The small town of Terrasse-Vaudreuil, Quebec, was carved out of the forest about 75 years ago. But until recently, the trees had no rights.<\/p>\n
A few countries and local jurisdictions around the world have recognized the rights of nature to varying degrees. This town of about 2,000, just west of Montreal, is the first governing body to adopt the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Trees<\/a>, according to the global environmental law tracker, Eco Jurisprudence Monitor. The resolution recognizes that trees, as living beings, have the right to exist, thrive and receive protections in the law.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we live in Terrasse-Vaudreuil, it\u2019s because we love trees,\u201d said Sylvie Tr\u00e9panier, a member of the town\u2019s environmental committee, which drove the resolution. \u201cWe want to keep what we have.\u201d<\/p>\n Trees, Please<\/p>\n Last spring, about 60 residents attended a screening of \u201cDes Arbres et Des Arts,\u201d or \u201cThe Trees and the Arts,\u201d a documentary by the Quebec filmmaker Andr\u00e9 Desrochers that proposes trees should receive legal rights. \u201cWe decided we really need to do something,\u201d Ms. Tr\u00e9panier said.<\/p>\n The town\u2019s environmental committee wrote a proposal to prioritize tree protection for the health of the canopy and the broader community, and it gained widespread support.<\/p>\n When councilors adopted the resolution unanimously, Mayor Michel Bourdeau declared, \u201cToday, we affirm that trees are not merely a backdrop in our community. They are indispensable allies for our health, our climate resilience, and our quality of life.\u201d<\/p>\n The Universal Declaration on the Rights of Trees was drafted in France in 2018 and 2019 by lawyers, ecologists and lawmakers. It mandates that humanity \u201cact with the Tree in a spirit of fraternity and solidarity\u201d and has been presented as a petition to the United Nations and the European Parliament, among others.<\/p>\n Adopting the resolution was not merely symbolic, Mr. Bourdeau said in an interview. In Terrasse-Vaudreuil, practically, the resolution requires the town to prioritize canopy protection across all municipal planning. The next step is to review existing regulations and strengthen tree protections, the mayor said, followed by plans to plant and distribute trees to schools, businesses and residents in an ongoing effort to protect and diversify what has now been deemed a collective asset.<\/p>\n What precisely this will all mean when put into law \u2014 whether it will require simple replacement of trees, limits on development or on cutting down trees \u2014 remains to be decided.<\/p>\n The resolution was an easy sell in Terrasse-Vaudreuil. \u201cThere were not people who were resistant. On the contrary, they welcomed it.\u201d<\/p>\n Standing for Nature<\/p>\n The notion that trees could have legal rights is alien to many and an affront to some, which is why the town\u2019s move has generated international headlines and anger<\/a>.<\/p>\n Critics see granting rights to nature as a threat to humanity\u2019s ability to extract resources or develop.<\/p>\n In an article in The National Review, Wesley J. Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute\u2019s Center on Human Exceptionalism, called the nature rights movement a \u201csubversive ideology\u201d and described the town\u2019s legal strategy plainly: \u201cIt is an inch by inch, step by step tactic,\u201d Mr. Smith wrote. \u201cOne small town today, a city, province, or country tomorrow, and eventually, an international treaty.\u201d<\/p>\n This month, a bill was introduced in the British Parliament to recognize the rights of nature<\/a>. More than three dozen communities in the United States, and a handful in Canada, Mexico, Peru, Australia, Ireland, and Northern Ireland have adopted laws or nonbinding resolutions recognizing such rights, according to Mari Margil, who heads the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights. And Ecuador enshrined rights of nature in its Constitution in 2008.<\/p>\n Nature has long been considered property in legal systems around the world and treated as a resource. The rights of nature movement advances laws recognizing nature\u2019s independent right to exist, thrive and regenerate.<\/p>\n In 2008, the organization Ms. Margil leads worked with delegates to Ecuador\u2019s constitutional convention to develop rights of nature provisions. Since then, laws and court rulings in Panama, Colombia, Bolivia, Uganda, Bangladesh and Spain \u201chave recognized that nature possesses legally enforceable rights \u2014 including the most basic of rights, the right to exist,\u201d she wrote. \u201cThis is a movement that has grown quickly,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n But it took decades to gain traction.<\/p>\n Once Unthinkable<\/p>\n \u201cThroughout legal history, each successive extension of rights to some new entity has been, theretofore, a bit unthinkable,\u201d wrote Christopher D. Stone in a 1972 Southern California Law Review<\/a> article proposing legal rights for \u201cnatural objects\u201d like trees.<\/p>\n He argued that \u201cthe rightlessness of rightless \u2018things\u2019\u201d seems inherent or fundamentally true, rather than \u201ca legal convention acting in support of some status quo.\u201d Just as laws denying rights to women, children and people of various abilities, races, ethnicities, nationalities and religions were once considered just before becoming unacceptable, views on nature could similarly change, Mr. Stone suggested.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is no answer to say that streams and forests cannot have standing because streams and forests cannot speak,\u201d he wrote. \u201cCorporations cannot speak either; nor can states, estates, infants, incompetents, municipalities or universities. Lawyers speak for them.\u201d<\/p>\n