Our founders, Paul and Brontie, met at the 2019 UK Wild Law Conference. After the event, Paul shared a vision with Brontie for an organisation called ‘Lawyers for Trees’. As a lawyer, Paul sought to create an organisation that would help community groups and environmental defenders protect Nature through legal support and education.
At the centre of our organisation is Rights of Nature. This is, in short, the idea that Nature, either specific parts like woodlands or rivers, or entire ecosystems, should have legal rights and personhood in the same way that companies and humans do.
In 2022, Faith in Nature, the natural beauty company, approached Lawyers for Nature wanting to make Nature the ‘boss’ of their company. Brontie, Paul, the creative directors at Faith in Nature (and the Earth Law Centre) worked together in imaginative ways to give Nature a seat at the board. We have subsequently worked with a number of organisations to give Nature and future generations a voice in their decision-making, you can learn more about our work here. We are currently expanding this work into the third sector.
We have been involved in a number of campaigns, such as the ‘We Are Nature’ campaign (alongside Frieda Gormley at House of Hackney); a grassroots movement to update dictionary definitions of the word ‘Nature’ to include humans. Our campaign has so far persuaded the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) to modify their entry to reinstate a once obsolete wider definition of ‘Nature’. ‘We Are Nature’ is now working to update outdated definitions in the USA and to raise awareness of our interdependence upon, and inseparable connection with, Nature. They will be running a series of workshops at galleries and museums in 2025.
Lawyers for Nature lobby on an international level and attended COP16, the United Nations Biodiversity Conference, to advocate for integrating a Rights of Nature approach in the Biodiversity Credit Marketplace. We worked with the People’s Assembly of Ireland and the Irish Government to seek constitutional amendments for Nature and we are part of the UK-wide consortium to bring a Rights of Nature bill to the UK Parliament in 2026.
At a more local level, we work with local river groups to encourage river guardianship. We are also developing an education and training program so that more people, in more places, can learn about Rights of Nature and become Nature Directors.
We continue to envision new ways for the law to help create a thriving, resilient, and sustainable future, not solely for humans but for all life on earth.
