The vision
“We might have environmental protections, but those come from humans determining what’s good about an ecosystem. It might look a little different if you were to talk to a pod of pilot whales about what their needs are.”
— writer and environmental philosopher Melanie Challenger
The spotlight
Imagine: You’re in parliament, getting ready to introduce a motion to tax greenhouse gas emissions at the global level and encourage the development of renewable energy. To your right, a fellow human lawmaker from the other side of the world nods in approval. But to your left? A koala glares at you; in Australia, the tax is expected to incentivize the clearing of eucalyptus groves — the koala’s habitat — for a major solar project!
Next to the koala is a frangipani tree, and after the tree is a bend of the Murrumbidgee River. They’re on equal footing with you, since the policy will affect their interests as well as those of humans. Your motion is in danger — unless it can win the support of a majority of Earth’s living and nonliving constituents.
This scenario is a caricature, of course; river bends and koalas aren’t going to be literally invited into parliament anytime soon. But it’s a caricature of a real proposal recently put forward by Planetary Democrats, a European legal association. According to the group, too many decisions are currently made from a purely human-centric perspective, without proper consideration for the natural entities they affect. They argue that a “planetary parliament” representing the interests of nonhuman plants, animals, and ecosystems could bring much-needed balance — and get at the root of problems, like environmental degradation and animal exploitation — ensuring that nature is valued on its own terms and not just for the benefits it brings humans.
“These entities are affected by laws, and so they should be represented in the decision-making process,” said Anton Rüpke, the Planetary Democrats’ first chairperson. He said elements of nature deserve political representation by virtue of their existence, not because they have some special utility to humans.
Representation, not just rights
Rüpke’s thinking is rooted in a broader effort to recognize humans as just one part of the global ecosystem, with no inherent right to dominion over everything else. For example, within the “rights of nature” movement, many experts and environmental groups have advocated for the rights of nature to be enshrined in law.
They’ve won a handful of big victories — Ecuador’s 2008 constitution, for example, recognizes Earth’s inherent right to “maintenance and regeneration of its life cycles, structure, functions, and evolutionary processes,” independent of its utility to people. Other countries and subnational jurisdictions have enshrined nature’s rights through constitutional amendments and Supreme Court rulings.
Underlying those victories, however, is a question of representation. Granting legal rights to something or someone is not a guarantee that those rights will be respected. Rivers, forests, and wildlife can’t speak for themselves; they need human surrogates in order to participate in human governance systems. Some jurisdictions have attempted to solve this problem by appointing specific legal guardians to nature, or by calling on the general population to bring lawsuits against those who violate nature’s rights.
But for Rüpke, depending on the legal branch alone is a reactive approach — it puts nature on the defensive every time a threat arises, rather than empowering it to create laws that could stop threats from cropping up in the first place.
“We need to have representation also in the executive and legislative branches of government,” Rüpke said.
Enter the notion of a “planetary parliament,” the Planetary Democrats’ idea for a new, 400-member legislative body — potentially within the United Nations — to represent the interests of nonhuman nature. According to the group, this would lead to more democratic decision-making and better protections for all of nature, not just the parts that are most popular among humans (such as charismatic megafauna like whales and eagles).
How it would work
Here’s how it would work: 200 members of the parliament would be selected at random from the global population to represent the diverse interests of humanity. The remaining 200 representatives would be experts nominated by environmental groups to legislate on behalf of nonhuman animals, fungi, plants, and microorganisms, as well as nonliving entities — the atmosphere, the cryosphere (ice), the hydrosphere (water), and the lithosphere (rocks). If the planetary parliament were created within the U.N., it could be empowered to put forward legislative proposals and make decisions that would be binding under international law.
Rüpke said this could include any number of policies to curb biodiversity loss, improve soil health, address plastic pollution — whatever the representatives deem to be the most pressing problems. Of course, existing governance bodies are already trying to tackle those problems. But they haven’t been very successful — at least not yet — and according to the Planetary Democrats, they lack the high degree of democratic legitimacy that would set apart a planetary parliament.
“While current politicians are beholden to their human constituents, nature’s representatives would be beholden to the entire planet, representing different needs and requirements in a more balanced way,” the Planetary Democrats’ proposal says.
It’s an out-of-the-box approach, and the Planetary Democrats acknowledge that new tools will have to be developed to overcome practical and epistemological challenges. For example, with no way to receive direct feedback from their nonhuman constituents, nature’s representatives would have to imagine new ways of evaluating their work. External accountability bodies might also have to develop ways to ensure that representatives act in nature’s best interests and don’t abuse their power. And there would have to be a protocol for when the interests of one part of nature clash with those of another.
Pablo Magaña, a former postdoctoral researcher at NOVA University Lisbon and a board member for the Pompeu Fabra University Centre for Animal Ethics in Barcelona, said a strong, durable planetary parliament should be as inclusive as possible, with plenty of consultation and input from those outside the governance body. “If all stakeholders aren’t included, it’s more vulnerable, more likely to fail,” he said. Rüpke suggested that members could take regular excursions to endangered ecosystems while in office, in order to feel more connected to the entities they would be representing.
For now, the idea of giving nature political representation might seem far-off. But then again, this is how it often is with social progress — it was once seen as a “grave social experiment” to allow women to vote — and smaller-scale experiments around the world are giving advocates hope. Several jurisdictions, including Germany, Malta, Spain, and New York City, have appointed animal welfare commissioners or offices, tasked with representing the interests of pets and wildlife. New Zealand has a commissioner for the environment, and Wales has one charged with representing the interests of future generations of humans, who, like nonhuman parts of nature, cannot advocate for themselves.
“What we’re seeing is the green shoots in the garden of experimentation,” said Melanie Challenger, deputy co-chair for the Nuffield Council on Bioethics and vice president of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in the U.K. While some of these experiments might not work out, she added, they’re still driving the conversation forward.
“Every group that is proposing something is adding something of value,” Challenger said. “Even those proposals that need to change.”
— Joseph Winters
More exposure
- Read: more about the rights of nature movement, and new tactics that advocates are employing (The Guardian)
- Read: about the efforts of Indigenous advocates to fight extractive projects and industries on behalf of salmon and wild rice (Grist)
- Read: about an effort in Utah to ban “legal personhood” for natural entities, including the Great Salt Lake (Inside Climate News)
- Watch: a short documentary on Ecuador’s biodiversity, and the movement that made it the first and only country to enshrine the rights of nature in its constitution (Nature on PBS)
A parting shot
These (kind of inexplicably wacky) images, created by Planetary Democrats using artificial intelligence, show a visualization of the ethos behind the proposal. In two of them, a cloud and a koala speak in parliament, surrounded by plants. In others, for some reason, a clump of algae rides public transit and a swirl of ocean water hangs out in a studio.
