High U.N. Official Supports “Nature Rights” and Environmental Lawfare

The assistant secretary general of the U.S., Kanni Wignaraja, wants “nature” to go to court so that tribunals can set environmental policy for the world. From her “Nature Goes to Court,” published by the U.N. Development Programme (of which she is a regional director):

Nature is taking the stand as courtrooms worldwide become battlegrounds for Earth’s rights. The rise in climate litigation shows how the environment can take centre stage as a plaintiff, demanding justice and accountability, benefiting us all. . . .

Good grief. “Nature” would not be “going to court” or doing anything as viruses, geological features, flora and fauna would be utterly oblivious of the proceedings. What Wignaraja really means is that people who think like her will be granted legal standing to bring environmental actions in courts.

Such environmental lawfare has already commenced:

Since 2017, climate change court cases have surged, particularly in the US, but increasingly worldwide. Cases tripled from 884 in 2017 to 2,540 in 2023, with about 17 percent now occurring in developing countries, including small island developing states. The legal landscape is evolving, with significant rulings in Asia and the Pacific driving change. This is an area where UNDP is providing crucial support.

Some of these cases seek to declare a clean environment as a human right. That’s a debatable policy, I suppose, if established democratically rather than by courts and aimed at establishing reasonable conservation standards as a human duty (which is part of human exceptionalism).

But not if conjuring a “rights of nature” regime becomes the focus — which is the direction in which much of this is going:

Following the landmark Paris Agreement in 2015, activists and citizens worldwide are increasingly turning to courts for climate solutions, spurring innovative legal approaches and rethinking what climate justice means. Key trends include . . .

• Innovative legal concepts: New principles like “water justice” and recognizing nature’s legal rights are gaining traction, for example trees as living beings. . . .

Irrational principles, she should have written.

The U.N. bureaucrat wants courts deciding these issues:

For UNDP, this is not only an area that requires urgent action but also a natural point of thematic convergence that brings together two of our areas of expertise: climate action and governance. UNDP is actively supporting courts in tackling these novel cases.

I’m sure the U.N. minions are enthusiastically behind these cases since court usurpation allows the elites to decide environmental policies by diktat.

I do hope that the incoming Trump administration impedes the international community’s effort to make environmental policy via “novel” legal theories and court diktats. A good starting point would be to thwart “nature rights” by supporting legislation and enacting regulations declaring that only humans, our juridical entities and associations, have legal rights or standing in any court.