Rights of Nature in the European Union: Contemplating the Operationalization of an Eco-Centric Concept in an Anthropocentric Environment?

A global movement to give legal rights to nature is slowly gaining momentum in the face of the ongoing biodiversity crisis that is hitting our planet. At its core, the concept of rights of nature presupposes a novel template for ecological governance, which is aimed at prioritizing nature’s right to exist and to flourish through a societal and legal reform. This chapter makes two separate arguments. First, it argues that rights of nature constitutes a powerful new paradigm for ecological governance. Second, it demonstrates the difficulties and opportunities encountered when operationalizing this emerging concept within the existing legal order through a case study on the interplay between nature’s rights and the existing EU legal order. In spite of the identified alignment between a more rights-based approach to nature protection and the existing EU environmental law, several long-standing defects of the existing EU legal order seem to block a further operationalization of rights of nature. Against the backdrop of the relatively strict case law at EU level with respect to standing in environmental cases before EU courts and the persisting anthropocentric nature of many EU environmental directives, this chapter concludes that the recognition of rights of nature at the national level, either through strategic litigation or legislative amendments, is to be approached as the most realistic pathway to the short-term operationalization of ecocentrism in the EU.