Susana Borrás: Hello, it’s my pleasure to talk with you. Yes, trees, rivers… Nature can a should have rights as we humans have. Law is a human construction, and we can use it to improve life. Actually, our rights come from Nature’s existence. Therefore, the Rights of Nature are related to how we protect it. Until now, our law was based on an anthropocentric perspective, now is turning to an ecocentric.
In other words, traditionally, we have focused on protecting, without great success, the natural resources that had an interest for us, but not necessarily because of their ecological and biological value. Now, this new ecocentric vision is based on the natural value for the planet.
With this new legal set, we consider Nature a subject we must protect rather than just an object with protection. We have been able to give rights to no-human legal personhood. We have done it with companies and corporations, but now we do it with Nature and we think it’s weird. We should recall that Nature is the necessary precondition to guarantee human existence; just for this, it is required to rethink how we will protect it to protect us.