Righting Aotearoa’s coastal marine area: a case for legal personhood to enhance environmental protection

ABSTRACT The health and integrity of New Zealand’s essential coastal marine area is deteriorating, while a fragmented and inadequately implemented statutory framework fails to effectively manage threats to New Zealand’s marine environment. In an attempt to respond to these issues, I suggest that legal personhood could be used to support increased environmental protection of marine areas and resources. Drawing on comparative examples from New Zealand and internationally, I consider the recognition of ecosystems as legal persons within regulatory and governance models, and argue that legal personhood could similarly be applied to New Zealand’s coastal marine area. If implemented correctly, I argue that legal personhood could, critically, shift the relationship between humans and Nature, thereby elevating the interests of the coastal marine area above those who exploit it, and support more collaborative and holistic environmental management.