The rights of nature movement has, over the past 50 years, sought to recognise rivers, forests, and other ecosystems as legal subjects with inherent rights to exist, flourish, and regenerate, rather than as mere property.

Emerging from Indigenous cosmologies, critical legal scholarship, and Earth jurisprudence, it has inspired constitutional reforms, court decisions, and local and tribal laws across Latin America, Aotearoa New Zealand, North America, and beyond.