The “nature rights” movement continues to advance swiftly across the globe. Recently, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled in an advisory opinion that to protect humans from climate change and other environmental disasters, nature should be granted “rights.”

From the opinion (citations omitted):

The Court takes note that the United Nations General Assembly has adopt fifteen resolutions and twelve reports that reflect the increasing recognition of the case law on the Earth and the rights of Nature at the global level.

Additionally, the Pact for the Future, adopted by Member States of the United Nations in 2024, declares “the urgent need for a fundamental shift in our approach in order to achieve a world in which humanity lives in harmony with nature.”

Finally, the Court notes a growing tendency in legislation and case law to recognize Nature as a subject of rights. This tendency is reflected in judicial decisions at the regional and global level, as well as in the domestic laws of several countries of the Americas, such as, Canada, Ecuador, and some subnational entities.

Indeed, we have discussed many of those unfortunate developments here at NRO.

Then, in an act of irrational bootstrapping — granting rights to nature as a means of protecting human rights — the court ruled that because these several laws exist, that means such policies should be imposed universally:

By four votes to three, that, 7. Recognition of Nature and its components as subjects of rights constitutes a normative development that permits reinforcing the protection of the long-term integrity and functionality of the ecosystems, providing effective legal tools to confront the triple planetary crisis, and facilitating the prevention of existential damage before it becomes irreversible. This concept represents a contemporary expression of the principle of the interdependence between human rights and the environment, and reflects a growing tendency at the international level aimed at strengthening the protection of ecological systems in the face of present and future threats, in accordance with paragraphs 279 to 286.

Normative development? No. Ideological is more like it.

The usual suspects celebrated the ruling and promised to use the opinion as an accelerant to further environmental actions, including litigation. For example, the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature is giddy:

This legal precedent opens the door to new strategic litigation efforts, the protection of threatened ecosystems, and the advancement of Nature’s Rights legislation throughout the region.

Columbia Law School’s Climate Law blog was equally thrilled:

The IACtHR’s advisory opinion on the climate emergency has, once again, placed it at the vanguard of human rights protection. Advancing a profoundly climate justice-centred interpretation of international law, the IACtHR’s recognition of Nature as a subject of rights marks a sharp break with inherited legal understandings that have brought humanity to the brink of ecological disaster.  In doing so, the IACtHR has managed to strike a delicate balance: one that recognizes the rights of Nature as complementary to human rights and integrates an expansive approach to the protection of life on earth into the Inter-American human rights framework, thus facilitating sustainable coexistence.

Meanwhile, in a decision that made the World Economic Forum joyful, the UN’s International Court of Justice, while not granting rights to nature, has ruled in another advisory opinion that the extraction and use of fossil fuels must be restricted by States to fight climate change (citations omitted):

In the Court’s view, the “well-established rule of international law” that “the conduct of any organ of a State must be regarded as an act of that State” is applicable in the context of climate change. Failure of a State to take appropriate action to protect the climate system from GHG emissions — including through fossil fuel production, fossil fuel consumption, the granting of fossil fuel exploration licences or the provision of fossil fuel subsidies — may constitute an internationally wrongful act which is attributable to that State.

True, these rulings can’t legally force any country to enact particular policies. But these decisions are a bigger deal than some readers might think. The vaunted international community is going all-in on radical environmentalism that, if enacted widely, would gut human prosperity and inhibit the fruitful development of resource-rich areas in which people are currently living in destitution.

There is still time to stop the rights of nature movement and other radical environmentalist strategies by enacting prophylactic policies declaring (for example) that only human beings and our associations have rights and legal standing in any court. But time could be growing short. Imagine the policy consequences if the Trump administration were to be succeeded by one of the AOC/Mamdani school of political progressivism. The Green New Deal would look conservative by comparison.