The ‘rights of nature’ in an age of white supremacy?

Abstract

The past 10 years have witnessed a flourishing of interdisciplinary research across the social sciences that aims to better theorize the relationships between structural racism and the deepening ecological crisis. In this article, I consider how grassroots lawyers and community activists for the ‘rights of nature’ (RoN) in the United States are transforming their discourses, legal tactics, and pedagogical strategies in the face of a national context marked by pervasive anti-Black racism. After considering how racism has historically accompanied efforts to extend moral and legal ‘personhood’ to ecosystems in ways that continue to make solidarity work with racial justice organizations vexed and difficult, I show that, despite these exclusionary legacies, RoN activists are experimenting with municipal law-making in ways that are bringing them into closer conversation with contemporary racial justice struggles. Instead of focusing narrowly on the problem of the denial of ‘rights’ to non-humans, RoN activists are increasingly concerned with the broader structural problem of state pre-emption over local decision-making and the profoundly anti-democratic nature of a state/corporate nexus that is limiting possibilities for progressive action across a wide range of justice issues. Whilst these legal experiments do not resolve enduring tensions between anti-racist and environmental struggles, they suggest important re-directions taking place among historically white environmental activists.