Presenter
Dr. Amrisha Pandey, BML Munjal University
Co-author(s)
Dr. Sudeep Shukla, Individual
Sub-theme
6. Innovation for Water Governance and Management
Topic
6-1. Water rights and water markets
Body
Nature is property under the Law. Recent developments have challenged this notion using rights-based discourse for the benefit of Nature and its components. These are inherent rights of Nature to exist, thrive and evolve. Countries from Ecuador to Australia and Bolivia to New Zealand and many more have incorporated and assigned some sort of rights to Nature or its various components by legislating a right or by interpretation of the existing rights through the Court of Law. Having said so, the developing earth jurisprudence in this field is not free from its set of problems which hinder the realisation of the rights of nature in one way or the other. Human rights protect the rights of humans’ not because of their value to another but by virtue of their intrinsic value. Certain basic rights are inherent in every person by birth - making them universal. Art 3 of UDHR confers the right to life, liberty and security of a person. There is a substantive jurisprudence arising from national and international courts pointing out that the right to health and wellbeing is the pre-condition for the fulfilment of the right to life. Similarly, the author in this paper substantiates an argument by expounding the claim that Nature can indeed be granted legal personhood but for the realisation of nature's right to life, the right to health and wellbeing must be accorded to Nature not as an independent right but in continuum to the right to life making its realisation a reality. The author aims to conduct this investigation using doctrinal and comparative research. It is believed that by charting out what it means by health and well-being for Nature and its components one can have specific parameters to look out for the purpose of realisation of Nature’s Rights. This is argued as a focused approach having the potential to remove the obstacles nature's rights have been facing and it can contribute vastly towards developing earth’s jurisprudence concerning Nature’s rights.