Rights of Nature? Shifting Patterns in Environmental Constitutionalism¹

At the beginning of the 1970s provisions on the protection of the environment were missing in European constitutions. ⁽²¹⁾ Discussions on incorporating a fundamental right to an environment (Grundrecht auf eine menschenwürdige Umwelt) gained attention in early 1970s German Federal Republic under a centre-left government. ⁽²²⁾ In the debate the appropriateness of a subjective right was questioned as well as whether such a right should be conceived in an anthropocentric or ecocentric perspective. ⁽²³⁾ The idea of a ‘right of nature’ was occasionally voiced, but never seriously taken into consideration. ⁽²⁴⁾

The majority required for modifying the constitution could be reached only ten years later in the context of the German unification. The compromise adopted in 1994 as new Article 20a of the German Basic Law (GG), avoids an explicit reference to the anthropocentric orientation as well as conveying any particular status to the protection of the environment. ⁽²⁵⁾ Due to difficulties of precisely defining the scope (Schutzbereich) and rightsholders, the new provision, instead of the initially intended fundamental right, took the form of a constitutional norm addressed to public authority (Staatszielbestimmung) ⁽²⁶⁾: ‘Mindful … of its responsibility towards future generations’, German public authority is bound to ‘protect the natural foundations of life and animals’. ⁽²⁷⁾ However, debate did not end there, given that individuals risked not having access to justice if that obligation was not respected. Legal doctrine has therefore proposed that the right to a healthy environment should be guaranteed through procedural rights such as rights to information, participation in administrative procedures and effective access to justice. ⁽²⁸⁾

Interestingly, an appropriate legal remedy was created not by a constitutional amendment, but by the case law of the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC). With the order of 24 March 2021 the FCC ⁽²⁹⁾ on the one hand denied a standing to environmental associations as ‘advocates of nature’, but on the other hand affirmed that the individual fundamental right protecting life and physical integrity under Art. 2(2) first sentence of the GG encompasses protection against impairments caused by environmental pollution, regardless of who or what circumstances are the source of the impairment. ⁽³⁰⁾ This means that in case of shortcomings in the environment protection law, individuals may bring a constitutional complaint to the FCC with the argument that the legislature has not complied with its obligations under Article 20a GG. Moreover, this would not necessarily require that concrete damage to their physical integrity have already occurred. In the said order the FCC, qualifying fundamental rights as ‘intertemporal guarantees of freedom’, found that a complaint could also be justified when the legislative shortcomings have ‘an advance interference-like effect’ (eingriffsähnliche Vorwirkung) on the freedom comprehensively protected by the GG. Thus, the practical consequences of the FCC case law are coming close to the mentioned proposal by Callies, being understood that a correction of a failure of the democratic process through judicial review will be likely only in cases of a severe impact on individual rights.

Developments towards constitutionalising environmental protection can be observed in most other European countries as well as at the level of the European Union and the ECtHR case law. The frontrunners were States that adopted new constitutions after overcoming authoritarian regimes: article 24 of the constitution of Greece (1975), article 66 of the constitution of Portugal (1976), article 45 of the constitution of Spain (1978). Currently the constitutions of all EU member States but three (Denmark, Ireland, Cyprus) contain programmatic provisions on environment protection; thirteen of them provide for a fundamental right and seven of them even for a fundamental obligation for everybody to protect the environment. ⁽³¹⁾ All constitutional developments in Europe, however, stopped short of codifying a genuine ‘right of nature’.

The Swiss Constitution of 29 May 1874 contained merely isolated provisions on the protection of animals or waters until the Referendum of 6 June 1971 incorporated Article 24f (now Article 74 of the Constitution of 18 April 1999 ⁽³²⁾) which obliges the Federation to protect people and their natural environment from harmful or annoying influences. Unlike the German FCC, the Swiss Supreme Court, however, denied individual protection with regard to alleged shortcomings of the Swiss law on climate protection. The plaintiffs are now bringing their case to the ECtHR. ⁽³³⁾

In France the Charter of the Environment ⁽³⁴⁾ enshrines with constitutional rank everybody’s right to live in a balanced and healthy environment (Art. 1) and to access relevant information thereon (Art. 7) as well as their corresponding obligations to protect and improve the environment, as far as provided for by the Law (Articles 2–4). Public authorities are obliged to apply the precautionary principle (Art. 5) and promote sustainable development by reconciling the protection and improvement of the environment, economic development and social progress (Art. 6). In the current state of the case law, the scope of the provisions of the Charter does not appear uniform. Although the Conseil dÉtat allows an applicant to invoke the provisions of the Charter to request the annulment of an administrative act, their applicability is not fully recognized by judges and the control carried out on their basis is hesitant. ⁽³⁵⁾

The most recent innovation in European environmental constitutionalism was achieved in Italy with the adoption of the constitutional law of 11 February 2022, amending Art. 9 and 41 of the Italian constitution. While the provision added to Art. 9 of the Italian constitution ⁽³⁶⁾ refers to the duty of the Republic to protect the environment, also in the interest of the coming generations (in a very similar manner as Art. 20a of the German GG), it is innovative insofar as by explicitly protecting biodiversity and ecosystems it could be understood as expressing a conceptual shift towards a moderate and balanced ecocentrism. Moreover, the amendment to Art. 41 ⁽³⁷⁾ is noteworthy in that it makes it clear that private and free economic activity must not be detrimental to health and the environment as integral aspects of human dignity. Evidently, no case law regarding the new provisions can be reported yet. But it would be surprising if the Italian Constitutional Court would not find the procedural means to give them effect.

At the supranational level, the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights which was agreed by a Convention in 2000, but legally enforced only with the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty on 1 December 2009, falls short of granting individuals the right to a clean and healthy environment. ⁽³⁸⁾ Its Art. 37 does not go beyond the obligation of EU decision makers to integrate a high level of environmental protection and the improvement of the quality of the environment into the policies of the Union, in accordance with the principle of sustainable development. The meaning of these requirements has not been concretised yet by the Court of Justice of the European Union, which for the time being has only confirmed that acts of the Union legislator could be declared invalid if not complying with those requirements. ⁽³⁹⁾

The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) does not explicitly recognize an individual right to a clean and healthy environment. Case law of the ECtHR has considered severe ecological damage as infringement of the right to physical integrity. ⁽⁴⁰⁾ A pending case (Swiss Seniorinnen) might bring clarification on the Court’s position regarding the impact of climate risks on that right. ⁽⁴¹⁾

Outside of Europe, the picture is less homogeneous. Some States have adopted constitutional guarantees for environment and climate protection: Côte d’Ivoire, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Thailand, Tunisia, Venezuela, Vietnam. ⁽⁴²⁾ The most telling example is the 2008 Constitution of Ecuador. Referring to the millenarian roots, diverse wisdoms and religions of the human beings that constitute the sovereign people of Ecuador, the preamble expresses the will of the latter to establish a new way of citizens living together, in diversity and harmony with nature, ⁽⁴³⁾ which, in the words of the Constitutional Court, is based on ‘an intercultural convergence of the knowledge of the indigenous peoples with modern occidental science’. ⁽⁴⁴⁾ Art. 10 of the Constitution conceives nature as a subject of constitutionally guaranteed rights which, according to Art. 11, are to be implemented by all authorities of the State, including the judiciary. These rights are subsequently spelled out in detail in chapter seven on rights of nature (Derechos de la naturaleza, Art. 71–74). Based on such explicit texts, the country’s Constitutional Court in the said judgement could overrule without major hermeneutic efforts the arguments that contested the application of those rights by the judiciary which had been advanced in doctrine and by lower courts. ⁽⁴⁵⁾ The Court was aware that it would be difficult to understand Ecuador’s constitutional choice ‘from a strictly anthropocentric perspective which conceives the human being as the species with the highest value’. ⁽⁴⁶⁾ Reporting judge Jimeìnez qualified this choice to be ‘a change of paradigm since throughout its history the law had the function to instrumentalise, appropriate and exploit nature as mere natural resource’ ⁽⁴⁷⁾.

The constitutional choice of the people of Ecuador is clearly outstanding in its attempt to free the constitutional dimension of environmental care from its anthropocentric logic. Even if it sets a worthy example for all mankind, its immediate contagious effect can seriously be doubted. Up to now, only the Chilean constitutional convention agreed on provisions of the same kind, but its proposal for a new constitution was rejected by the Chilean people in 2022. Moreover, it seems as if it is still an open question whether the case law of Ecuador’s constitutional court will hold. It has been observed that the case law does not uniformly answer the question who concretely is the subject of the constitutional rights: nature as a whole, or individual natural entities such as forests, rivers, etc. ⁽⁴⁸⁾ Moreover, a strict interpretation of the precautionary principle as retained by the Ecuadorian court would mean that in future anyone undertaking an economic project would have to scientifically prove that it would not produce environmental damage. This would put courts in the position of ultimate evaluators of scientific evidence and expose the country to litigation based on investment protection clauses in trade agreements. ⁽⁴⁹⁾ Diverging decisions of lower courts have been reported in the meantime. ⁽⁵⁰⁾ Future case law may satisfactorily address technical legal issues and find balanced solutions, albeit at the expense of the principled radicalism of Los Cedros, but the question remains whether the Ecuadorian approach is fully coherent. Building the legal personality of nature on the idea of Pacha Mama, shared amongst indigenous peoples of Southern America, the Ecuadorian constituent power makes a literal use of what in the ancient traditions is one of the metaphors that – in contrast to abstract principles – guide human beings in their interactions with the surrounding world. While the indigenous wisdom of conceiving all of nature and its multiple ecosystems as living entities is even more valid at present times of ecological crisis, it can be doubted whether translating it into the subject-object dichotomy of legal relationships is an appropriate means of dignifying its intrinsic value and agency in the sustaining of life in general. Such subject-object relationships – as Judge Jimeìnez rightly pointed out – were always functional to human self-interest. In order to sort out a balanced way forward, a closer look may be useful at how – independently of any constitutional pathos - courts all over the world have tried to strike ecological justice.

Independently from the controversial question whether or not the described constitutional innovations constitute effective safeguards for a healthy natural environment, in many parts of the world constitutional change was out of reach, at least through the formal constitutional amendment process. In the absence of normative texts vested with constitutional authority, the judiciary was faced with the challenge of compensating on legal grounds the underperformance of more or less democratically legitimate political authority.

Courts in the Netherlands have early shown awareness of the need to protect the natural environment. A judgement of 10 September 1986 by the Rechtbank Den Haag, ⁽⁵¹⁾ applying the principles of Dutch tort law, concluded from the joint dependency of the riparians of a body of water that private water users have a duty of care to ensure that the riparian communities living downstream have appropriate opportunities for use of water. In effect, the Court’s legal view resulted in a strict, no-fault liability for those who discharged toxic or polluting substances into a body of water. A similar line of reasoning was taken up again more than 30 years later by the Rechtbank Den Haag with regard to CO2 emissions. ⁽⁵²⁾

In 2015 litigation was initiated on the question of whether the State is obliged to reduce, by the end of 2020, the emission of greenhouse gases originating from Dutch soil by at least 25% compared to 1990, and whether the courts can order the State to do so. That litigation was concluded with the judgement of 20 December 2019 by the Hoge Raad (Dutch Supreme Court ⁽⁵³⁾), confirming that the Dutch government has obligations to urgently and significantly reduce emissions in line with its human rights obligations. Such obligations are based on Art. 2 ECHR protecting the right to life, and Art. 8 ECHR protecting the right to respect for private and family life. According the established ECHR case law, these provisions oblige a contracting state to take suitable measures if a real and immediate risk to people’s lives or welfare exists and the state is aware of that risk. The Hoge Raad holds that the same obligation applies when it comes to environmental hazards that threaten large groups or the population as a whole, even if the hazards will only materialise over the long term. Moreover, the court finds itself bound to grant legal effective protection because according to Art. 13 ECHR national law must offer an effective legal remedy against a violation or imminent violation of the rights that are safeguarded by the ECHR.

The argument that a duty to protect the environment can be based on human rights obligations flowing from the ECHR was upheld in the abovementioned judgement of 26 May 2021 by the Rechtbank Den Haag. ⁽⁵⁴⁾ The interesting aspect of that judgement is that it extends the duty to protect the environment to private (commercial) actors, granting individuals or environmental organisations remedy under tort law. The court interprets the unwritten standard of care from the applicable Dutch Civil Code (Book 6 Section 162) on the basis of the relevant facts and circumstances, the best available science on dangerous climate change and how to manage it, and the widespread international consensus that human rights offer protection against the impacts of dangerous climate change and that companies must respect human rights. Such interpretation shows a kind of environmental constitutionalism reaching beyond the literal text of the national constitution. The legal text crucial for the court’s ruling, a general clause of civil law, in substance refers to recognized and shared standards, in other words to aspects of the actual constitution of the society.

In Columbia the Constitutional Court in its judgement No T-411/92 of 17 June 1992, referring to 34 provisions of the constitution that came into force in 1991, developed the concept of an ‘ecological constitution’ (Constitucioìn Ecoloìgica). As the main pillars thereof, the Court highlights the obligation of the State and of individuals to protect the cultural and natural wealth of the Nation (Art. 8), ⁽⁵⁵⁾ the ecologic function which is inherent to the social function and to the obligations implied by property (Art. 58) ⁽⁵⁶⁾ and the duty of everybody to protect the cultural and natural resources of the country and take care for the conservation of a healthy environment (Art. 95–8). ⁽⁵⁷⁾ Building on the concept of ‘ecological constitution’, the same Court in its judgement of 10 November 2016 (T-622/16) asserted the concept of biocultural rights (derechos bioculturales) and recognised the entity of the Atrato river, its basin and tributaries as a legal subject entitled to protection, conservation, maintenance and restoration by the State and ethnic communities. ⁽⁵⁸⁾ In the literature the attribution of constitutional rights to an entity of nature was hailed as a landmark decision that ‘adopted, for the first time, an explicit ecocentric approach to environmental protection’ and ‘pushed the boundaries of constitutional law’. ⁽⁵⁹⁾

Due to globalisation and digitalisation, this courageous judgement has been duly noted and followed by similar case law all over the world. Societies became increasingly aware of the progressive destruction of the natural environment through the growth of population, poorly conceived technology and industrialisation, with democratic and non-democratic public authorities frequently failing to slow that process down. Under such circumstances the high judiciary, provided it is sufficiently independent from political powers, may step in and give expression to concerns widespread in the society. Thus, on 30 January 2019 the High Court of Bangladesh recognised the river Turag as a living entity with legal rights and held that the same would apply to all rivers in Bangladesh. The judgement was upheld by the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court on 17 February 2020. ⁽⁶⁰⁾ The Constitutional Court of Guatemala, on 7 November 2019, rendered a verdict ⁽⁶¹⁾ recognizing the spiritual and cultural relationship between Indigenous People and acknowledging Water as a living entity. In Brazil the Superior Court of Justice in a judgement of 21 March 2019 ⁽⁶²⁾ based an ecological perspective on the principle of dignity of the human person and recognised non-human living beings as subject of rights. The judgement further addresses the need to change the Kantian anthropocentric paradigm and replace it with biocentric or ecocentric thinking, stressing the interconnectedness between human beings and Nature and also recognising Nature’s intrinsic value. With judgement of 6 February 2020 the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ⁽⁶³⁾ confirmed the protection of Indigenous communities’ property rights over their ancestral territories under Article 21 of the American Convention on Human Rights and of their rights to water, food, a healthy environment and cultural identity under Article 26. In India, on 19 April 2022 the Madras High Court ⁽⁶⁴⁾ declared Mother Nature as a Living Being – many other High Court judgements follow a similar line.

These impressive developments give rise to the question whether and to which extent they constitute a significant breakthrough in to-date-prevalent anthropocentric approaches to environmental protection. A closer look at the arguments developed on the 397 pages of the extremely well-reasoned judgement of 10 November 2016 by the Colombian Constitutional Court may, however, induce a more nuanced assessment. The biocultural rights as understood and affirmed by the Court ⁽⁶⁵⁾ were conceivable within the well-established concept of ‘ecological constitution’, taking a standpoint which the Court qualified as holistic ⁽⁶⁶⁾ and ‘ecocentric’. ⁽⁶⁷⁾ Such biocultural rights would have been alone sufficient legal grounds for justifying the five concrete orders and two admonishments ⁽⁶⁸⁾ that the Court addressed to the distinct public authorities and ethnic communities with a view to resolve the complex task of safeguarding the Atrato river ecosystem. The recognition of constitutional rights of that ecosystem was somehow a surplus that deployed scarce legal effects besides conferring the joint guardianship – that is, its legal representation – to the Colombian State and the ethnic communities that inhabit the Atrato river basin. ⁽⁶⁹⁾ Even the effects of such representation could have been achieved otherwise, for instance by granting rights of legal standing and requirements for public administration to proceed with the consent of the indigenous communities. The value of the innovation may rather be found in its persuasive force. Alike in archaic or indigenous traditions, the personification of nature is a forceful metaphor that commands human compliance perhaps with more strength than legal norms ever can. It therefore has a legitimate place in the context of environmental constitutionalism – as long as those who apply the law do not forget about its metaphoric dimension and consider granting nature legal subjectivity as panacea against destruction of the environment by humanity. By doing so, nature would remain subsumed to the subject-object dichotomy of legal relationships. Due to the legal form, rights of nature would continue to conflict with contrasting interests of other legal subjects, be subject to the balancing of interests in accordance with the principle of proportionality and thus remain imprisoned in anthropocentric structures of thought and agency. This is why the concept of biocultural rights, understood from an ecocentric perspective, appears to be more far-reaching than only attributing legal personality to nature.

In contrast to examples of poor legislative performance in the field of environment protection, some recent developments in countries moving towards environmental constitutionalism through committed pieces of legislation merit notice. Their scope ranges from regionally limited measures such as granting a natural entity the legal status of a person (the Whanganui River in New Zealand ⁽⁷⁰⁾) to granting such status to Madre Tierra (Bolivia’s Ley Nr. 071 of 21 December 2010 ⁽⁷¹⁾) or making effort to set in motion a comprehensive program for a sustainable form of life.

Such a program is embedded in Bolivia’s Ley Nr. 300 of 15 October 2012. ⁽⁷²⁾ It aims at establishing ‘the vision and foundations of integral development in harmony and balance with Mother Earth to Live Well’. ⁽⁷³⁾ It conceives Madre Tierra ⁽⁷⁴⁾ as dynamic living system consisting of the indivisible community of all life systems and living beings which are interrelated, interdependent, complementary and share a common destiny. It aims at Vivir Bien, ⁽⁷⁵⁾ understood as an alternative civilizational and cultural horizon to capitalism and modernity, that is born in the worldviews of nations and rural communities of indigenous origin and of intercultural and Afro-Bolivian communities, and is conceived in the context of inter-culturality. The entire law has the character of the substantive constitution of a State where the civilisation and the economy no longer treat nature as an object (or res in the sense of Roman law), clearly and deliberately distancing itself from the occidental way of life. From the perspective of the latter, this text would rather appear as utopic and the fact that it was adopted in the form of law and not of a constitution may give rise to some doubts as to the majorities that were in support of it.

Other examples of environmental constitutionalism manifested by national legislators are the Uganda National Environment Act of February 2019 that recognizes Nature’s fundamental rights to be, evolve and regenerate, or Australia’s Great Ocean Road and Environs Protection Act of 16 June 2020 that recognizes the Great Ocean Road as ‘one living and integrated natural entity’ (section 1 (a)). In the same vein, Panama’s law No. 287 of 24 February 2022 ⁽⁷⁶⁾ recognises in its first article Nature as a subject of rights and concretises the rights of nature and the obligations of the State authorities to protect and respect these rights with the assistance of the citizenry (Art. 6). The law considers the interest of Nature as superior in principle, due to its vulnerability through human activity, and it establishes ‘in dubio pro natura’ and ‘in dubio pro aqua’ as maxims for administrative and judicial authorities (Art. 8).

In several other countries national legislation on the Rights of Nature has been proposed, either with regard to Nature in general, as in Argentina (Proposal of 2020 for a national regulation on Rights of Nature ⁽⁷⁷⁾) and Peru (Proposal of 2 June 2022 of a Law recognizing Mother Nature, the ecosystems and the species as subjects of rights ⁽⁷⁸⁾), or with regard to distinct ecosystems, as in Canada (Bill C-271 aiming at giving legal capacity to the St. Lawrence River, examined on 5 May 2022 in first reading by the House of Commons of Canada ⁽⁷⁹⁾).

The first measure of this kind adopted in Europe is the Spanish Law 19 of 30 September 2022 ⁽⁸⁰⁾ which confers legal personality to the lagoon of Mar Menor in the province of Murcia. In contrast to the southern hemisphere, where the personalisation of nature could be linked with indigenous tradition and contribute to better integrate the society, in the European legal systems since Roman times nature is treated as res, as possible object of property rights and at the disposal of mankind. Against such backdrop personalisation of nature is an unprecedented step. It is all the more interesting to examine what the concrete legal effects of such change are.

The law 19/2022 links to the legal person of the lagoon of Mar Menor (Art. 1) the rights to exist and naturally evolve (Art. 2), to be protected notably against activities potentially detrimental to its ecosystem (2a), to be entitled to actions preserving terrestrial and marine species and habitats (2b) as well as to repair actions, which restore natural dynamics and resilience once damage has occurred (2c). Representatives of public authorities, of the citizenry of waterfront communities and a scientific committee are entrusted with the legal person’s guardianship (Art. 3), while everybody is given a standing to assert rights and prohibitions of the law at Court or vis-à-vis the public administration (Art. 6). In case of any violation of a right established by it, the law stipulates that the responsible persons or authority are to be pursued and sanctioned in accordance with the provisions of criminal, civil, environmental and administrative law (Art. 4) while nullity is provided for of any act of the public authority that is found in contrast with the law (Art. 5). Finally, public authorities are instructed to take a number of policy measures to achieve the objectives of the law (Art. 7).

Bearing in mind that the Spanish parliament adopted the law 19/022 pursuant to article 149.1.23.a of the Constitution, making use of the exclusive competence of the State for basic legislation on environmental protection (Disposicioìn final segunda), provisions having the legal effect of articles 2–7 described above could have also been adopted in the absence of the provision of Art. 1 in form of general environmental protection rules. ⁽⁸¹⁾ In that case, these provisions should have been worded differently, such as redrafting the rights of Art. 2 in form of prohibitions and obligations, replacing the guardianship in Art. 3 by the requirement of the public authorities acting in agreement with the citizens’ representations and the scientific advice. It would even be unnecessary to change instructions addressed at the public authority in Art. 7. As to articles 4 and 5 of the law, it is questionable whether they have any legal value at all, since they provide for the obvious that any act of the public authority not in conformity with the law needs to be declared void. Moreover, Art. 4 does not stipulate other than the obligation of public authorities to pursue in accordance with the principle of legality any violations of the law with a view of them being sanctioned pursuant to penal, civil, administrative or environmental law as applicable. Insofar there are good reasons to share the doubts expressed by Marie-Christine Fuchs ⁽⁸²⁾ about any real increase of environment protection, while her assumption that personalisation might turn out to belong to the realms of fetishism and legal utopias, is probably an exaggeration. Such considerations apply mutatis mutandis to all legislative action taken in recent years. In legislation as well as in constitutions and case law the same doubts come up: What is the effective added value of recognising personality to natural entities? In strictly legal terms, the personalisation of nature mostly does not have measurable effect that could not be achieved on other legal grounds.

The exception is the most far-reaching and coherent approach that is offered by the Bolivian Ley 300/2012. If that program became a reality and the Bolivian political class, society and economic actors were really successful in implementing its provisions, and if the rest of the world would let them do so, a new societal order could be expected to arise. Under such a changed societal paradigm the personification of nature would assume a meaning that is different from the understanding we develop in societies built on the law and structured through contradictory legal claims. By conceiving Madre Tierra and Vivir Bien as interdependent with and co-equal to all other rights (see Art. 4.1 of Ley 300) and prohibiting to commercialise natural processes and components of the Earth’s life systems (Art. 4.2.), the personalised nature would cease to be a fictitious legal entity opposed to other legal and natural persons and everybody could feel appealed to identify as part of Madre Tierra.

Another interesting aspect can be drawn from the experience of the making of the Spanish law on the Mar Menor. In the Spanish parliament the bill was carried with the votes of all political parties but one (Vox), following a referendum that initiated and endorsed the bill with a large majority. One might ask why, despite such a broad political consensus, the representatives did not take equivalent action sooner. This casts a rather dim light on the capacity of democratic representative bodies to take decisive action for the protection of the environment. Apparently that consensus only came about once a large number of the citizenry in despair about the ongoing destruction of their habitat through its progressive commercialisation resolved to oppose it through the metaphor of personalising nature. Since it is the big number that counts in democracy, ⁽⁸³⁾ addressing nature as a person can help build the majorities required for its protection.