Environmental personhood
Environmental personhood or juridic personhood is a legal concept which designates certain environmental entities the status of a legal person. This assigns to these entities, the rights, protections, privileges, responsibilities and legal liability of a legal personality. Because environmental entities such as rivers and plants can not represent themselves in court, a "guardian" can act on the entity's behalf to protect it. Environmental personhood emerged from the evolution of legal focus in pursuit of the protection of nature. Over time, focus has evolved from human interests in exploiting nature, to protecting nature for future human generations, to conceptions that allow for nature to be protected as intrinsically valuable. This concept can be used as a vehicle for recognising Indigenous peoples' relationships to natural entities, such as rivers. Environmental personhood, which assigns nature (or aspects of it) certain rights, concurrently provides a means to individuals or groups such as Indigenous peoples to fulfill their human rights. Background The United States Professor Christopher D. Stone first discussed the idea of attributing legal personality to natural objects in the 1970s, in his article "Should trees have standing? Towards legal rights for natural objects". A legal person cannot be owned; therefore, no ownership can be attributed to an environmental entity with established legal personality. Standing (law) is directly related to legal personality. Entities with standing, or locus standi, have the right or capacity to bring action or appear in court. Environmental entities cannot themselves bring action or appear in court. However, this action or standing can be achieved on behalf of the entity by a representing legal guardian. Representation could increase protection of culturally significant aspects of the natural environment, or areas vulnerable to exploitation and pollution. Although there is no federal law in the United States implementing environmental personhood, the idea has been advocated for by a US Supreme Court Justice. In the decision of the 1972 US Supreme Court case Sierra Club v. Morton, Justice William Douglas wrote a dissenting opinion arguing that certain "environmental elements" should have locus standi, and that people with a meaningful relationship to that environmental element should be able to act on its behalf for its protection. As of June 2021, at least 53 initiatives in 12 countries have used the concept of 'person' in their legal text. The Sierra Club, an environmental advocacy group, brought this suit against then Secretary of the Interior of the United States, Roger C. B. Morton stating that the federal government, according to the Administrative Procedure Act, could not grant permits for developers to build infrastructure – specifically a highway, powerlines, and a ski resort – in the Mineral King Valley, part of the Sequoia National Forest. The Sierra Club aimed to protect this undeveloped land within the national forest, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit had stated that because the members of the Sierra Club would not be directly affected they could not sue under the Administrative Procedure Act, which "provides standards for judicial review" for