A petition has been submitted to Ecuador’s copyright office to recognise Los Cedros cloud, an Ecuadorian forest roughly 15,000 acres (6,070 hectares) in size, as a co-creator of a musical composition.

This proposal aims to grant legal recognition to nature’s role in artistic creation, potentially setting a new precedent in environmental and copyright law.

So what does the petition ask for and can forests, lakes or other natural bodies have legal rights in the same way that humans can?

What song does the forest ‘want’ rights to?

The petition by the More than Human Life (MOTH) project, which advocates for “advancing the rights of humans and non-humans”, demands that Los Cedros forest be given formal credit as the co-creator of the “Song of the Cedars”.

The song was composed by musician Cosmo Sheldrake, writer Robert MacFarlane and field mycologist Giuliana Furci from the Fungi Foundation, a US conservation group.

In a recent interview, MacFarlane told the UK’s Guardian newspaper: “This was absolutely and inextricably an act of co-authorship with the set of processes and relations and beings that that forest and its rivers comprise. We were briefly part of that ongoing being of the forest, and we couldn’t have written it without the forest. The forest wrote it with us.”

Is there a legal case for this? 

Yes, special rights were extended to natural areas when Ecuador adopted a new constitution in 2008 under former President Rafael Correa. This made Ecuador one of the first countries to recognise the inalienable rights of an ecosystem.

The Rights of Nature (RoN) Articles 10 and 71-74 of Chapter 7 of the Ecuadorian Constitution state the following:

• Nature or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution.
• Nature has the right to restoration. This integral restoration is independent of the obligation on natural and juridical persons or the State to indemnify the people and the collectives that depend on the natural systems.
• The State will apply precaution and restriction measures in all the activities that can lead to the extinction of species, the destruction of the ecosystems or the permanent alteration of the natural cycles.
• The persons, people, communities and nationalities will have the right to benefit from the environment and form natural wealth that will allow wellbeing.

According to a 2023 article published by Cambridge University, the rights of nature (RoN) under Article 10 have been invoked 55 times for judicial decisions between 2019 and February 2022 in Ecuador.

The article states: “Consequently, the Court is interpreting RoN in a way that forces a non-traditional approach to sustainable development, which emphasises the need to achieve an equitable balance between economic development and ecosystem protection, rather than consistently prioritising economic development at the expense of the environment.”

Ecuador and other countries may continue or even expand economic activities such as mining and fishing on an industrial scale under such laws, but these laws are intended to require such industrial operations to be conducted in a manner that “preserves the integrity of ecosystems and their natural cycles”, as well as ensuring the survival of species, as stated in Article 73.

Have nature spots been granted legal rights before?

Yes, including in the following places:

Ecuador

In 2021, the “personhood” of a forest was recognised in a decision by Ecuador’s constitutional court, when it designated the Los Cedros biological reserve as a legal entity. The 2021 ruling blocked Enami EP, Ecuador’s national mining company, from further mining the area by cancelling their mining permits.

New Zealand

In 2014, a New Zealand court declared the mountainous area of Te Urewera – located on the North Island of the country – to be “beyond human ownership and to own itself and to have a legal personality”, Rachael Evans, legal lecturer for the Faculty of Law at University of Canterbury in New Zealand, told Al Jazeera. This was in response to a legal challenge mounted by local Indigenous communities.

This legal precedent produced the Te Urewera Act 2014 which confirmed the Te Uruwera region as a legal entity with “all the rights, powers, duties, and liabilities of a legal person”.

Mountainous regions in New Zealand are not the only entities to be given legal personhood. In 2017, New Zealand granted legal personhood to the Whanganui River, a river system that flows through the North Island.

Bangladesh

In 2019, the High Court of Bangladesh gave all rivers in the country legal rights, essentially declaring all rivers as “living entities”. The National River Conservation Commission (NRCC) in Bangladesh was declared the legal guardian of all rivers in the country.

Under this decree, the NRCC is responsible for establishing guidelines to protect rivers from erosion and pollution while safeguarding water sources within the country.

Colombia

In 2018, the Colombian Supreme Court granted the Colombian portion of the Amazon rainforest the legal status of “personhood” after a group of children and youths took the government to court over its response to climate change and deforestation.

How did the idea of granting legal rights to nature come about?

While formal legislation regarding the legal rights of nature has mostly been formed in the 21st century, the idea of creating legal rights for an ecosystem goes back to the 1970s.

In 1972, the Sierra Club, an environmental organisation founded in 1892, filed a lawsuit against Walt Disney Enterprises which was developing a ski resort in Mineral King Valley, located in Sequoia National Park. Sierra Club argued that the new development would cause irreparable damage to the natural ecosystem.

Although the US Supreme Court ruled against the Sierra Club, arguing that the organisation had no evidence that its members would be disproportionately affected by the new development, it did prompt a dissent from Justice William O Douglas, who suggested that natural ecosystems might well need to be granted personhood to allow them to sue in their own right.

In his dissenting opinion, Douglas wrote: “Inanimate objects are sometimes parties in litigation. A ship has a legal personality, a fiction found useful for maritime purposes. The corporation sole – a creature of ecclesiastical law – is an acceptable adversary, and large fortunes ride on its cases. The ordinary corporation is a ‘person’ for purposes of the adjudicatory processes, whether it represents proprietary, spiritual, aesthetic, or charitable causes.”

Douglas said his dissent was influenced by the earlier works and papers of the so-called “godfather of personhood for eco-systems”, US academic Christopher Stone.

In 1972, Stone published a paper titled “Should Trees Have Standing – Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects”, arguing that nature should be granted legal standing, similar to corporations. Stone argues, that trees, rivers, and other natural ecosystems should have legal guardians to represent their interests in court.

Have nature spots been granted legal rights to art or music before?

Although the petition for granting Los Cedros forest is still pending with Ecuador’s copyright office, there has been no earlier precedent to credit natural ecosystems music or any other artistic right credits.

If the Los Cedros petition is successful, it would most likely not affect the rights to previous works of art or music, however.

“The general rule in this country, and I believe in other common law countries [such as] the United Kingdom and in Canada – is that law can’t be retroactive unless it is very explicit. Personhood in the future doesn’t make a past act illegal,” she said.

What about animals?

In 2014, the Association of Officials and Attorneys for the Rights of Animals (AFADA) filed a habeas corpus petition on behalf of an orangutan named Sandra as a “non-human” person with legal rights.

AFADA argued that the authorities at Buenos Aires’ zoo had unjustly and arbitrarily restricted Sandra’s freedom, leading to a severe decline in her mental and physical wellbeing. The organisation warned that her condition had deteriorated to such an extent that she faced an imminent risk of death.

Although the case was initially denied it was later appealed to Argentina’s Federal Chamber of Criminal Cassation, where in 2015 Sandra was awarded “non-human” personhood rights. Sandra was then moved to the Center for Great Apes in Wauchula, Florida, a sanctuary known for its proper caretaking of orangutans.