What if “constitutional rights” applied not just to people, but also animals, trees, and bodies of water? Therein lies the crux of “rights of nature,” a burgeoning movement aimed at redefining how we treat the world around us. As oil pipelines, climate change, development pressure, and proliferation of data centers drive a crescendo in rights of nature discussions worldwide, the topic comes to Traverse City this week with two International Affairs Forum (IAF) events.

The Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (GARN) defines the concept as “recognition that our ecosystems – including trees, oceans, animals, mountains – have rights just as human beings have rights.” In theory, violations of these rights – by people, governments, corporations, or other parties – can be litigated in court, with a natural body or species “named as the injured party, with its own legal standing rights.”

“[Rights of nature] is essentially about giving personhood to something from the non-human world and saying, ‘These things have rights that are worth defending,’” explains IAF Executive Director Alex Tank. While radical given the focus of the United State Constitution on human rights, Tank notes that rights of nature is not a new idea. Indigenous peoples, he says, have observed versions of this belief system for generations, and the country of Ecuador even wrote it into its constitution in 2008.

The idea to spotlight rights of nature as part of IAF’s current season came from Emily Modrall, a former member of IAF’s advisory board. After “being introduced to the concept in conversations with Anishinaabe community members a couple of years ago,” Modrall took part in an online course “that supplied information about the legal angle” of the concept.

“Groups around the world are integrating rights of nature into legal discussions and structures, often with indigenous communities in the lead,” Modrall explains. “To start, it can push us to think about nature's place in the worldviews and values that underpin our legal systems. So many of us in northern Michigan feel a powerful sense of gratitude and protectiveness when it comes to the extraordinary land, water, and life here. The opportunity to consider that – and to consider potential future environmental challenges – through the lens of rights of nature and related international action seemed to me like a good fit for IAF.”

The main event, scheduled for 7pm Wednesday, April 15, will feature two attorneys from the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights (CDER). Hugo Echeverría is based in Ecuador and is a leading expert on that country’s constitutional rights of nature provisions. Frank Bibeau is a tribal attorney based on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota and also the director of CDER’s tribal rights of nature program.

In 2018, Bibeau landed at the forefront of the U.S. rights of nature movement by helping author a law for another Minnesota Ojibwe tribe, the White Earth Nation, recognizing the legal rights of wild rice, or “manoomin.” Bibeau then used that law as a framework to help the White Earth tribe sue Minnesota’s Department of Natural Resources in 2021, seeking to halt Canadian energy company Enbridge in its construction of the Line 3 oil pipeline. Enbridge is the same company behind the controversial Line 5 pipeline planned to run under the Straits of Mackinac.

While the manoomin case ultimately failed, Bibeau says it has become a rubric for other tribes seeking to litigate rights of nature. In one recent example, the Sauk-Suiattle Tribe in Washington State sued Seattle City Light on behalf of salmon. The lawsuit claimed that three dams operated by the city-owned utility on the Skagit River violated tribal and nature rights by offering no means for salmon to pass through. The case ended with the city agreeing to invest nearly $1 billion over the next 30 years to incorporate fish passage technology into its dams.

Now, Bibeau is working on another fish-related case in Virginia, where the Rappahannock Tribe is seeking to reverse a permit from the state allowing for mass extraction of water from the Rappahannock River, including for the cooling of data centers.

Bibeau expects artificial intelligence and the growth in data centers to get more people talking about rights of nature. His goal is to “be the ambassador” for the concept, and “to help everybody see that there is a way and a legal framework” for fighting to protect natural assets.

With that ambassadorship in mind, IAF scheduled a second event this week as part of Bibeau’s visit: “a conservation community dialogue,” slated for April 16 at NMC.

“We're convening our region's active conservationists and environmental leaders to engage with Frank and our moderator, Nicholas Reo, to bring local value and context to the preservation and reclamation work these groups undertake in our midst – for our direct benefit and for the health and future of our ecosystems that sustain us in northern Michigan,” Tank says.

Multiple local conservation leaders say they’re excited about the opportunity to learn more.

Liz Kirkwood, executive director of FLOW Water Advocates, sees kinship between her organization and the rights of nature movement, noting that both seek “to shift culture away from unchecked extraction and short-term profit toward stewardship, accountability, and lasting protection.”

SEEDS Executive Director Sarna Saltzman says her organization is “curious about the rights of nature movement because we recognize our interdependence with all the beings engaged in helping us have clean air and fresh water.”