Ms Mari Margil:

I thank the committee for the invitation to be here today. I am executive director of the Centre for Democratic and Environmental Rights. I am joined by Thomas Lizney, our senior legal counsel. The centre is a non-governmental organisation based in the United States. We work in countries including Ecuador, Nepal, and the UK, assisting governments, communities and civil society to advance laws which recognise the legal rights of nature.

Since 2006, national rights of nature laws have been enacted in five countries: Ecuador, Bolivia, Panama, Spain and Uganda. Local laws have been adopted in the US, Canada and Brazil. Courts in Colombia, Bangladesh and India have recognised that rivers and other ecosystems have rights. These all recognise, for the very first time, that nature possesses legal rights, including rights to exist, flourish, regenerate and be restored.

In 2021, Donegal County Council adopted a rights of nature policy. Belfast and other councils in the North have as well, including very recently, amid the growing ecological crisis with Lough Neagh, calling for the recognition of legal rights of the lough. My colleague, Thomas Lizney, drafted the very first rights of nature law in the world. This was for a community in the US facing the dumping of toxic waste. The community found that environmental laws, rather than protecting against the pollution, were in fact authorising it to take place. They recognised the need for a different approach, one in which nature was no longer considered a thing that environmental laws regulate the use and exploitation of. Rather, it was time, in the eyes of residents, to recognise that nature is a living entity with legal rights, including the most basic of rights: the right to exist. Environmental laws around the world treat nature simply as a thing - a resource - with laws regulating its use. As such, environmental laws legalise environmental harm, including the destruction of ecosystems and pollution of land, air and water. Under such laws, today we face global environmental crises, including ecosystem collapse, soaring species extinction rates, biodiversity loss, and climate change. In the face of this, civil society, governments and courts are recognising that we need to make a fundamental shift in humankind's relationship with the natural world, that we can no longer, as Colombia's constitutional court put it, act as a "ruler" of nature, that we must recognise that we are part of nature. This means changing how we govern ourselves toward nature and how nature itself is treated under law.

In 2008, we were invited to consult with Ecuador's Constituent Assembly that was formed to draft a new constitution. Facing threats to its fragile ecosystems, from the Amazon to the Galapagos, and to species in a country renowned for its biodiversity, we worked with assembly delegates and civil society to draft rights of nature constitutional provisions. With this, Ecuador became the first country in the world to enshrine the rights of nature in its constitution. Since then, many cases have been filed in Ecuadorian courts to enforce these rights, including recently to overturn mining permits issued in an endangered species habitat in one of the country's cloud forests.

Here, the Citizens' Assembly on Biodiversity Loss has recommended amending the Constitution to recognise the human right to a healthy environment and the rights of the environment itself. We believe both are important. In Ecuador, the constitution recognises both sets of rights.

Ecuador's constitutional court has ruled that protecting the rights of nature is essential to protecting the human right to a healthy environment. The rights of nature radiate through Ecuador's constitution, complementing and helping to protect the human right to a healthy environment. This builds on a growing understanding, as Pope Francis stated in his 2015 speech at the UN that, "Any harm done to the environment ... is harm done to humanity." He called on all nations to protect the environment and explained that a "right of the environment does exist." Far from being abstract, this work is about empowering nature's defenders with a new set of tools, designed expressly for the growing ecological crises we face. In the face of these crises, governments around the world are recognising that the rights of nature are central to the path forward. We offer whatever assistance we can to the committee as it moves forward and look forward to any questions members may have.