Canopy Tree Project
Channel Your Inner Lorax: Speak Up for the Trees
November 10, 2025
Law has existed for thousands of years as a bedrock for building the idea of safe, and just society — but what happens when society moves too fast for its laws to keep up and protect it? For those fighting climate change, an existential threat to humankind and all living creatures, there’s one significant legal issue that hinders holding governments accountable: “standing”.
Legal standing means a person must prove they have suffered a direct and immediate injury before they can sue or formally accuse someone, including holding governments accountable. However, environmental harms usually affect entire communities or ecosystems broadly, rather than causing a clear-cut injury to a single individual. This makes it difficult to hold government authorities accountable in court, even when public harm is clearly evident.
This was a problem for environmentalists in the U.S. Supreme Court case Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife (1992), when the justices ruled that the Defenders of Wildlife group, who had tried to sue the government for limiting the Endangered Species Act, had no standing because they “failed to show that one or more of their members would thereby be directly affected apart from the members’ special interest in the subject.” Ironically, the fact that biodiversity loss harms all people was not seen as a legitimate legal argument.
This isn’t just an American problem, either. In Japan, citizens must prove they have personally suffered tangible, individual harm. So, when a group of citizens challenged the construction of a coal-powered plant, near Yokosuka, in May of 2019 by filing a lawsuit against the Japanese Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry, the Tokyo High Court dismissed it.
Australia’s legal system, although more flexible, also depends greatly on the identity of the plaintiff suing and whether they were personally affected in some way — “ideology” alone is not always sufficient, which limits the number of laws environmentalists can challenge. For example, in 1980, the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) sued to stop the government from approving a tourist resort development in Queensland, arguing the government had ignored required environmental impact procedures. However, the court ruled that ACF lacked standing because it couldn’t show a “special interest” or that it or its members would suffer harm different from the general public.
But what if, instead, we humans didn’t have to prove our standing at all? What if we changed our laws to include who is directly injured by deforestation — the trees themselves?
A Legal Experiment
In 1972, legal scholar Christopher Stone wrote a groundbreaking book titled Should Trees Have Standing? It argued that, instead of considering trees as property under the law, they should be granted legal personhood, with any individual able to sue the government for injuries against them.
This theory at the time went nowhere, in part because the public was still developing a strong environmentalist consciousness in the 1960s and 1970s, and it was believed that this activism — along with other new environmental laws — would be enough to protect the Earth.
However, since things clearly haven’t worked out as these early activists may have hoped, a growing international network — known as the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (GARN) — is putting pressure on nations and institutions to legally give trees, rivers, mountains, animals, and other natural entities distinct rights in court. Legal human guardians would be appointed and allowed to represent specific ecosystems, and sue if that ecosystem’s rights are violated. While that may seem odd, we already do grant legal rights to non-humans who’d otherwise be unable to speak for themselves, such as corporations, and religious sites.
Inanimate parties such as ships and corporations are considered capable of launching litigation, and so it should be as respects valleys, alpine meadows, rivers, lakes, estuaries, beaches, ridges, groves of trees, swampland, or even air that feels the destructive pressures of modern technology and modern life.
Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice, William O. Douglas, in a dissenting opinion
Roots of Change are Emerging
Today, several countries are experimenting with environmental personhood.
New Zealand’s indigenous peoples have persuaded the government to give Te Urewera, a former national park, and the Whanganui River rights as legal entities. This gave the forest the similar rights and responsibilities as a human citizen, recognizing its identity and life force (mauri) rooted in Māori cultural values. The forest is now managed by a joint board of Tūhoe iwi (tribe) and Crown representatives, making it a world-first legal recognition blending Indigenous law with state law.
In 2019, due to rampant river pollution, Bangladesh gave its rivers legal personhood. This status empowered appointed guardians to legally protect the rivers’ health and sustainability, marking a significant step in recognizing the rights of nature in South Asia under environmental justice frameworks.
Ecuador’s 2008 constitution was the first to grant legal rights to nature itself, recognizing ecosystems’ inherent value beyond human use. This principle was tested recently when an Ecuadorian court revoked approval for a large-scale mining project in the Los Cedros forest in 2021, citing violations of those constitutional protections for nature. The ruling underscored the power of rights of nature to prevent environmental destruction in Latin America.
Nature Is More Than A Bundle of Commodities
Of course not all laws go unchallenged and many are not followed.
Bolivia, for example, passed the Laws of the Rights of Mother Earth in 2009, but continues to allow deforestation and mining projects in violation of that law.
Similarly, India has passed laws granting the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers legal personhood, but later on, revoked them. Additionally, while some U.S cities have passed environmental rights of nature laws, if the US federal government continues on its current path it might be moot.
Laws do more than simply permit or prohibit certain actions; they also serve as powerful examples that shape how people believe others should be treated. They reflect and influence societal values, setting norms for respectful and just behavior.
This is why some legal experts argue that when a society’s laws define nature merely as objects humans can control, it becomes harder for environmentalists to shift popular attitudes toward seeing humans as a part of nature rather than above it. Laws, in this sense, both mirror and mold cultural beliefs about our relationship with the natural world, reinforcing existing perceptions for better or worse.
Additionally, when nature is valued only in monetary terms, it becomes much harder for environmental advocates to effectively protect ecosystems. Most national legal systems define forests, rivers, animals, and mountains by their economic value—meaning their worth is measured by the profits they produce or their market price.
As a result, financial interests often override ecological well-being and long-term sustainability. This prioritization of profit makes policy decisions less responsive to calls for deeper, intrinsic respect for nature, leaving environmentalists fighting an uphill battle where money almost always seems to trump all other values.
The Power of Belief
However, that’s not to say that the law is the ultimate arbiter for how people think. It functions only when people believe it to be moral, and choose to live by its rules. So when communities choose to extend respect, power, or humanity to those the law does not, the sheer force of their shared belief can be powerful.
In 1832, in Athens, Georgia, the theory of environmental personhood was not a mainstream legal idea. Even the idea that all people could have legal rights was controversial back then — slavery still existed, and married women were property of their husbands. But when a local tree lover, William H. Jackson, died that year, he wished that a local white oak could have possession of itself and eight feet of land around it.
Although there was no written legal deed, the town gave the tree the rights Jackson wanted. It became such an essential part of that town that, after it fell in 1942, the Junior Ladies Garden Club planted a new tree from an acorn of the old one. It stands there to this day, and the town even has a self-guided tour for visitors to see “The Tree That Owns Itself.” This story begs the question: What could our communities do, if we decided to believe in the autonomy of the trees around us?
For one, we can band together, plant more trees, and recognize these parts of nature as our neighbors. EARTHDAY.ORG has gathered communities around the world, and planted millions of trees, in our initiative, Canopy Tree Project.
We hope to plant 60 million more by our 60th anniversary, but we can’t do without your help. If you, like the people of Athens, Georgia, believe that trees deserve life, and thriving habitats, consider donating to the project or becoming the next place where new trees take root.
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