Quick Takes – Gaia’s Rights Get Moist: Whale Rights; Rivers Are People Too; Unalienable Great Lakes

     Another “quick takes” on items where there is too little to say to make a complete article, but is still important enough to comment on.

     The focus this time: Water, water everywhere, nor any rights to keep.

     First, a little mood music:

     Carrying on…

     Whale rights are all the rage in New Zealand…

“The initiative, Te Mana o Te Tohorā (The Enduring Power of Whales), aims to establish whales as legal persons, granting them rights that recognise their ecological importance and sentience. Developed in collaboration with the Pacific Whale Fund and Ocean Vision Legal, the project represents a significant step forward for the giants of the ocean in environmental law.

“The proposed legislation builds on the He Whakaputanga Moana (Ocean Declaration), a treaty signed by Pacific Indigenous leaders earlier this year, which first granted whales and dolphins legal personhood in the Pacific Islands.

“Simmons & Simmons, which has been supporting the project pro bono, hopes the frameworks will pave the way for nations to adopt similar protections, bridging Indigenous environmental values with global legal systems.

“These frameworks centre on the concept of a ‘legal person’ — an entity acknowledged as having ‘standing’ within the judicial system. Traditionally, this status has been reserved for humans, community organisations, and corporations. Granting this designation to whales represents a groundbreaking shift, acknowledging the value of non-human life and redefining how the law engages with the natural world.

“‘This legislation challenges traditional legal frameworks by recognising whales as sentient beings with intrinsic value,’ said Rob Allen, a partner at Simmons & Simmons. ‘It builds on existing protections for cetaceans, offering a more comprehensive approach to safeguarding their habitats and acknowledging their complex ecological roles.’”

     Captain Ahab hardest hit.

     Some people take “stream of consciousness” a bit too literally.

“Dr Macfarlane, a professor of literature and the environmental humanities at Cambridge University, has a pragmatic agenda embedded in his powerful prose. To recognise rivers as living beings, as indigenous cultures so often have, is a useful step towards providing them with personhood and rights. Those rights can be used in campaigns that protect both rivers and the life they contain and sustain, be it of humans, other fauna, flora or fungi.

“Not many rivers currently enjoy such respect; most are treated in purely utilitarian ways. In ‘In Praise of Floods’, a posthumous book by James Scott, an anthropologist and social theorist who died in 2024, Scott recalls a conversation with a Filipino hydrologist about the fact that the Colorado river no longer reaches the Sea of Cortez. Scott suggests that it is ‘sad, given all our poems about rivers running down to the sea, that the Colorado was prevented from achieving its destiny’. The hydrologist has no time for such fancy. ‘No, no, no! It is not a sad thing at all! It is wonderful; it means that all the water in the Colorado is used for important human purposes and not a drop is wasted!’ All over the world people treat rivers as a resource for the taking—of hydroelectric power or of sustenance—or for the taking-away of often noxious effluent. When they are not taking, Scott points out, they are taming. States seek to control the rivers whose past floods produced rich alluvial soils, lest future floods should flow free again.”

     A bill in the state of New York wants to create a “bill of rights’ for the Great Lakes and other state waters. It reads, in part:

§17-2301. Declaration of rights.

Rights of the Great Lakes ecosystem.   The Great Lakes, and the watersheds that drain into the Great Lakes and   their connecting chan-nels,   as well as the watersheds and ecosystems throughout the state of New York, shall possess the unalienable and fundamental rights to exist, persist, flourish, naturally evolve,   regenerate and be restored   by culpable parties, free from human violations of these rights and unencumbered by legal privileges vested   in property, including   corporate property. The Great Lakes   ecosystem, as well as the watersheds and ecosystems throughout the state of New York, shall include all natural water features,   communities of organisms, soil, aquifers, as well as terrestrial and aquatic sub ecosystems that are part of the Great Lakes and their watersheds and connecting channels.

     TTFN.