Whanguanui River, New Zealand has rights of persons.
“Today, New Zealand’s Whanganui River is a person under domestic law, and India’s Ganges River was recently granted human rights. In Ecuador, the Constitution enshrines nature’s “right to integral respect”.
“The theory of giving rights to nature was proposed in the 1970s by the American legal scholar Christopher D. Stone as a strategic environmental defence strategy.”
By Mihnea Tanasescu on June 19, 2017 Research Fellow, Environmental Political Theory, Vrije Universiteit Brussel