Should rivers be given legal rights like humans? A Bristol campaigner is testing the waters of British law in an effort to protect the Avon from further pollution.
Our legal system needs a radical overhaul that asserts the rights of the whole ecosystem. A forthcoming conference will discuss the set out the vision for a Wild Law. SHEHANA GOMEZ reports
The House of Commons has passed a government amendment to strengthen environmental protection in the EU Withdrawal Bill. However, critics said it would still result in lower protection than the UK has currently, writes CATHERINE EARLY
The European Union's top court ruled today that increased logging in Białowieża broke EU nature laws. The Polish government must now reverse decisions that allowed logging, or face fines of up to tens of millions of euros. CATHERINE EARLY reports
The Polish government has been ignoring a temporary ban on logging in the Białowieża Forest since July. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) is now taking unprecedented action to protect the best-preserved primeval forest in Europe. CATHERINE EARLY reports
An African movement for Earth-centred living and governance, founded in traditional cultures, is growing across the continent, writes HANNIBAL RHOADES. Meet the newly graduated Earth Jurisprudence practitioners helping a revival to flourish
A new report from Global Witness places India fourth in the league table of killings of environmental activists. As part of our collaboration with CLIMATE TRACKER, environmental law researcher MRINALINI SHINDE looks at the human trauma behind the statistics - and calls on India's urban elite to act.
We need a new paradigm for ocean governance focused on well-being and guided by principles of sustainability, ecosystem health, precaution and interconnectedness, argues MICHELLE BENDER of the US based Earth Law Centre.
With the UN Ocean Conference beginning in New York next week, Elizabeth A Kirk asks: can we devise a legal system that promotes the ecological resilience of the oceans? To do so will mean placing ecosystems at the heart of decision making, over and above countries' selfish 'national interests'. It will be tough, but if we fail it's hard to see how the gamut of problems - from ocean acidification to plastic pollution and overfishing - can ever be solved.
On the one side, the Guarani people and the entire panoply of international and Brazilian law asserting the rights of indigenous peoples to their lives, lands, and way of life. Against them, the entrenched economic and political power of farmers, ranchers, loggers and others exploiting the wealth of the Guarani's soils, forests and waters. Right now the power of money is winning every time. Only with international pressure can the Guarani emerge victorious.
There is a growing global movement to recognise the rights of rivers, writes Debadityo Sinha. But rights alone are not enough. We must love and respect rivers, and even think like rivers to understand the vital functions they perform within landscapes and ecosystems, and so discover where their 'best interests' truly lie. And then we must be willing to act: protecting rivers and restoring them to health and wholeness.
Attacks on Amazon Indians and on their land rights are threatening vital areas of rainforest, writes Jan Rocha. Meanwhile FUNAI, the agency responsible for safeguarding indigenous tribes is being forced to withdraw from key conflict zones due to underfunding, while Indians' attempts to assert their rights are met with state violence.
Recognising nature as a legal stakeholder with inalienable rights in environmental law proceedings is a powerful counterbalance to corporate dictatorship, writes Mumta Ito. It empowers people and governments to stand up for nature - the underlying basis of our economy and our lives. And it stands in contrast to feeble approaches based on the financialisation and commodification of nature, which may be twisted to justify more destruction.
It's barely mentioned in the election campaign or reported in the media. But a powerful faction of Tory ministers, ex-ministers and backbench MPs are bent on using Brexit to ignite a massive bonfire of 'spirit-crushing' laws on wildlife protection, air and water pollution, pesticides, renewable energy and public health, writes Brendan Montague. At risk are not just EU directives and regulations but even the UK's own Climate Change Act. May's Brexit may not just be hard, but very, very dirty.
A new study explains for the first time how nanoparticles like those in diesel exhaust fumes cause heart disease by lodging in inflamed blood vessels, writes Oliver Tickell. The study, published as the UK government is ordered before the High Court to justify its refusal to publish plans to tackle illegal air pollution which afflicts 38 million people, also raises wider fears about 'engineered nanoparticles' in the environment.