Dana Zartner is a professor in the International Studies Department and adjunct professor at the School of Law at the University of San Francisco. She has served as an accredited representative at UN meetings, including the Committee on Women’s Rights in New York and the Expert Mechanisms on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Geneva. She is the author of Courts, Codes, and Custom: Legal Tradition and State Policy Toward International Human Rights and Environmental Law.
Rights of Nature laws are becoming a vital tool for addressing environmental injustice. From New Zealand and India to Ecuador and Bolivia, advocates have successfully secured legal rights for rivers, forests, and mountains. Granting rights to nature has the potential to expand environmental protections, strengthen indigenous rights, promote sustainable development, and alter how humans relate to nature. Despite these promises, rights of Nature laws have met with greater resistance in some countries than in others.