As climate impacts intensify, innovative legal strategies are emerging worldwide to protect both people and nature. Recent cases — from South Korea’s climate rights rulings to proposals for granting legal personhood to rivers — highlight five main approaches shaping modern environmental law:
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Right to a Healthy Environment – Recognized by the UN and over 150 countries, this human right allows citizens to sue governments for failing to protect clean, sustainable environments, as in Held v. Montana (2024).
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Rights of Future Generations – Based on “intergenerational equity,” this principle holds present generations responsible for safeguarding resources for those yet to come, as upheld in Colombia’s 2018 Amazon deforestation case.
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Government Responsibility (Public Trust Doctrine) – Requires governments to preserve shared natural resources, applied in landmark climate cases in the Netherlands and the U.S. (Juliana v. U.S.).
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Rights of Nature – Grants legal rights to ecosystems and species themselves, enabling them (via guardians) to defend their existence, as seen in Ecuador’s constitution and rulings in Bangladesh and Colombia.
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Ecocide as a Crime – A growing movement to recognize severe environmental destruction as an international crime, comparable to genocide, with laws already adopted in countries like France, Vietnam, and Ukraine.
While each approach differs in focus and scope, together they reflect a global shift toward viewing the environment as an entity worthy of legal protection in its own right — and as essential to human rights.
