Today, we face global environmental crises - including soaring extinction rates and accelerating climate change. This has happened despite thousands of environmental laws. What those laws have in common is that they regulate the exploitation of nature - treating nature as existing for human use. It's time for that to change - for our laws to recognize nature -- the waters, plants, animals and ecosystems we live among -- as a living being with legal rights.
We call upon our elected representatives at the state and local level to adopt rights of nature laws - as communities across the U.S. have, as countries including Ecuador and Panama have, and as many indigenous nations have done - to secure the right of nature to exist, flourish, and be restored.