The Ocean Should Have the Legal Right to Life to Combat Climate Change, Researchers Say

Earth’s global ocean should be considered a living entity with its own set of rights and protections, a paradigm shift that is informed by Indigenous worldviews and the burgeoning tradition of Earth law, according to a new article written by an interdisciplinary team of researchers. 

This new vision for the ocean is necessary to confront the devastating pressures that humans have placed on the global seas, which include climate change, overfishing, habitat destruction, and pollution, the team argued. The article addresses goals laid out by the United Nations as part of its Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, an effort that aims to reimagine and transform the human relationship to the ocean over the coming decade.

It is impossible to overstate the role of the ocean—which covers over 70 percent of our planet’s surface—in the story of life on Earth, which remains the only place in the universe that we know hosts living creatures. Ancient seas served as the crucible for the first lifeforms billions of years ago, and modern marine environments host a dazzling array of species, from tiny microorganisms to gargantuan blue whales. Even species that live on land, like humans, are dependent on the oceans for sustenance and stability. But despite the centrality of the ocean to our existence, regulations typically cast it as an inanimate realm filled with extractable spoils to be fought over and divvied up among nations. 

Now, researchers led by Michelle Bender, the Ocean Campaigns Director at the Earth Law Center, a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to conferring rights to natural entities, have laid out a new framework that evokes “a higher respect for the Ocean and Nature, not as objects, but living entities,” in an article published on Monday in the journal PLOS Biology.  

In an email to Motherboard, Bender noted that there is “a huge gap between ocean law and Earth law discourse” that has become increasingly frustrating to her in light of “the decline in ocean health and the piecemeal and anthropocentric traditional approach to ocean conservation.”

“At Earth Law Center, our program seeks to address this gap in the Rights of Nature movement, and not only educate the public on the interconnection of ocean health and human health, but provide tools for policy makers and partners wanting to implement and enforce such an approach within ocean governance,” said Bender in the email, which included input from co-author Rachel Bustamante, a conservation science and policy analyst at the Earth Law Center. Kelsey Leonard, a water scientist at the University of Waterloo and an enrolled citizen of the Shinnecock Nation, also co-authored the article.

“The inspiration for this paper was to publish some of the thinking we have had about Ocean Rights in practice, showing that building blocks of the framework exist around the world,” the team continued in the email. “The UN Decade Challenges are globally recognized as the most pressing issues to Ocean health. We see Ocean Rights as an opportunity to address these challenges, recognizing the interconnection between them, and our human relationship to the Ocean. We believed this would be a helpful addition and development in global Ocean conservation and legal discourse and therefore tied our analysis to the ten decadal challenges.” 

To that end, the team now present a comprehensive roadmap toward this future by identifying five “Ocean-centric principles to transform Ocean governance”: Ocean rights (including the right to life and restoration), Ocean relationality (creating a balanced and reciprocal relationship between humans and the ocean), Ocean data sovereignty (producing an accessible technological infrastructure for observing ocean trends), Ocean protection (accepting collective responsibility to protect and preserve the ocean), and Ocean justice (ensuring the democratization and equitable access to of ocean spaces and resources). 

These principles address the ten challenges laid out by the UN as part of its decadal ocean effort, which include beating marine pollution, restoring marine ecosystems and biodiversity, sustainably feeding the global population, unlocking ocean-based solutions to climate change, and even creating a digital representation of the ocean. 

Of course, these challenges are incredibly daunting. To overcome them, the researchers argue that we will need to reverse centuries of exploitative practices and break out of a pernicious anthropocentric mindset that places humanity outside of nature. 

Bender and her colleagues point to numerous successes in the law that have given rights to nature. One prominent example is New Zealand’s Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Act of 2017, which grants personhood to the Whanganui River and recognizes it as “a spiritual and physical entity,” according to the legislation. 

Panama also adopted a similar stance earlier this year with its National Rights of Nature law, which “includes the respect for Indigenous cosmology” and is built on the idea of “dubio pro natura (when in doubt err on the side of Nature),” according to the team’s article. While these nature-centric acts have only cropped up in a few nations so far, they provide a real-world foothold that could potentially lead to much wider implementation of similar laws around the globe. 

“Hundreds of laws and policies have emerged around the world,” Bender’s team told Motherboard. “More people are wanting solutions and remedies that our existing legal systems are not providing, and coming to Rights of Nature organizations for legal advice.” 

“Earth Law Center is working hard to advance campaigns on Ocean Rights at the local to international levels; from recognizing the rights of the Southern Resident Orcas of the Salish Sea, to advancing a Universal Declaration of Ocean Rights at the United Nations (with partners The Ocean Race),” the researchers continued. “In Panama and Latin America, with partner The Leatherback Project, we are also working to implement the national rights of nature law in the ocean space, specifically in a new sea turtle conservation law, a new marine reserve, and regionally to protect migratory corridors.”

The new article also confronts the idea that humans can simply pillage the ocean, and nature more broadly, which has led to a catastrophic collapse in marine biodiversity due to overfishing and habitat destruction. This abandonment of our human responsibility to the ocean, along with a denial that humans are completely interconnected with these systems, is also at the heart of the climate and marine pollution crises.

This extractive mindset is widespread in the modern world, but Bender and her colleagues note that many cultures have developed a more holistic and relational view of nature, including the “Ancient Celtic belief systems in Europe and the cosmovisions of many Indigenous Peoples today center on respect for Mother Earth,” according to the article.

If humans want to reverse our disastrous effects on natural ecosystems, we will need to channel these perspectives, which often date back thousands of years. That said, the team emphasized the diversity of Indigenous peoples, and noted that their views on Earth law and related matters, are far from monolithic.

Bender and her colleagues “acknowledge that Indigenous worldviews come first and are broader than Rights of Nature, rather than the assumption that Rights of Nature came first or is an Indigenous worldview,” in their email to Motherboard. “That can be further seen as co-opting Indigenous practices and placing them into western colonial law. I feel this is something anyone can do in communicating about the Rights of Nature.”

The team also noted in the email that it is important “to learn and listen from Indigenous peoples on what they feel is the right and appropriate way to engage with law. Customary law and practices have long existed, and we can carve out space to ensure those laws have space to live, thrive and be respected equally (and even higher) to western western laws.”

To that end, the team offers a new blueprint that breaks down what may seem like an utterly insurmountable problem—the devastation of the ocean at the hands of humans—into more manageable goals that all peoples can participate in. Whether humans around the world can cooperate toward these ends remains to be seen, but one thing is clear: The fate of the world’s oceans, and therefore the future of human civilization, depends on our actions today. 

“Recognizing the Ocean as a living being is increasingly important for planetary well-being and global sustainability,” the team concluded in the study. “Shifting our relationship with the Ocean from one of ownership and separateness towards loving interdependence, reciprocity, and reverence can transform Ocean governance.”

Update: This article has been updated to include comments from study authors Michelle Bender, Rachel Bustamante, and Kelsey Leonard.