A May 31 New York Times column by Robert McFarlane, author of Is a River Alive?, celebrates the demolition of four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River in northern California, thus providing some “400 miles of restored habitat for salmon and steelhead trout” while “creating wetlands” and facilitating forest regrowth. The dams’ removal isn’t expected to significantly affect the supply of electricity in the area, since they were producing only 2 per cent of current demand.
In contrast to “the doctrine of human supremacy” over nature, rights-of-nature advocates view human beings as “entangled” in nature’s “web.”
What is more interesting, indeed concerning, is the ground on which McFarlane celebrates the event. He finds in it “a beacon of hope” when the Trump administration has demonstrated its intention “to drastically de-prioritize the natural world in favor of economic interests.” That aim is said to be manifest in the administration’s plans to “fast-track energy projects,” while expanding American timber production (since “logging degrades water quality by increasing soil erosion”) and “narro[w] the definition of ‘the waters of the United States,’” which will allegedly “make it easier for pollutants such as fertilizers, pesticides, and mining waste to enter bodies of water.”
To explain McFarlane’s last point first: defining “the waters of the United States” (WOTUS) became an issue thanks to a provision in the Clean Waters Act of 1971 that delineated the limits of the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to govern waterways — specifically, how far upstream from major rivers the EPA’s coverage extended. In the 2023 case Sackett v. EPA, the Supreme Court ruled that the Biden administration had defined WOTUS too broadly, and that it properly extended only to bodies of water that had a “significant nexus” to a navigable waterway. (Previously, the EPA could deny landowners the right to build on “vernal pools,” areas that weren’t covered with water year-round, let alone being demonstrably connected to a waterway.)
But while the administration then revised its definition, agricultural groups found it still too broad, and sued to have it further revised. Those groups expressed satisfaction with EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s March 12 announcement that his agency will redefine WOTUS while still guaranteeing “clean water for all Americans supported by clear and consistent rules for all states, farmers, and small businesses.”
This isn’t the place to assess Zeldin’s specific decision. Rather, what merits concern is Macfarlane’s contention that natural bodies like rivers should be regarded as having “rights” of their own, which would in principle remove decisions about issues like dam removal or the scope of WOTUS from the political process to the courts. Macfarlane’s position mirrors that of what he calls a “powerful” international “rights of nature” movement, which “challenges [the] anthropocentric presumptions … embedded in our laws and imaginations.”
In contrast to “the doctrine of human supremacy” over nature, rights-of-nature advocates view human beings as “entangled” in nature’s “web,” lacking any inherent claim to superiority to other parts of that web.
As evidence of the international growth of the rights-of-nature movement, Macfarlane cites the 2008 act of “moral imagination” in which Ecuador revised its constitution to recognize those rights, engendering a 2013 decision by its Constitutional Court blocking the development of two gold mines because they would “violate the rights of a cloud forest and its associated river system”; an act of the New Zealand Parliament that recognized the Whanganui River as a “spiritual and physical entity” and appointed “a body of river guardians to speak” on its behalf; and the “landmark legal recognition” of a Peruvian river as “a living entity with the inherent rights to exist, flow, give life to animals and remain free of pollution.”
Finally, Macfarlane reports that the “Eco Jurisprudence Monitor … details 156 [current] rights of nature initiatives [that is, lawsuits] in America, far more than in any other country.”
The Rights of Man
Let’s think through the implications of Macfarlane’s claims. Note first that “the doctrine of human supremacy” over nature, far from being invented by Donald Trump, is stated in Genesis I:28, where Adam is granted authority “to rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and every creature that craws upon the earth.” (Ruling those creatures would presumably entail governing their environment as well). And man’s superiority to other creatures is stated by Aristotle in Politics I.2, citing our unique faculty of speech and reason. But Macfarlane and other members of his movement apparently prefer a different religious or philosophic outlook, according to which rivers are themselves “spiritual,” “life-giving” beings.
Note that simply in arguing for the “rights of nature,” Macfarlane and other rights-of-nature advocates are unavoidably demonstrating their superiority as humans to those they claim to represent: if we are simply parts of a non-hierarchical “web,” no higher than its other parts, how come a group of “river guardians” had to be chosen to speak on behalf of the Whanganui River, rather than letting the river represent itself?
None of this is to deny the legitimate claim that given the enormous power of modern technology, we should use it responsibly in order to preserve the natural environment to the extent possible. But in rejecting the notion of “human supremacy” so as to justify enhancing the prosperity of salmon and steelhead trout, Macfarlane and his ilk seem to be overlooking the fact that the main reason we are interested in the well-being of fish is to ensure that they will be healthy and readily available for human consumption (now and by future generations).
Of course, the reasons for caring for our natural environment are not always so directly utilitarian. We have a duty to those who come after us to preserve natural sites of grandeur through establishing institutions like national parks, and also to seek the preservation of animal species that interest us (in the wild, or in well-appointed zoos). And on a vaster scale, it is in the interest of the human race to preserve the Amazon jungle against continuing encroachment, not only as a reminder of what relatively pristine nature looks like, but because of the likely influence of the forest on the earth’s climate. (To achieve that aim, international action is called for to reimburse the Brazilian government for the cost of protecting it, compensating Brazilians for being denied the right to level the forest in order to better earn a living.)
But none of these facts justify the claim that nonhuman animals or rivers have legal “rights” of their own. In practically every instance of weighing the immediate benefit to groups of human beings (gold miners, cattle herders, loggers, users of electricity, consumers of industrial products, tourists, you name it) against the apparent good of other parts of nature, what is required is a balancing of goods or interests.
The appropriate venue for that is a well-ordered political process, rather than enabling self-denoted defenders of nature to trump competing claims in courts of law. In purporting to adopt a posture of humility with regard to nature (disclaiming “human supremacy”), activists like Macfarlane are really seeking to elevate themselves above their fellows, by having courts impose their particular weighing of goods on the rest of us.
Macfarlane’s concluding expression of contempt for the Trump administration’s alleged “drive to gut environmental regulation” so as to “reduce the natural world to dollar value” indicates a dismissal of the welfare of his fellow human beings, who need to earn a living in a way that ultimately requires using nature’s resources (exploitation of which normally requires payment in some sort of currency). Did it occur to Macfarlane, for instance, that expanded timber harvesting will help alleviate the high price of housing (while also reducing the risk of forest fires)?
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