Rights of Nature Laws Are Coming Up Against Legal Systems Designed for Destruction

July 2, 2026 Share This Article Republish Claudia Rondan, an environmental defender from the Emberá Indigenous community, walks on the banks of Colombia’s Atrato River in Choco on Aug. 29, 2024. Credit: Raul Arboleda/AFP via Getty Images Related Rights of Nature Defender Wins Goldman Prize for Protecting Colombia’s Magdalena River From Fracking In the Fight to Defend the Amazon, This Indigenous Community’s Secret Weapon Is Science How a Groundbreaking Indigenous Treaty on Whales’ Rights Could Change National Laws Share This Article Republish Most Popular Can Clusters of Human-Constructed Ponds in the Arizona Desert Save a Threatened Frog? A Pipeline Company Says It Will Protect the Environment in North Carolina. Its Record in Tennessee Says Otherwise. New Florida Law Bans Local Net-Zero Emissions Policies Years after landmark court rulings in Colombia and Bangladesh recognized rivers as legal persons, the waterways remain polluted and under threat—an outcome a new study attributes in part to a systemic issue: Legal systems are still overwhelmingly designed to treat nature as an object for humans to use and profit from.

The report, released Monday by the nonprofit Stockholm Environment Institute, focused on how rights of river laws are being implemented and found that legal recognition is not, by itself, enough to stop toxic contamination and the destruction of ecosystems.

Instead, researchers concluded that it is only a first step. Whether it leads to healthier rivers depends on what follows: who is empowered to act on the river’s behalf, whether Indigenous and local communities have meaningful decision-making power, whether governments make systemic policy shifts away from treating nature as a bundle of extractable resources and whether officials have the political will to enforce the law.