Unite for Rights Blog

Foreword: This blog was written by Maya Forte, Unite for Right’s Social Media Director. This blog was produced as a combination of external research in both English and Spanish, and examination of inherent rights of nature explored by our associates at EarthLaw. Visit EarthLaw and Unite for Rights to learn more about how environmental protections expand into the realm of international human rights.

Rights of Nature and Environmental Protections

While many cases of environmental protection, including from habitat destruction, pollution, and wildlife trafficking have been brought forward for their effects infringing upon restrictions outlined in domestic and international legal protections, this case sets itself apart for its focus on nature’s rights inherent, making a river a rights holder in the same way as a human being. 

The Rights of Nature movement holds that Nature itself, including rivers and ecosystems possess legal rights regardless of people’s dependence on them. To Rights of Nature, nature is guaranteed these rights, yet needs human defenders to protect and safeguard those rights. Learn more about human rights law and RoN from this EarthLawCenter article.

The case of the Marañón

On March 18th, 2024, a major environmental legal victory set a new stage for environmental protections around the world with an incredible declaration: a river as a holder of rights itself. Mixed Court of Nauta legally recognised the Maranon River as a holder of rights, appointing its protection to the Indigenous communities and Peruvian state to defend, guard, and represent the river.

It is through a federation of Peruvian Kukama Indigenous women that the case was brought forward, who view the river as a sacred center to their ancestors and representation of the health of the homeland; the state oil company PetroPeru had not updated its environmental management plan, and as a result pipeline leaks had contaminated the river. 

Under Resolution number thirty-one, the Marañón river has “; it has the right to flow to guarantee a healthy ecosystem, the right to provide a healthy ecosystem; the right to flow freely from all contamination; the right to feed and be fed by its tributaries; the right to biodiversity; the right to be restored; the right to the regeneration of its natural cycles; the right to the conservation of its ecological structure and functions; the right to protection, preservation and recovery; the right to be represented and that the State must legally protect, because they are an important part of the fundamental rights of every human being and of our future generations as they are life, health and represent one of our basic needs for our subsistence, so they have to be represented.”

How does this case connect to Unite for Rights?

In the case of the Marañón River, human rights were foremost relied upon, despite legal precedent connecting to RoN both in Latin America and Europe. The InterAmerican Court of Human Rights (IACtHR), based in Costa Rica, issued an advisory opinion in 2019 connecting the right to a healthy environment as a distinct human rights. Not only did this opinion provide regional level basis for precedent of the non-human exclusive nature of human rights considered by international courts, but provides inspiration and basis for courts around the world. In 2024, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) built on this advisory opinion, expanding the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights defining nature as a rights holder. In the case of KlimaSeniorinnen v. Switzerland, suing the Swiss government for inaction to curb climate change; in Neubauer v. Germany, the German Federal Constitutional Court ruled that Germany’s Federal Climate Protection Act was incompatible with constitutional rights to life and health (EarthLawCenter, 2025.)

So, what do these cases have to do with Unite for Rights? Namely, its a matter of efficiency in expanding rights around the world. It’s clear through these cases that the various international court systems both on regional and domestic scales are all reexamining approaches to environmental litigation in light of climate change and huge environmental degradation, with increasing devastation of both human and nonhuman effects. With Unite’s proposed International Bill of Human Rights universalized across these systems, beginning with the regional courts, the ease of expanding rights for both humans and nature will be much more efficient, and we will have more time to focus on the real issues- mitigating climate change and its adverse impacts on both mankind and nature.