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The Conquest of Gaza and the Dissolving of Humanity
Both Spanish officials in the Americans then and Israeli spokesmen now have openly declared their intention to “conquer” their enemies by forcing their removal from their homes and concentrating them in more controllable areas.
May 23, 2025
Leon Golub once related a story to a mutual friend. A Chicago artist famous for large canvases depicting crimson torture rooms in Central America, Golub had been asked what it meant to him to be a “Jewish political artist.” The painter’s quick reply was that he wasn’t a “Jewish political artist,” he was just a “political artist.” In the end, though, Golub came to believe that he had let himself off too easily, that his answer was too pat. Yes, he was a political artist. His paintings had focused not just on Latin America but on war-torn Vietnam and racism in the United States and South Africa. But he had consciously avoided Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
Golub admitted that what it meant for him to be a successful artist was never to take the “horrors inflicted on Palestinians” as his subject matter. Only then would he be left free to paint his political opinions on anything else.
Over the last year and a half, I’ve thought of Leon Golub, who died in 2004, many times as the escalation of Israel’s assault on Gaza and settler violence on the West Bank paralleled my own rush to finish a book (just published as America, América: A New History of the New World).Among other things, it traces Latin America’s largely unrecognized role in the abolition of the doctrine of conquest and the creation, after World War II, of the liberal international order, including the founding of the International Court of Justice (today considering South Africa’s case that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza).
Arguments over the legality of the Conquest went on for decades, just as arguments over the legality of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands have.
I’ve been writing critically on how the U.S. acted in Latin America for more than three decades. Unlike many scholars and students of the Middle East, I was able to do so and not be punished because, like Golub, I mostly focused on the “horrors inflicted” on people other than Palestinians. As President Richard Nixon put it all too accurately in 1971, nobody of import in the United States gives “one damn about Latin America.”
A general indifference to the region, as well as the fact that even the most diehard defenders of U.S. global power have been willing to concede that this country often acted in unhelpful ways in its own hemisphere (where Washington undertook at least 41 regime changes between 1898 and 1994!), have made it remarkably safe to speak out about Latin America. Yet, in 2025, the “horrors inflicted” are everywhere and it’s no longer possible to silo one’s sympathies.
Conquest, Then and Now
Consider the Spanish conquest of the Americas alongside Israel’s assault on Gaza. In many ways, the two events, separated by half a millennium, are incomparable. The first was continental in scale, a fight for a New World that was then home to, by some estimates, 100,000,000 people. The second unfolds on a patch of land the size of Las Vegas with a population of just over 2 million. The conquest would claim tens of millions of lives, while so far, Israel is estimated to have killed more than 50,000 Palestinians and injured tens of thousands more.
Yet there are uncanny parallels between the two conflicts, including the fact that each began in the wake of a communications revolution: the printing press then, social media now.
Spain was the first empire in modern history to actively publicize its colonial atrocities, as printers in Madrid, Seville, and other cities stamped out sheet after sheet of conquest gore: accounts of mass hangings, of babies drowned or roasted over fire pits to be fed to dogs, and of torched towns. One Spanish governor described a postapocalyptic landscape filled with the walking near-dead, victims of mutilations meted out to Native Americans, this way: a “multitude of lame and maimed Indians, without hands, or with only one hand, blind, their noses cut off, earless.” Today, the internet circulates countless photographs and videos with no less horrific images of atrocities committed by Israeli soldiers on Palestinians, of armless boys and “decomposing babies.” Some photographs of children starved by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), according to a New York Times editor, were simply too “graphic” to publish.
In 16th-century Spain, common soldiers wrote, or paid others to write, their stories of mayhem, hoping to make a heroic name for themselves. Today, we see updated digital versions of a similar kind of conquering pride, as members of the IDF, on platforms like TikTok, upload videos of Gazans “stripped, bound, and blindfolded” and others showing bulldozers and tanks razing homes. Soldiers mock the destruction of schools and hospitals or, as they rummage through abandoned homes, are seen playing with or wearing the bras and underwear of their former residents.
Both Spanish officials then and Israeli spokesmen now have openly declared their intention to “conquer” their enemies by forcing their removal from their homes and concentrating them in more controllable areas. Not all Spanish, like not all Israelis, believed their enemies to be subhuman. But some did and do. Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda thought Native Americans were “brute animals,” as “monkeys are to men.” Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant calls Palestinians “human animals.” Many Spanish priests and royal officials admitted that Native Americans were human, but considered them child-like innocents who had to be violently severed from their pagan priests—just as Israel believes Palestinians have to be violently severed from Hamas. “We are separating Hamas from the population, cleansing the strip,” said Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich of the IDF’s extreme tactics.
Hernán Cortés had his men level Aztec temples, which he called mosques. Those temples served as healing places, and their destruction parallels the ruin visited on Gaza’s hospitals and other centers of refuge. Not even the dead were safe—neither in the Americas, nor today in Gaza. As did the conquistadores, the IDF has desecrated several burial grounds.
Spanish violence in the Americas provoked a powerful ethical backlash. The Dominican jurist Francisco Vitoria, for instance, questioned the legality of the Conquest, while Father Bartolomé de las Casas insisted on the absolute equality of all human beings, and other theologians of the time condemned the many varieties of enslavement imposed on Native Americans. Such declarations and condemnations were consequential in the long run. Yet they did little to stop the suffering. Arguments over the legality of the Conquest went on for decades, just as arguments over the legality of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands have.
“The Conquest,” as a singular uppercase event, might have been challenged, but all the individual battles that made up the Conquest, the morning massacres and midnight raids on Indigenous villages, simply went on. Spanish settlers took it for granted that, no matter what priests said from pulpits or jurists argued in seminar rooms, they had a right to “defend” themselves: that, were Indians to attack them, they could retaliate.
Here’s just one of many examples: in July 1503, Spanish settlers slaughtered over 700 residents in the village of Xaragua on Hispaniola (the island that today comprises Haiti and the Dominican Republic), killings that Spain’s Queen Isabella deemed “just” because some members of the village had started to violently resist Spanish rule. Israel uses the same kind of legalisms to insist that its war on Hamas is indeed similarly just, since Hamas started it. Just as the conflict on Hispaniola is sequestered from the larger context of the Conquest, the conflict that started on October 7, 2023, is isolated from the larger context of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands.
From Cortés to Hitler
The doctrine or “right” of conquest goes back to Roman times and, apart from the criticism aimed at Spain in the 1500s, remained mostly uncontested until the late 18th century, when—with the breaking free of the Americas from Europe—the doctrine found new champions and new critics.
The leaders of the new United States reinforced the doctrine, invoking the right of conquest to justify their drive westward toward the Pacific Ocean and their taking of Native American and Mexican lands.
At the end of WWII, with Adolf Hitler dead and fascism defeated, Latin America’s nations gladly joined in the creation of a postwar “rules-based” liberal order, the founding principles of which they had all already adopted.
Generations of law professors in the U.S. taught their students that the doctrine was legitimate. “The title of European nations, and which passed to the United States, to this vast territorial empire, was founded on discovery and conquest,” as James Kent put it at Columbia Law School in the 1790s. The Supreme Court, too, said that the United States was founded on conquest, and that its doctrine remained applicable. As late as 1928, a widely-assigned English-language law book insisted that, “as long as a Law of Nations has been in existence, the States, as well as the vast majority of writers, have recognized subjugation as a mode of acquiring territory,” deeming it legal for “the victor to annex the conquered enemy territory.”
In contrast, Spanish America’s independence leaders fiercely repudiated the principle of conquest. They had to, since they had to learn to live with each other, for they presided over seven new Spanish-American republics on a crowded continent. If they had adhered to a U.S. version of international law, what would have stopped Argentina from conquering Chile the way the United States conquered the Creeks and the Mexicans? Or Chile from marching on Argentina to gain access to the Atlantic? The result would have been endless war. And so, the region’s jurists and other intellectuals (drawing from earlier Catholic criticisms of Spain’s subjugation of the New World) disavowed conquest. In its place, they cobbled together a new framework of international relations that outlawed aggressive war and recognized the absolute sovereignty of all nations, regardless of their size.
For decades, Latin American diplomats tried to force Washington to accept such a vision of cooperative international law—and for decades Washington refused, not wanting to be a Gulliver tied down by a gaggle of Latin Lilliputians. Over time, however, U.S. statesmen began to grudgingly accept Latin America’s legal interpretations, with the far-sighted among them realizing that a reformed system of international law would allow for a more effective projection of Washington’s power. In 1890, at the first Pan-American Conference, the United States signed a provisional treaty abrogating the doctrine of conquest. In 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt agreed to give up the right to intervene in Latin American affairs and to recognize the absolute sovereignty of all nations.
At the end of WWII, with Adolf Hitler dead and fascism defeated, Latin America’s nations gladly joined in the creation of a postwar “rules-based” liberal order, the founding principles of which they had all already adopted, especially the rejection of the doctrine of conquest.
Cortés to Hitler, the age of conquest, it seemed, was finally over.
The End of the End of the Age of Conquest
Not really, of course. Cold warriors found many ways to circumvent the “rules,” and didn’t need to cite Roman law doctrine to justify atrocities in Vietnam, Guatemala, or Indonesia, among other places. Then, after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, war began spreading again like wildfire in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, including the U.S.-led first and second Gulf Wars.
Still, the liberal order globally held on to the idea that the world should be organized around cooperation, not competition, that nations had more interests in common than in contention.
Now, though, that idea seems to have been tossed aside and, in its place, comes a new vision of conquest. We see its burlesque version in the boastful pronouncements of U.S. President Donald Trump, who has casually claimed the right to use coercion to take the island of Greenland, annex Canada as “the 51st state,” grab the Panama Canal, and clear out Gaza, supposedly turning the strip into a Riviera-like resort. Far more ferocious expressions of that vision of conquest are seen in both Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine and Israel’s in Gaza.
Of those two wars of conquest, the second touches a deep nerve, in part because Israel’s existence is so tightly bound up with the fortunes of the liberal international order. The United Nations in 1949 conjured Israel (legally at least) into existence. Latin American nations at the time voted unanimously to recognize Israel’s nationhood, with Guatemala serving as Washington’s whip, ensuring that the region would act as a bloc. And the Holocaust has served as the West’s moral reference point, a nightmarish reminder of what awaits a world that forsakes liberal tolerance or doesn’t abide by liberal rules. At the same time, especially after the Six-Day War in 1967, the United Nations has also become the most persistent critic of Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. Israel ignores U.N. criticism while invoking the U.N. charter’s article 51, which grants nations the right to self-defense, to justify its assault on Gazans.
As we enter what may be the final phase of the Gazan genocide, that long entwinement between a rules-based order and Israel has become a kind of death dance. Many turn away, unable to bear the news. Others can’t turn away, horrified that those in power in this country offer nothing other than more weapons to Israel, which continues to kill indiscriminately, while withholding all food and medicines from those trapped in Gaza. As of April, about 2 million Palestinians had no secure source of food at all. Babies continue to decompose. “When children die of starvation, they don’t even cry. Their little hearts just slow down until they stop,” said Colorado pediatrician Mohamed Kuziez, who works with Doctors Against Genocide.
In early May, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet unanimously approved a plan dubbed Operation Gideon’s Chariots, which, if enacted, would drive all Gazans into a small containment zone in the southern part of that strip, with Israel controlling all food and medical aid to them. The IDF would then, as one official described the plan, complete “the conquest of the Gaza Strip.” Gaza, said Finance Minister Smotrich, will then be “completely destroyed.” He added grimly, “We conquer and stay.”
Back in the 1500s, the revulsion felt by some theologians and philosophers at the extreme brutality of the Spanish conquest began the “slow creation of humanity”—the fragile idea, nurtured over the centuries and always imperfectly applied, that all humans are indeed equal and form a single community beyond tribalism and nationalism. Today, a similar brutality is undoing that work. Humanity appears to be dissolving at an ever-quickening pace.
From Cortés to Netanyahu, Putin, and Trump, the end of the end of conquest begins.
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The US Is in Free Fall, But We Can Turn Things Around by Valuing Our Neighbors Over Money
The United States’ version of capitalism has systematically failed its population through corporate greed and manipulation of the legislature. But don’t lose hope.
May 11, 2025
The United States is often revered as the most powerful nation in the world. The U.S. has a strong economy; the most equipped military on the planet; a working class of over 130 million people; the biggest GDP of any nation; and large music, film, agricultural, beauty, food, fossil fuel, and technology industries. However, many of these industries are on the brink of collapsing, or are already starting to. Most industries were built on the backs of a marginalized working class, and continue to perpetuate deep flaws in integrity from the wealthiest 1%.
By examining my own life as an impoverished Kānaka ʻŌiwi (Indigenous person), comparisons to socialist ideologies, and through extensive economic analysis, we will find the truth of how the United States’ version of capitalism has systematically failed its population through corporate greed and manipulation of the legislature.
It’s difficult for me to find footing to explain Hawaiian culture to anyone, because most of it has been erased. Hawaiian is a critically endangered language, with only 2,000 native speakers at one point in time. In the few years I lived in Hawaii during my early childhood, I always questioned tourism, and I always questioned what was going into our clear oceans. I questioned why others visiting was so “important,” why the beaches and trails were always overcrowded with not only people but litter, and why the natives always spoke of the “haoli” with such ferocity. I quickly connected the dots as to the negative effects of taking advantage of such a beautiful land, but before I could do anything about it, we were moving, and headed off to Texas.
As financially successful as the United States is, it’s clear this “success” is an illusion that, when looked at more closely, is rampant with corruption.
Growing up raised by a single mother in a poor area off the metropolis of San Antonio, my family faced many struggles. Before we had to leave him, father would come home from working 70 hours a week just to support our family, and the hours took a toll on his mental and physical health. His knees were weak, his voice hoarse, and overall seemed off. Watching my father waste his life away in a society that treated him and his native people ruthlessly instilled in me a strong feeling of injustice.
By the time I was at the age to look for work, I could hardly juggle working for tips after school in the eighth grade while trying to impress my family with my academic achievements. The issues my family faced snowballed and forced their way into adulthood. Not a dime was saved for my sister and me after we finished high school. Learning this, I understood my options were narrow, and I had to work longer hours to get into the college I wanted. Luckily, I was accepted into a great university, but I had to start working as many hours as I possibly could to support myself.
It’s no secret that the U.S. is highly segregated, not only by race, but by income. Want to get the best education? Well, you’d better have enough money for that. Want health insurance? Be sure to pray you don’t turn 26. It’s a constant reminder of “inferiority” that kills the will of impoverished children, marginalizes people of color, and amplifies the richness of those who were born into wealth. It disrespects the time and work the lower and middle class pour into the golden cups of CEOs and investors. According to the American Journal of Public Health: “Neighborhoods ‘redlined’ by the Home Owners Loan Corporation in the 1930s (i.e., neighborhoods with large Black and immigrant populations) experience higher rates of firearm violence today than do neighborhoods deemed most desirable. This past de jure segregation may be related to present-day violence via impacts on education, transportation, jobs, income and wealth, and the built environment.” These same people who were segregated and forced into these disadvantaged, gerrymandered zip codes to begin with, and are often too poor to relocate, continually face the blame for the issues in this country. In other words, we, the working class, bear the pain and consequences of a failing nation that we’ve traded our lives and well-being to support.
Teachers, nurses, janitors, dishwashers, firefighters, truck drivers, grocery baggers, servers, social workers, and many more all comprise the working class. These respectable people are our neighbors, our community, our family. Our families, however, don’t reap the benefits of this work, and it’s easy to prove it. As of 2025, the ratio of the price of the average house divided by the median household income in America is at 7.37, an all-time high. This is even worse than during the housing crisis of 2008, where it was 6.82. In some metro areas, this number exceeds 10 for renters. With education, the price of attending college adjusted for inflation has skyrocketed over 500% in the last half-century, and the average American is spending $14,570 on healthcare per year, a 670% increase from $2,151 in 1970.
One of the main issues that capitalism in America causes when left unchecked is large monopolies that control the market too tightly, which undermine a free economy. Among markets that are “thriving” in the U.S., as discussed before, many of these markets consist of only a handful or less of main corporations controlled by billionaires. As a result, the market loses its flexibility. If the top dogs are struggling, it means everyone is. Most Americans don’t grow their goods. We buy goods from a supermarket that gets their produce and other items shipped from mass production farms and factories, filled with chemicals and human rights violations.
There are, however, alternatives that we can learn from. In other countries, there are creative solutions that will be briefly covered. Our first example, Vietnam, reformed in 1986, shifting to a more “socialist-oriented” market economy, where they implemented reforms in the country that led to positive changes and reductions in inflation. They allowed farmers to sell their surplus crops to private markets, leading small farmers and local businesses to thrive even during a recession. In the case of Cuba, their government established a food rationing system on March 12, 1962, called the libreta, that allowed citizens to purchase necessities and services at an affordable price.
Left unchecked, the prices and quality of life in the United States will continue to dwindle, and soon the country won’t have a healthy population to support itself. Many other countries have already realized this, such as France, Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. They employ similar rules to set price caps on pharmaceutical services and products. For example, in the U.K., they have a price limit on prescriptions. You pay nine pounds and ninety pence, no matter what prescription, no matter how many pills you need. If you need 30 pills or 90, it’s all the same. In Canada, you don’t have to pay anything for healthcare; instead, they’ve all agreed to pay a slight percentage increase to their taxes so that everyone gets free healthcare. As a result, poor people don’t avoid going to the hospital when they get ill or injured, because they don’t dread the hospital bill, or get turned away from a surgery or life-saving care due to insurance or money problems. This is precisely why Canadians live on average three years longer than Americans.
The flaws in the United States’ version of capitalism, such as price gouging, violations of workers’ rights, and the commodification of human lives and experiences, are felt greatest by those who are economically disadvantaged. In the United States, if you are born into poverty, you have over a 90% chance of staying in the same tax bracket you were born in. This is because trends show that over the past 50 years, the poorest 20% of American citizens have seen zero increase in wages (adjusted for inflation). In contrast, the wealthiest 1% nearly doubled their wealth over the same period. Furthermore, these wage issues affect marginalized groups more adversely, such as females, people who have disabilities, people of color, and people who identify with the LGBT community. Fifty-one Fortune 500 Companies have CEOs who make over 840 times the amount of the average worker for their company in wages.
These issues with wages, coupled with the rising costs of living, are causing people in poor communities to either find more roommates than the space can comfortably accommodate to afford rent, or become homeless. Unfortunately, once that happens, it’s mostly game over for most Americans. The U.S. infrastructure provides little to no assistance to those who are homeless or need necessities. Overcrowding in the few homeless shelters that do exist leads to overflow and people being denied rooms, forced to wait in the cold overnight. In Denton, Texas earlier this year, a locally renowned woman named Kimberly Pollock, who became homeless due to personal financial struggles, was turned away from a warming shelter and froze to death outside. She was somebody’s daughter, and she was a close, dear friend to many. These preventable and tragic losses of our local citizens are only the tip of the iceberg.
Once a magnifying glass is aimed at American capitalism, it becomes clear that the system works exactly as intended, to make the most money possible, no matter the means necessary. Ample industries rake in more money than any other country, and since more assets are being put on the table, it’s all positive reinforcement to keep going. The food, drug, and beauty industries are all aware of this. In the European Union (which formed in 1993), over 2,400 harmful chemicals have been banned in food and cosmetics. In contrast, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which oversees the safety of produce, drugs, cosmetics, and other products in the United States, has only banned 11 harmful chemicals as of today.
This disparity in the regulation of our foods, hygiene products, furniture, pesticides, medicines, and more has several key drawbacks. First, the FDA bans only a small number of chemicals because it allows companies to put cheaper, yet more harmful, chemicals in their products. Usually, it’s done to increase shelf life or to heighten the taste of a food. This causes Americans to become overloaded with chemicals and become sick, slowly and chronically. Once this occurs, an American is forced to see if they can afford to deal with their illness for the rest of their lives in their healthcare system. Bloated, high off should-be-banned chemicals, tired from working excess hours with no time off, upset with the cost of living, with a serious illness, but too poor to pay for help. It’s a lose-lose-lose situation, and this is the sad reality for many of our neighbors.
The part of capitalism that I believe makes it unredeemable is the fact that it is in direct conflict with our form of government. The United States is a representative democracy, but to run for office, you have to have thousands, if not millions, of dollars to have a strong campaign. That already excludes any low-income citizens from running for a higher-up position. Secondly, most people in our government can be “bought out” or influenced politically through lots of bribery. It’s the sad truth, but our last hope of reforming the system, through law reversal, is corrupted as well. For example, in 2024 alone, over $150 million dollars were covertly given to the Senate, House, and both presidential candidates by the fossil fuel industry alone. Some of these people include U.S. President Donald J. Trump, with over $2,100,000; former Vice President Kamala Harris, with over $1,300,000; and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), with over $1,000,000. The numbers for food industries in 2024, such as Coca-Cola, exceeded $24 million dollars. These companies are paying our “representatives” to vote in their interests, not ours. This is the reason why no chemicals are being banned, why we keep going to war with countries that coincidentally have tons of oil underneath them, and why we make so much more money than anyone else.
One of the most alarming things about the current state of the United States is that, under its current administration, there seems to be no plans for reform from our government. Despite worldwide protests, public uproar, and the deaths of many innocent citizens, it seems no steps are being taken to address the undeniable inhumanity of the United States. To try and redirect our anger at the lack of change, fingers are often pointed at the most disadvantaged of our population. People of color, gay, or poor communities are blamed for not working hard enough, shooting their kind, stealing, or getting addicted to drugs. It’s the Mexicans stealing our jobs, and the immigrants paying no taxes, or drag queens influencing our children the wrong way. It’s never the 151 mass shootings since 1982, the 26,000 Americans who die each year from not having insurance, or the sad reality that a woman only makes 83% of what a man makes in the same job position.
As financially successful as the United States is, it’s clear this “success” is an illusion that, when looked at more closely, is rampant with corruption. Even though things look unfixable, I encourage you not to lose hope and to look to your neighbor with compassion. We became the country that values our money more than our neighbors, that focuses on productivity, and not connectivity, by taking, and not giving. Figuring out adulthood as a queer, homeless Hawaiian in Texas would have been impossible without my close friends whom I met along the way. They are a constant reminder that even though we live in a country known for its selfishness, that is not a valid placeholder for the average American.
In Hawaii, we have a saying that goes Ua kuluma ke kanaka i ke aloha, meaning, we are all naturally loving people. I believe this is true. We’ve been misguided as a country and as a people, and our values have been manipulated over generations to value material possessions instead of other souls. We must reclaim our administration, restore our poor and middle class communities, and actively fight having to choose between profits and people. Slowly, and with powerful, passionate change, we can dismantle systems that commodify the human experience, and the American dream won’t be something we have to be asleep to live in.
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The Rights of Nature: A Paradigm Shift for Environmental Protection
This revolutionary legal framework moves beyond traditional environmental laws and acknowledges that Nature itself has inherent rights, much like human beings and corporations.
Apr 21, 2025
For centuries, legal systems around the world have treated Nature as property—something to be owned, exploited, and managed for human benefit. This anthropocentric perspective has led to widespread environmental degradation, climate change, and biodiversity loss.
However, a revolutionary legal framework is emerging: the recognition of the Rights of Nature. This paradigm shift moves beyond traditional environmental laws and acknowledges that Nature itself has inherent rights, much like human beings and corporations.
The Rights of Nature concept is based on the idea that ecosystems and species are not mere objects but living entities with their own inherent rights to exist, thrive, and evolve. This legal framework challenges the prevailing notion that Nature is merely a resource for human use and instead recognizes its intrinsic value. By granting legal personhood to rivers, forests, and other natural entities, governments and courts can ensure that these ecosystems have standing in legal proceedings.
By shifting from an exploitative to a respectful relationship with the natural world, humanity can ensure a healthier planet for future generations.
The movement gained global attention when Ecuador became the first country to enshrine the Rights of Nature in its Constitution in 2008. The document states that Nature, or "Pachamama," has the right to exist and regenerate. Similarly, Bolivia passed the Law of Mother Earth in 2010, reinforcing Indigenous worldviews that see Nature as a living system with rights. Since then, countries such as New Zealand, Panama, India, and Colombia have also granted legal rights to specific ecosystems, setting legal precedents that continue to inspire the global community.
Why should we grant rights to Nature, you might ask? Traditional environmental laws often fail to prevent ecological destruction because they are based on regulation rather than protection. Corporations and governments can exploit loopholes, pay fines, or simply weigh the financial cost of pollution against profit margins. The Rights of Nature framework, however, fundamentally shifts the legal system from one of ownership to one of stewardship.
One of the most compelling cases for this approach is the Whanganui River in New Zealand. In 2017, the New Zealand government recognized the river as a legal entity, granting it the same rights and responsibilities as a person. This decision was made in collaboration with the Whanganui iwi, the Indigenous Māori people who have long regarded the river as an ancestor. Now, legal guardians, including representatives from both the government and the Māori community, speak on behalf of the river in legal matters. This recognition has already influenced policy decisions related to conservation and sustainable water management. Similarly, in 2017, the High Court of Uttarakhand in India granted legal rights to the Ganges and Yamuna rivers, acknowledging their sacred and ecological importance. Although this ruling faced legal challenges, it sparked important discussions about environmental governance and the need for stronger protections for vital ecosystems.
Despite these victories, the implementation of the Rights of Nature faces legal, political, and economic challenges. Many governments and corporations resist this shift, fearing restrictions on industrial activities. Additionally, enforcement mechanisms vary widely, and some legal rulings remain symbolic without proper institutional backing. However, the movement continues to gain momentum. Local communities, Indigenous groups, and environmental activists are advocating for the recognition of Nature's rights as a crucial tool for fighting climate change and biodiversity loss. In the United States, cities such as Pittsburgh and Toledo have passed local ordinances recognizing the rights of ecosystems, empowering communities to challenge environmental destruction more effectively.
Ecuador has witnessed several groundbreaking legal victories that affirm Nature's rights. Among these, the 2021 Constitutional Court ruling on Los Cedros Reserve was historic: The court halted mining exploration in this biodiversity hotspot, recognizing that the rights of the forest and its species, including endangered monkeys and orchids, outweighed extractive interests. Similarly, in Intag, a region long defended by local communities, legal actions based on behalf of endangered frogs and the Rights of Nature have helped suspend mining operations that threatened primary cloud forests and rivers vital to both people and ecosystems.
Another notable case is Estrellita, a woolly monkey rescued from illegal trafficking. When authorities attempted to relocate her to a zoo, a judge ruled in favor of her individual rights as part of Nature—marking the first time an animal in Ecuador was granted such recognition. These cases underscore the growing power of constitutional rights when applied to real-life conflicts between conservation and exploitation. They also reflect the tireless advocacy of Indigenous peoples, environmental defenders, and legal experts who are reshaping the legal landscape to center ecological integrity and the interconnectedness of all life.
The Rights of Nature framework is more than just a legal concept—it is a cultural and ethical transformation. By shifting from an exploitative to a respectful relationship with the natural world, humanity can ensure a healthier planet for future generations. As this movement grows, it is essential for policymakers, legal scholars, and citizens alike to support and advance this revolutionary approach to environmental protection.
The Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (GARN) is a global network that has been at the forefront of the Earth Jurisprudence and Rights of Nature movement for the last 15 years, educating, upholding, and supporting its growth. With over 6,000 allies worldwide, GARN serves as a movement hub, connecting Indigenous leaders, civil society, lawyers, and advocates reshaping environmental governance.
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