Dear Assem, Thanks for your wonderful piece. Ariel, I look forward to now reading your piece. Assem, since I have been thinking about this subject for the last few years, I couldn’t help but jump in with some of the threads it opened up for me. Some reflections below. Excuse me for any lack of understanding... In many of my writings, written along with others, we have critically examined the Rights of Nature discourse, arguing about its limitations and cautioning that proponents of the discourse must be aware that it is a ‘means’ towards a larger systemic transformation, rather than a transformation, an end in itself. Where I might slightly depart from your analysis is in how we understand the history of the movement itself. If one were to look at the examples in Ecuador, Bolivia, Colombia and New Zealand, I would argue that many of these emerge from ontological conflicts. By this, I mean that Rights of Nature emerges as a strategic and directional discourse to protect a relationship from separating (humans and their habitats) for communities and activists. On the one hand, communities that believe that the river is alive and sentient are fighting a massive modernist ontological perspective that sees rivers as sources of hydropower that can be mined, dammed or otherwise destroyed for profit or for ‘national interest’, or managed through conservation. A community that includes the rest of nature in its decision-making is largely unthinkable within the modern state. Rights of Nature therefore emerges in this onto-epistemic (Escobar el al 2023), in-between space (Graeber 2007)—as an interface that enables such a system to partially recognise the inseparability of humans and rivers, mountains and the rest of nature, and the entanglements between them. It is important to recognise the many ‘worldlings’ that are in play here. RoN, in that sense, is a space in between that enables two worlds or worldlings to meet: the world of absolute destruction and the one that understands humans, nature, rivers and the cosmos as inseparable. I don’t think the intention is necessarily to transform the law and the state—which, as you rightly mentioned, are designed in ways that can perpetuate systems of domination and can never fully understand these concepts. The intention, rather, is to open cracks. To infiltrate courtrooms that have never heard a mountain speak as a law-maker—for instance, Niyam Raja (literally, ‘Lord of the Law’), who is understood by the Dongria Kondh as the protector, keeper and provider of the forests—and to possibly enable a judgement that is cognisant of such cultural beliefs. The 2013 Supreme Court judgement in the Niyamgiri case is an important example. Another powerful example is the ruling recognising Los Cedros Protected Forest as a living being in Ecuador. Agustín Grijalva, the judge involved in this important ruling, told some of us last year in Australia- “The forest defeated the mining company and was able to protect itself. I didn’t write the ruling. The forest wrote it through me.”He went on to say that local communities, artists, musicians, poets, scientists, naturalists, lawyers and activists had all become part of writing the ruling, describing this as a form of radical democracy—not just about ‘us’, but drawing on a Global South wisdom in which social processes and movements become an important force. As he put it, “the ruling sits on the efforts of a lot of people.” Listening to a judge speak of forests writing through him is, to me, precisely the emergence of these cracks. And though these might be one-off or temporary moments, they do interrupt the coloniality of practices that seek to move away from diversity and towards homogenisation. What they enable is the potential for more fundamental transformations, and a potential eruption of diversity. As for the language of personhood itself, I think one of the most pertinent points is about beginning with ‘naming’. Naming is, in many ways, the beginning of justice. As some indigenous scholars, like Robin Wall Kimmerer, say that the linguistic imperialism replaced the language of animacy with one of objectification of nature, which renders nature as lifeless and inanimate. Legal personhood is therefore a tool (however insufficient) through which there is an attempt to change the existing language and narrative- challenging the ontological assumption of the western legal system that only humans can have rights. Hence, there is a lot more unraveling in the diverse articulations of the movement, I would also caution against simply using western and eurocentric discourses to critique rights of nature, as that can, in some ways, mean remaining trapped within the very framework one is trying to critique. These are just some thoughts in relation to the use of law. There are many more questions I hold around implementation, cross-boundary issues, customary governance, international agreements, and so on.As someone working within and involved in this emergent movement, I remain very critical of several aspects of it, and especially cautious about the potential co-option of the language itself—as happens with many alternatives more generally. Hence, the continued emphasis on seeing Rights of Nature as part of a broader systemic transformation that also requires us to speak about the economy (local, care, sharing economies), politics (the need for Earthy, bioregional governance), and social justice (including questions of gender, caste and race) and importantly rekindling spiritual and deeper connections (which you beautifully articulated in your piece) Ashish K. and I wrote about this in our paper on Earthy Governance, arguing for precisely for suchbroaderframing. https://news.mongabay.com/2024/10/if-all-life-mattered-what-would-decision-m... Thanks again for this thoughtful piece. Warmly, Shrishtee Shrishtee Bajpai Linkedin <https://www.linkedin.com/in/shrishtee-bajpai-18055390/> Other writings and publications <https://linktr.ee/shrishteebajpai> Substack <https://substack.com/@aequusaltus665891> On Sat, 5 Sep 2026 at 5:41 PM, Ariel Salleh <[email protected]> wrote:
Friends all, I was deeply moved by Aseems’s beautiful essay - and agree with his critique of the political limitations of Rights of Nature environmentalism. Here I would like to add to his remarks by sharing a paper I wrote some 4 decades ago. It was a response to 'the deep ecology movement’ popular in Europe and USA at the time.
As Aseem says - if we are to build new communities that live in harmony with the world, then we will all need to recover a sense of our Human selves 'as part of nature’. The problem is that almost universally, patriarchal cultures accord Humanity only to Men, meanwhile Women are said to belong to Nature - and bodily ‘resourced' as such.
The contradiction will need to be faced before we can move towards an Earth Democracy. All good energies Ariel www.arielsalleh.info
Ariel Salleh (1984) 'Deeper than Deep Ecology: the ecofeminist connection’, Environmental Ethics, Vol. 6, No. 4, 335-341:www.cep.unt.edu/enethics.html
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On 24 Aug 2026, at 12:34 am, Pooja Kishinani <[email protected]> wrote:
Dear All,
Our latest articles on RED may be of interest-
Beyond the Rights of Nature: Toward an Ecosophy of Belonging by Aseem Shrivastava
This two-part essay interrogates the “rights of nature” discourse, arguing that it extends one of modernity’s most anthropocentric concepts—individual rights—onto nature rather than questioning the framework of rights itself. Drawing on Raimon Panikkar’s cosmotheandric vision, Martin Buber’s philosophy, and Mary Midgley’s essay on dolphin personhood, Aseem Shrivastava argues that rights discourse presupposes separateness before relation, which risks feeding the financialisation of nature rather than healing “ecological alienation”— a deeper ontological wound that legal personhood cannot address.
Aseem traces a fourfold progression from rights to duties to responsibility to belonging, arguing that law should follow custom and relationship rather than substitute for them. The conclusion calls for moving “from claim to communion”— recovering rootedness, kinship, and cosmic responsibility over legal entitlement, since law can restrain harm but cannot teach belonging to the earth.
Read the essays here:
https://radicalecologicaldemocracy.org/beyond-the-rights-of-nature-toward-an... (Part One)
https://radicalecologicaldemocracy.org/beyond-the-rights-of-nature-toward-an... (Part Two)
I have copied the author on this thread if you'd like to share comments and reflections with him directly.
In solidarity, Pooja
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