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BAGUIO CITY — The Catholic Church is asking local governments in the mountainous Cordillera region to pass ordinances establishing the Rights of Nature, a legal theory that ecosystems have the same right to “exist and flourish” as human beings and that would grant critically endangered forests and polluted waterways legal standing in courts.
Participants in the Church’s four-year climate resiliency project, Green Northern Luzon, mapped out the advocacy campaign during a two-day conference over the weekend at the Diocese of Baguio, with Caritas Philippines facilitating the project.
According to Yolly Esguerra, national coordinator of the Philippine Misereor Partnership Inc., giving trees, river boulders, and forest animals the right to sue for their own protection may sound silly at first, but it is a policy recourse that is slowly being embraced globally in light of unenforced environmental laws and other legal doctrines.
“Our environmental laws do not protect the subject of these laws, which is Nature. There must be something wrong with the framework of our legal system, so we need new jurisprudence that would recognize nature and ecosystems as legal entities and rights-bearing entities,” she added.
