What would the world look like if legal systems rendered decisions based on what was best for the integrity of ecosystems? A people’s tribunal on the “rights of nature” is providing a model.

Amid the corporate events pervading New York’s “Climate Week,” an international people’s tribunal held an emotional hearing that spotlighted the ecosystems and people living in the shadow of fossil fuel projects.

 

Representatives from communities around the world, scientists and advocates told stories of human and nonhuman forced displacement, degraded heath, ruined economies and lost histories to the International Tribunal on the Rights of Nature on Sunday. 

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In India, coal mines are degrading the habitat of endangered elephants sacred to Adivasi Indigenous people. In Louisiana, petrochemical facilities are being built on sacred grave sites. In East Africa, construction of a new oil pipeline is displacing communities and slicing through the homes of giraffes, lions and hippopotamuses. And in Peru, communities that have endured decades of crude oil production and more than 1,000 oil spills are facing down installation of a new refinery and expanding operations.

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The testimonies, sweeping in both their global reach and in the harms alleged, were gathered to create a repository of evidence linking the “fossil fuel era” to violations of humans’ and nature’s rights.