Rights of Nature in Liberal Legal Systems

Rights of nature have not yet been implemented comprehensively in Western liberal legal systems. In light of this, the chapter addresses how rights of nature could be convincingly implemented. It develops elements of a contemporary liberal theory of rights of nature that can also find its implementation in practice. To this end, the chapter first seeks to elaborate on the worldwide implementations of rights of nature in the past two decades as a global discourse to illustrate the diversity, commonality and transferability of rights of nature. Subsequently, the concept of “ecological liberalism” will be used to develop elements of a contemporary liberal theory of rights of nature. Building on this, the chapter turns to the practical implementation of rights of nature in liberal legal systems by examining the possibility of granting rights to nature de lege lata and presenting a model provision for rights of nature in liberal constitutions de lege ferenda.