Bolivia’s Law of Mother Earth sets out 11 legal rights for nature, giving it rights equal to those of humans. They include the right to exist, the right to clean air and water, and the right not to have “cellular structure modified or genetically altered”.

The Salvador Dalí Desert in the Eduardo Avaroa Andean Fauna National Reserve, part of the Bolivian landscape the law protects.
Image: Diego Delso more
The Salvador Dalí Desert is located in the Eduardo Avaroa Andean Fauna National Reserve , Potosí Department , southwestern Bolivia . The place is called like this because similar landscapes have been painted by Salvador Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0

The law treats nature and humans as equals. It draws on an Andean world view that places the earth deity Pachamama at the centre of life. The law is part of a wider rebuild of the legal system, one that followed a change of constitution in 2009.

What the rights actually cover

The 11 rights include the right to life, the right to continue “cycles and processes free from human alteration”, the right to balance, and the right not to be polluted. One clause is controversial. Nature gains a right to be shielded from “mega-infrastructure and development projects” that upset the balance between an ecosystem and the people living alongside it.

At the time, Vice-President Álvaro García Linera called it a law that “makes world history”, saying it puts human and nature in a new relationship that has to be kept in harmony. Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca tied the law to climate policy. He said Bolivia’s indigenous respect for Pachamama was central to preventing further warming.

What it does not settle

The Guardian reported at the time that it was not clear what protection the rights would give in court to insects or ecosystems. Bolivia earns $500m a year from mining companies, nearly a third of its foreign currency. The government was expected to create a ministry of mother earth and an ombudsman. It was also committed to giving communities powers to monitor polluting industries.

Part of a wider pattern

Bolivia is one of a small number of countries that have given legal personhood to nature, alongside New Zealand’s Whanganui River, Colombia’s section of the Amazon rainforest, one of the US Great Lakes, and India’s River Ganges, according to the BBC Radio 4 programme Naturebang. In New Zealand, two members of the local Māori tribe speak for the river as its legal representatives.

Corporations have held legal personhood since the late 1800s. The law professor Christopher Stone argued in a 1972 essay, “Should Trees Have Standing?”, that if a corporation can hold legal personhood, a river or a forest could too. Anna Grear, a professor of law at Cardiff University, and Dr Rāwiri Tinirau, an adviser on Māori and Indigenous human rights, discuss on the programme whether extending rights to nature also extends people’s empathy towards it.

Ecuador took a similar step in its constitution, giving nature the right “to exist” and “to regenerate its vital cycles”. The Guardian noted that those rights had not stopped oil companies operating in some of the Amazon’s most biologically rich areas.