"The UN secretary general has declared that the world is in the middle of an “ocean emergency”, and urged governments to do more to restore ocean health."
In 2006, a local government council in Pennsylvania concerned about sewage sludge dumping enacted the Western legal system’s first formal “rights of nature” instrument. Today, numerous countries have laws recognizing specific rights or even legal personhood for nature. As legal expert Alice Bleby explains, this new perspective arises from a wide range of contexts and plays out in many different ways.
"Forest pathologist Martin MacKenzie strode forward on a narrow path through California’s mythic bristlecone pine forest in the White Mountains near the Nevada border, methodically scanning gnarled limbs for the invaders that threaten the lives of some of the world’s oldest trees."
"A federal study released Thursday determined that hardrock mining in a Minnesota wilderness area would risk contaminating the region."
"Beside a canal that runs through farmland, rushing water roared through an irrigation gate and flowed down a concrete culvert toward a wetland fringed with cottonwoods and willows."
"President Biden’s top aides are weighing whether to ban new oil and gas drilling off America’s coasts, a move that would elate climate activists but could leave the administration vulnerable to Republican accusations that it is exacerbating an energy crunch as gas prices soar."
"The White House on Thursday launched a formal partnership with 11 East Coast governors to boost the growing offshore wind industry, a key element of President Joe Biden’s plan for climate change."
"The current pace of reducing agricultural pollution in the Chesapeake Bay is off track, an advocacy group said Wednesday."
"As California endures water restrictions due to widespread drought, a proposed $2.5-billion reservoir expansion project in Santa Clara County promises to increase the amount of freshwater for more than a million people."
"The hydrological cycle is a fundamental natural process for keeping Earth’s operating system intact. Humanity and civilization are intimately dependent on the water cycle, but we have manipulated it vastly and destructively, to suit our needs."
