This is totally the wrong approach. While it is indeed a fact that our Anglo-American legal system is based on rights vested in the individual, that undiluted system is without a doubt the best way to do things, and the ONLY way to do things in legal systems descended from Magna Carta.

Human individuals are unique in the universe in that they have the ability to express their individual preferences, and vote accordingly. They are A) self-aware and B) communicative. Therefore, a system based on an individual, equal vote for each person is the only real way for a group to decide their common interests. Ecosystems lack both the characteristics of self-awareness and articulation. Such characteristics are unique to human individuals.

In the Anglo-American system, furthermore, although a legislature can do virtually anything, a legislature is expressly NOT permitted to constrain the rights of the unique individual as laid out in a constitution.

The interests of property-holders SEEM to have more gravity than the interests of non-property holders, but that's only because property holders have a different type of motivation for protecting their individual rights, and they often fight tenaciously (and sometimes unfairly) because property is a social construct from which many people derive an outsized amount of emotional satisfaction.

However, those property owners who behave anti-socially, or against the commonweal, already can be punished by sanctions of criminal and civil law. And if the criminal and civil law is falling short in its ability to properly punish the anti-social, than the only remedy for that is to make the law stronger. To do that, advocates must convince their fellow voters to stiffen penalties. Hard work to do, but not impossible. Voters and legislatures can also adjust property rules in a manner that alters the distribuiotn of property, while not violating individual rights.

The theorists who propose rights of ecosystems, or animals, or groups, weaken the logic by which the legislatures and voters do their business, simply it seems because the heavy lifiting of politics is unpalatable.

An alternative concept:

Corporations are considered to be artificial persons vested with some species of rights that act like individual rights, but only for ease in transacting business and legal transactions. If someone wants to vest rights in an environment, an environmental group or authority should incorporate, establish a domain of interest, and defend that domain through litigation just like corporations do.

And that's already being done, in fact it's been done for centuries.

I have a real problem with the idea that is it the government that "grants" rights. The Constitution of The United States of America does not and cannot grant rights. The rights enumerated in that document stem from the belief that God created humanity differently than the animals. The rights you have come from the fact that you are human and nothing else. They are enumerated in The Constitution to ensure that the federal government does not try to govern who has those rights. This list is not all inclusive. You have other natural of human rights that are not listed in that document.

There is no such thing as "a constitutional right" because no rights can be granted by the constitution. The document is a constraint on the government. It really has nothing to do with you unless you are a federal law maker or law enforcement officer.

That is all.

I agree with rob that this is the wrong approach, our legal system is one based on individual rights and should remain that way.

Instead, we should establish a legal framework whereby natural ecosystems belong not to the property on which they exist, but rather to everyone within that legal jurisdiction. Thus, the interests of the individual property owner must be weighed against competing (and not necessarily equal) interests of the community. This won't protect every species or every wetland, but it would establish a basis for actually valuing ecosystem services that could fundamentally transform our economic system.

The alternative, one in which the ecosystem itself is granted rights, would arguably be temporarily more effective. That is, until the Constitution is amended to grant rights only to human beings (and their fetuses??--yikes, lets not go into that). People would get sick of hearing how the squirrels in City Park objected to the plans to cut down that old dead oak that keeps dropping branches on people. Which is a pressing right: the right to a secure home for the squirrel, or the right not to get stuff dropped on your head when you walk on a particular sidewalk?

If we at least put a value on ecosystem services, and provide a legal framework for commonly-owned resources, then economics could be harnessed to more effectively protect ecosystems than by bestowing them "rights" which they cannot possibly defend.

Anthonares,

Interesting ideas, although frankly I think the current system we have is probably the best, we just need more policial ooomph behind environmental interests.

I don't think we can place a replacement value on the services of the environment, just like we can't put a right on the basic communal interests of everyone having basic good health and education and freedom from crime. Although it is totally true that we assess a value on good health or liberty when it's been lost (in a tort decision, for example) I think the basic doctrine that "the commonwealth will protect all its members by preventing pollution, disease, and environmental degradation" probably allows more efficient, proactive regulation. This one statement resonates with parents and leaders a lot better than piecemeal protests.

I'm an optimist. I think the system that's in place is good, but poorly utilized, but that can change. I think Treehugger.com is doing so much great heavy lifting and I have total love for all their work!

It is indeed true that environmentalists will find endangered-species-focused habitat preservation harder and harder to defend as population and economic pressures increase. However, a far more involved social discussion of the value of biodiversity will perhaps help put these issues in perspective. Furthermore, modern science may show ways that we can have BOTH species protection and more economic use of protected lands.

Wonderful topic! How do we protect the rights of every Earthling, in a simple and fair way?

I have a couple of thoughts to add to the discussion:

1. Rights can be based on health. Of individuals and of the system. Humans depend on a healthy ecosystem for their own health. So protecting the health of the individuals (flora and fauna) in an ecosystem protects everyone connected to that ecosystem. And the individuals who don't speak english can be understood with more subtle listening skills (Is a tree sick? If so, it's "saying" that it's health is in danger!)

2. I've adopted a philosophy of Existential Rights:

Who gets rights?
Existence is the only common trait that I require of another individual or thing for it to have the same basic rights as I wish for myself. Not just life, but actual physical (or non-physical) existence. So yes, a rock, a tree, a cat, a human, a universe, and a beam of light all have the same rights as I do.

What are those rights?
I've recently become fond of the idea that individual things (animal, vegetable, mineral, or otherwise) have the right to do whatever they do. It works for me because that's reality - individual things do indeed do what they do :-) And, after trying for decades, I realized that it's nearly impossible to win in an argument with reality! So believing that things have a right to do what they do means that rocks have a right to just sit there, roll down a hill, or disintegrate, if that is what they do. And trees have a right to grow, shed their leaves, or fall over, if that is what they do. And cats and humans have a right to eat, sleep, pounce, juggle, drool, and/or eat cheese on Wednesdays. And the sun has a right to implode and turn into a black whole if it implodes and turns into a black hole. And the Universe has a right to expand, or contract, or multiply, or whatever it does. Now, obviously this also means that individual things have a right to be annoyed by the things that other individual things do, and to actively try and stop them, too.

What does this mean for me?
I have the right, as something that exists, to try to continue to exist, and the way I'm doing that is by trying to protect my own health and the health of those other things that I rely upon (my planet, my community, my family, my bicycle, and my friends). My goal is to keep everyone else happy and healthy so that I can be happy and healthy, and I will continue to assert my rights to do that until I no longer exist :-)

Having read this post, and seeing how blithely some people are anthropomorphising completely inanimate objects, it would seem the conclusion drawn by more than a few critics is gaining traction. The conclusion to which I am referring, is that environmentalists are utterly insane.

This post captures a huge problem that has vexed the environmental movement for some time. Among all the cries to protect the earth, something vital seems to get lost: any semblance of a reason to do so. And of course, we have a reason, a very good one in fact. We live here.

That obvious, but critical fact rarely pokes its head out when discussions about the environment come up. Given the discourse of today, a casual observer might be forgiven for thinking we should stop a housing development because of the existing ecosystem's "right to exist" or that we should stop global warming so that polar bears won't go extinct.

The whole point of building a sustainable civilization is to ensure that we humans, all of us, will be able to survive, happy and healthy, into perpetuity. Now, it happens that the survival of many ecosystems, as a resource for us to use wisely, is critical for our livelihoods. We should care about them because we care about us.

What a great discussion! Though the legal substance of some of the comments (particularly the excellent interchange between rob and anthonares) is a little over my head, I think the ideas articulated make sense and provide a framework for future action on similar issues. Adopting rob's notion that "the commonwealth will protect all its members by preventing pollution, disease, and environmental degradation" as a guiding principle for any type of litigation/legislation is probably the best way to bring together as many interested, yet distinct, parties as possible.

Annonymous, I think you might be a bit confused. I don't see anyone anthropomorphizing any inanimate objects in this discussion. Maybe your confusion came from the metaphors I was including in my somewhat poetic presentation of Existential Rights?

My bike clearly isn't a human, but both do exist, and I am better off when both me and my bike (and my garden, and my neighbor) are healthy (in working order).

Does that help?