The legal personality of environmental entities or how to humanize nature in law - reflections based on the case of the Whanganui River

Session 3 - The environment, nature and their rights

Chair : Thomas Perroud, Professor at the University of Paris Panthéon-Assas, Humboldt Fellow at the Humboldt University of Berlin.

Abstract

I will briefly recall the main lines and circumstances of the Te Awa Tupua Act of March 2017, a New Zealand law known for having granted legal personality to the Whanganui River (or at least to " something " in connection with this river. This law has become a kind of emblem of legal ecocentrism, which, in my view, it does not really or fully embody. More generally and beyond this case, I will attempt to interpret various provisions in favor of nature rights as an attempt to socialize, institutionalize or even humanize nature, a movement in fact not fully captured by the anthropocentrism/legal ecocentrism dichotomy, and distinct, perhaps, from the notion of legal animism that has sometimes been discussed in these same venues. The effectiveness of measures such as rights of nature, or the legal personalization of a natural entity, could depend on a skilful articulation between typically anthropocentric legal frameworks (property, sovereignty) and this type of measure, which is in principle more ecocentric.

Sacha Bourgeois-Gironde

Former student of the École normale supérieure, agrégé and doctor of philosophy. Professor of philosophy, then professor of economics (behavioral economics, law and economics) at Université Paris 2 Assas. Researcher at the Institut Jean-Nicod (CNRS-EHESS-ENS), principal investigator of the Environnement : concepts et normes team. Author, among others, of Être la Rivière, comment le fleuve Whanganui est devenue une personne selon la loi (PUF, 2020), and Wie uns das Recht ber Nature näherbringt (Matthes & Seitz, 2023).