By Emily Hite, Saint Louis University, United States
“Nature is a leader.”
“Water is a victim.”
“Gas is a fugitive.”
These narratives were reiterated by politicians and industry leaders throughout their presentations at COP28. Such quotes were visually complimented by the structures within which they were spoken at Expo City in Dubai – side event rooms flourished in green and blue hues, #NaturePositive signs posted in hallways, pathways shaded by overhead pergolas in the shape of birds protected us from the harsh sun, tree lined pathways provided a feeling of being in nature, and tranquil water fountains gave off a cooling misty breeze. These environmental nodes coalesced into a grande constellation, orbiting around a central dome set aglow with human-animal scenes dancing to soothing music.
Collective messaging at COP28 – the personification of the elements mixed with inspiring nature visuals – gave me pause. As an environmental anthropologist concerned with the justice and equity of climate decision and policy making across local and global scales, I felt moments of hope in an otherwise typically chaotic space. Governance representatives were openly and enthusiastically discussing these elements as active agents of change, seemingly recognizing their inseparable connections with people, and emphasizing their roles in addressing climate change. It seemed to belie what I had been witnessing as an ethnographer at COPs over the past five years, which rely on commodifying the elements into resources via market-based mitigation and adaptation strategies to maintain the status quo for economic growth.
I wanted to explore this contradictory declaration of nature’s agency that simultaneously contrasts with the exclusion of nature within dominant neoliberal climate responses. Refocusing our responses to climate change on the agentive role of nature, water, or gas, and their inherent relation with humans, could have significant implications for global climate governance, primarily if we consider nature and elements as rights holders. What is and what could be the role of a Rights of Nature framework in informing our futures?
Nature
In a bougie air conditioned conference room where the high-level COP events occur, a 360-degree monitor surrounded the audience, enticing viewers with videos of humpback whales swimming, drifting icebergs, and tropical coral scenes that made you feel as if you were immersed in an Imax theater. Markedly different from the smaller spaces that host civil society pavilions, this was an opulent room filled with dignitaries sipping on glass-bottled water, who were ushered to plush chairs by their security details. It was there, at a panel entitled Protecting Nature for Climate, Lives, and Livelihoods, that I heard about Nature with the agency to lead us out of climate disaster.
“Nature is the only leader in the world and we have to listen to it.” This inspiring statement came from the President of Slovenia, a female leader in a sea of male counterparts. Slovenia is one of the only countries in the world that has written the rights of water into its Constitution. French President Emanuel Macron reiterated this belief, arguing that “Nature is the best technology available to capture and stop CO2. We have a lot of money for capture and storage of CO2, but forests, oceans, and nature are the most effective.”
Water
In the opening of the Water Pavilion , a packed crowd vied for seating. Celebrity scientist Johann Röckstrom, perhaps most known for his work at the Stockholm Resilience Centre on Planetary Boundaries, spoke with a firm yet disheartened tone: “Water is the number one victim of climate change.” He stressed that we have shifted the entire global hydrologic cycle on a planetary scale through our unsustainable actions. This is critical because, as Röckstrom urged, water is fundamental to achieving the 1.5 degree scenario of the Paris Agreement. Quality and quantity of water underpins all of our energy, food, and integrated life systems. This recognition of water’s importance throughout the world in all sectors of society, is in part highlighted by the fact that COPs now have a water pavilion at all, this being only the third year of their existence.
Gas
John Kerry spoke at another high level panel entitled, COP28 summit on Methane and Other non-CO2 Greenhouse Gases that was specifically focused on methane, in which he called the gas a “fugitive.” He criminalized the gas because similar to an escaped convict, methane breaks out of permafrost and “it is out there doing damage.” We need to figure out how to stop it. One pathway is a cooperative agreement initiated by the United States and China – a multilateral global agreement to cut 30% of global methane emissions by 2030. The Global Methane Pledge was an exciting announcement to hear at COP26, particularly since methane is more potent and dangerous than carbon dioxide, and is 80 times more potent over a 20-year period.
Nature-cultures
At panel after panel, Presidents and Prime Ministers expressed their seemingly new knowledge that nature is an essential component of dealing with the climate crisis and is an integral component of a sustainable future for humanity. Don’t they know that we have never been modern? Latour’s essay emphasizes the hybrid, interconnected, and inseparable growth of peoples and our living and non-living environments that encompass and recreate our nature-cultures. This concept is something that many non-Western, non-settler colonial societies have long known, embodied, and otherwise valued and practiced.
Ideas of holistically managing nature with the same respect and reciprocity as our economies and industries has been promoted by certain groups, including the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform. However, those perspectives are considered ‘alternatives’ and often Indigenous perspectives on climate management are neglected as we instead largely opt to sell nature to save it. Elizabeth Wathuti, a climate justice advocate on the water panel challenged the audience’s worldviews, stating “Nature and climate are treated as separate. These are sides of the same coin. We have to address them as one…humanity’s survival is dependent on how we treat water, nature, and restore ecosystems.” So if we think of water as a victim, what then of the people who are spiritually and culturally connected to it?
Yet, despite 50+ years of climate governance and the practical deficiency of the Kyoto Protocol and other declarations to effectively halt greenhouse gas emissions or their associated temperature increases, counter narratives to economic-centric mitigation and adaptation efforts have so far been drowned out by the overpowering hegemonic Westernized schemata of neoliberal consumption and our inability to ever imagine the end of capitalism – instead of framing fossil fuel industries as the fugitives, the blame is placed on the gas it creates.
Rights of Nature
If we take seriously the concept of nature-cultures and accept some level of personification of the elements – letting our jagged worldviews collide by integrating an Indigenous, holistic value system into capitalist hierarchical structures, we could collectively accept and advance a more eco-centric approach to climate change governance, one where nature leads – through a Rights of Nature framework.
Repositioning climate governance into a Rights of Nature framework is a way to transform the western legal system and “shift the status of nature from property to a subject in law in an effort to protect the natural world.” Environmental lawyer Christopher Stone first advocated for recognizing the agency of nature in 1972 in Should Trees Have Standing?: And Other Essays on Law, Morals & the Environment, arguing that “voiceless natural objects should have the right to be legally represented in courts, through special, statutory guardians or trustees who defend their interests.” More comprehensively, the United Nations defines Rights of Nature as “recognizing Nature and her elements as rights holders, providing them with a voice through representation, and reorienting western law around principles of relationship, interconnection, reciprocity, responsibility, and the recognition that all Earth’s beings, ecosystems, and components have fundamental rights to exist, thrive, and evolve.”
In 2006, the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund was the first in the United States to successfully apply a rights of nature defense to protect their ecosystem from toxic pollution inundation. Soon thereafter, the United Nations initiated the Harmony with Nature Initiative to assist in defining and implementing a non-anthropocentric relationship with nature to our governance structure, which could help fulfill the Sustainable Development Goals.
My concern as someone who researches human-water relationships is with the rights of water specifically, which have been gaining prominence of late. Kelsey Leonard encourages us to ask not just “what” is water, but “who” is water. She believes that such an orientation will transform the ways we think about and protect rivers. She questions the moral compass of the Western world, underscoring inconsistencies and injustices of providing corporations freedom of speech and religion, but not providing legal personhood for nature.
The concept has been a success in some cases: Marañón River in Peru (2024), Whanganui River in New Zealand (2017), and the Río Atrato in Colombia (2017) are three rivers that have received status of legal personhood, thereby providing a shield to protect them from manipulation or degradation. The most extensive protection for rivers is in Bangladesh, the first country to grant all rivers with the same legal status as people. The Klamath River also received legal rights of personhood, a resolution passed by the Yurok Tribe in 2019 because they believe that personhood “creates laws and advocacy routes” and is “also an expression of Yurok values.” Save the World’s Rivers, an NGO based in Colorado on which I am a board member, campaign to protect the Colorado River from the Wall Street Takeover of this culturally and economically important transboundary waterway through application of the Rights of Nature framework in collaboration with the Earth Law Center.
The protections however are complicated and an agreed upon entity must be appointed to represent rivers in any legal proceedings, the selection of which can be challenging. For example, the Ganges and Yamuna rivers were declared living entities in 2017, but that decision was overturned shortly thereafter, citing difficulties in court representation of the rivers.
Much is to be learned from implementing a Rights of Nature system. But in acknowledging that nature, water, and gas are agentive elements, interconnected with and indivisible from peoples and cultures, COP meetings and climate governance broadly could hold space for effecting the types of change needed to sustainably respond to climate crises and provide the futures that we all imagine for ourselves and our nature-cultures.
Emily Hite is an assistant professor of Anthropology and Sociology at Saint Louis University and got her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Colorado Boulder. Hite’s work is concerned with the justice and equity of climate governance processes, with a focus on the cultural implications of local to global decision-making regarding newly proposed hydropower projects. She has conducted mixed methods ethnographic research with dam-impacted communities in the United States and Latin America, as well as international climate meetings.
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