Afederal lawsuitfiled in September against the state of Colorado seeks to have the Colorado River ecosystem recognise as " possessing right hand similar to a ' person , ' " including " certain right to exist , flourish , regenerate and course develop . "
The litigation , filed by Denver attorneyJason Flores - Williams , really names the river ecosystem as the complainant in the suit . Environmental groups Deep Green Resistance ( DGR ) and the Southwest Coalition and several single activists also are participate as the role of"next friends"acting on behalf of the river to impart the causa . DGR militant Will Falk explained in aSan Diego Free Press articlethat the lawsuit is an campaign to forestall a system that " presently defines nature as place . "
Flores - Williams has significant experiencerepresenting homeless peoplein class - action judicial proceeding against the city of Denver and city officials . He says that that previous work revolutionise the river suit . " The only affair more dispossessed than roofless people is nature , " he says .
Flores - Williams say that after researching legal efforts to protect the surroundings , he came to the last that even those " heroic " lawsuits had n’t keep environmental conditions from worsening . One reason , he says , is that " many environmental cases are displace for a deficiency of standing , because you ca n’t show what somebody , or a corporation or a state , is doing is of immediate impairment to a human being . "
" It ’s a material problem , a procedural flaw , " says Flores - Williams .
If the river cause is successful , Flores - Williams says that it would enable mathematical group to act on behalf of the river , and make their casing by demo that a suspect is damage the waterway , without the need to demonstrate that man are being hurt .
The idea of nature having legal rights is n’t a new idea . Back in 1972 , Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas , in his dissenting legal opinion in the casing ofSierra Club v. Morton , argued that environmental military issue might be put in skilful focus if lawsuits could be filed " in the name of the inanimate aim about to be despoiled , defaced , or intrude on by route and bulldozer , and where harm is the subject of public outrage . contemporaneous public concern for protecting nature ’s ecologic equilibrium should lead to the conferment of standing upon environmental objects to sue for their own preservation . "
Douglas quote effectual scholar Christopher D. Stone , whose book"Should Trees Have Standing?“made the case that natural objects could have legal right , which would be exercised with the assistance of appointed guardians .
Since then , an international motion has pullulate to confabulate sound rights on nature , and recently , several countries have open such status to river . In March 2017 , for example , after long negotiations with endemic hoi polloi , the New Zealand Parliamentpassed legislationthat declared the Whangagui ( Te Awa Tupua ) River to be " a legal person " with all of the right hand , powers , duties and liabilities that any other New Zealand resident physician might have .
presently after the New Zealand determination , a court in the northerly Native American state of Uttarakhand ruled that the Ganges River and its main tributary , the Yamuna River , alsodeserved the same legal statusas human beings .
Even so , the Colorado River lawsuit may face a difficult legal road . Reed Benson , chairman of the environmental law program at the University of New Mexico , told the New York Timesthat he consider it " a longsighted shot in more ways than one . "
But Flores - Williams does n’t seem deterred by the challenge , or by headache that some might take a dim persuasion of a river being granted rights alike to those of a human being , or ofa corporation .
" I bid hoi polloi would get hang up on the idea that our surroundings is being diminished , " he says . " The river should have a right to survive . " Additionally , he says , " anyone lie with that if the Colorado River is extinguished , it would stimulate an accidental injury to us all . "
The office ofColorado Gov. John Hickenlooperdeclined to comment on the courting itself , but , via email , spokesperson Jacque Montgomery defend the state ’s feat to protect the river .
" Colorado and countless spouse have long understood the import of the Colorado River system and the need to balance our needs for water with preservation and enhancement of the river ecosystem , " she save . " This extend from efforts to protect — and improve habitat for — endangered fish in the river over the course of decennary to the late evolution of Colorado ’s Water Plan . That design ’s very essence is about work together to ensure sufficient water supply supplies for agriculture , cities , recreation and the environment as our state continues to grow . The Colorado River , and its protection , has been a central focus of Colorado as a State Department , but also of local governments and piss utilities who themselves calculate upon the river ’s health and function as necessary for their own achiever . "
Flores - Williams say that activists in other states have expressed interest in filing like suits .
