Faith Communities
and the Rights of Nature
In recent years, faith leaders have taken notable steps toward the recognition of legal rights of nature. Pope Francis declared that the environment has "rights." The Church of Sweden has included the rights of nature within its educational program. The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines has called for the recognition of the rights of nature, and the United Church of Christ in the U.S. has adopted a rights of nature policy.
On this page you can learn more about the growing and important role that faith communities have in the global Rights of Nature movement.
September 2015: Pope Francis, Catholic Church
In May 2015, Pope Francis issued his encyclical letter, Laudato Si’, in which he wrote that we all have a “duty to protect the earth.” Later that year, Pope Francis delivered a speech at the U.N. General Assembly, in which he described further the need for a paradigm shift in how we protect nature. He explained, "First, it must be stated that a true "right of the environment" does exist...We live in communion with it, since the environment itself entails ethical limits which human activity must acknowledge and respect...Any harm done to the environment, therefore, is harm done to humanity."
July 2019: The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines
The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines issued a Pastoral Letter, titled “An urgent call for ecological conversion, hope in the face of climate emergency.” Within the Letter, the Bishops write: “The recognition of the Rights of Nature is at the core of the call for ecological conversion…” They add, “We need a paradigm shift in order to reestablish our sacred relationship with nature.”
July 2021: The United Church of Christ
The United Church of Christ, at its General Synod 33, adopted a Rights of Nature resolution. As the Church describes, it is “the first mainline Protestant Denomination to publicly affirm and proclaim that nature has rights.” The resolution reads, in part: “…the Rights of Nature supersedes harmful and destructive property rights, for the balanced cycles of the natural world must be protected as a common good for the present and future generations of human life and biokind…Promote the Rights of Nature to be free from human harm, including the right to healthy habitats, the right to species flourishing, the right to a fair share of the bio-region and its goods, and the right to fulfill their ecological potential without human infringements.
September 2022: World Council of Churches
The World Council of Churches, the largest ecumenical organization in the world, issued a statement titled: “The Living Planet: Seeking a Just and Sustainable Global Community.” Within the statement, the WCC calls for a new pathway forward to protect nature, writing, “A narrow anthropocentric understanding of our relationship with Creation must be revised to a whole of life understanding, to achieve a sustainable global ecosystem.” Along this new pathway, the WCC points to the rights of nature as in need of support.
Recommended Reading: CDER’s Mari Margil writes on Mongabay: The Pope, a prince and a judge walk into a bar…to argue for nature’s rights
The Pope, a prince, and a handful of judges – reaching across cultures, faiths, geography – are each calling for a new relationship with nature, one that fundamentally transforms how nature is treated by humanity, from being considered an object without even the most basic right to exist, to being understood as a living entity deserving of the highest form of protection that we have in human law, the recognition of legal rights.
Recommended Reading: CDER’s Mari Margil writes in the Minding Nature journal: Marching Toward Change—Faith and Governance in the Movement for the Rights of Nature
Today, as we face overlapping environmental crises, we need a fundamental shift in humankind’s relationship with the natural world—this means a major shift in how we govern ourselves toward nature. To achieve this requires advancing major societal and cultural shifts, as well—that is, changing how societies think about nature and humanity’s role as part of it, and the recognition that nature is worthy of respect, protection, and rights.