Nature doesn't need rights

But we need a change of heart

In the face of ecological collapse, some propose granting nature legal rights. But maybe mother nature doesn’t need rights. We should rethink our relationship with her.

Does this mountain need rights?

Subjecting all living beings on Earth to human laws and ideology is not the answer to our modern conundrum: that nature’s supply chain is struggling to meet the ever-growing demands of a single species—our own.

At a theoretical and ethical level, why do the needs of our species supersede the needs of every other form of life on this planet?

The climate crisis is nature’s response to our fight for supremacy. And ultimately, nature holds the upper hand. This climate crisis is nature’s French Revolution, an uprising against its greedy, self-appointed human emperors.

It is a reminder that life on Earth is not about the survival of the fittest, but about coexistence. That Earth’s ecosystem is a superior planetary operating system, with data centers, information networks, ecological algorithms and power supplies that no human technology can replace or replicate.

We pride ourselves on being the most intelligent beings on this planet. But nature is more intelligent than us. It is also longer lived. Our finite lives don’t allow us to grasp the scale at which nature operates. Cause and effect extend far beyond even our existence as a species.

Human life is part of this natural ecosystem and not the other way around. Therefore nature doesn’t need rights dictated by our laws. Quite the contrary: human laws must adapt to ensure our survival within nature’s laws.

Perhaps it’s time we reckon with the fact that our attempts to dominate this planet are not to our advantage. Instead of conquering nature, maybe we should allow it to once again enter our lives. Where a human steps, a tree should grow—not be cut. We should use our creative powers to help life flourish on this planet, not to take it away.

There was a time when humans were co-creators with nature. After the last Ice Age, our ancestors helped re-green the planet. Over millennia, they bred a wealth of seeds and plant species in collaboration with nature. These people left us a planet covered in ancient forests and still put food on our tables today. What will we leave behind for future generations? A spaceship to escape a planet we rendered uninhabitable for humans?

Rethinking our place and role as a species on Earth—and in the universe—is not the answer to everything. But it’s a start. A change of perspective can help us break out of this mental bubble in which we try to pass a camel through the eye of a needle. We cannot fit nature, the planet and the universe within our human capitalist system. We cannot even fit humans within our capitalist system. If we give up our notion that the highest ideal of human existence is to accumulate as much wealth as possible in this life, a whole new range of possible futures opens before our eyes.

Think of the implications of taking consumption out of the equation and replacing it with nurturing the natural world. What ripple effects would that have on our planet, our society, our future? How would this influence the way we build our technology, educate our children or treat other living beings on this planet?

The world as we know it is a reflection of the mental bubbles in which we live. The fastest and only way in which we can change is by changing our mindset. For the past 300 years we’ve been operating on a mental model that doesn’t serve us. We’re so obsessed with our own survival that we ended up destroying everything in our path. Our pathological need for hoarding resources is the animal instinct of survival brought to the extreme by an intelligent species. In our quest to secure our future, we’re annihilating it. This is existential angst brought to paroxysm. A form of collective madness.

But hoarding won’t save us when the ecosystems that sustain us collapse. We’ve become lonely islands dreaming of transforming into superheroes that will save the world. We are so wrapped up in our individual existences, so cut away from each other that we feel helpless in the face of collapse. Plugged into our glowing screens, we’re more blind than ever.

Meanwhile, indigenous women in rural India—some of the poorest and most marginalized people on Earth—are creating dream maps to reimagine their landscapes in the face of climate change. These women are connected to their ecosystems. They can clearly see the issues and what needs to be done. And they’re taking action: they submitted their dream maps to government officials and requested financial and legal support to restore the forests and rivers that ensure their livelihood.

Nature doesn’t need rights. Humans need a change of heart.

How much suffering will it take?

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I explore this question further in my mosaic novel There Is Hope, set in the year 2550—long after the Earth has reached +5°C of warming and a 400-year war over the last resources. Told through a collection of human memories in a Museum of Life, it follows the last humans walking the Dust Road, searching not just for survival—but for hope.

There Is Hope is an ode to what we stand to lose and a meditation on what it might take to live again in harmony with the Earth.

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Your curator,
Claudia—Builder of myths. Architect of deep futures.