the series will then look at what this means for law, expanding from Earth Jurisprudence to what I have termed ‘Interconnected Law’.

I’m writing these blog posts to share what I’ve learned and how my thinking has developed since I first encountered Earth Jurisprudence about seven years ago.

The release of The Felling Film, which catalogues the years-long struggle by local activists in Sheffield to stop their street trees being destroyed by the local city council, is an excellent excuse to look back and take stock of that campaign and the many lessons it can teach UK nature protectors.