Protestors dressed as animals and trees descended on Bath on Thursday 19th September to urge the local council to recognise the legal rights of nature.
Supporters with Sam Ross, Saskia Heijltjes & Joanna Wright, and Paul Powlesland | Photo © Anna Mounteney
The Green group of councillors brought a motion to a full meeting of Bath & North East Somerset Council, calling for the local authority to look into integrating the “rights of nature” into its decision-making.
People from groups such as Extinction Rebellion were among those who attended a rally outside the Guildhall in support of the motion, where people dressed as birds, bees, and trees.
Proposing the motion in the council meeting, Green group leader Joanna Wright (Lambridge, Green) said: “Rights of nature is not an abstract concept.
“In some parts of the world it already functions as a legal tool — the law recognises that nature deserves the same legal rights as people or corporations.”
In 2017, a river in New Zealand, Te Awa Tupua, was recognised as a legal entity with its own rights after a long campaign by Maori people.
The Green group called for the council to resolve to write to the government about exploring similar ideas, and do what it could to protect nature under existing UK law.
Councillor Wright said: “The council could appoint a sewage officer to monitor pollution and sewage spills using the Environmental Protection Act to prosecute offenders and protect the River Avon.”
Just days after the meeting, Paul Powlesland of Lawyers for Nature, who was among those to attend the protest outside the Guildhall, filmed a “plume of raw sewage” being discharged into a group of swans of the River Avon in Bath.
Wessex Water said the brown discharge would “largely be rainwater”.
But in the council chamber, the Green motion was defeated, with just five votes in favour, 39 votes against and three abstentions.
Councillor Wright said she was “disappointed” with the outcome but said: “Hopefully, this motion will ignite new conversations across local government and help elected officials realise their powers to use existing UK laws to ensure a resilient future for both people and nature.”
In the debate, Councillor Alison Streatfeild-James (Saltford, Liberal Democrats) warned that, as a practising lawyer, there was no legal framework for the rights of nature.
She said she applied the “imagination and the motivation” of the motion but said: “Until there is an established legal framework which can support recognised rights, I would suggest that it would be entirely inappropriate for a council operating through taxpayers’ money to formally and unilaterally recognise that nature has rights and agree to enforce them and integrate those rights into its operations.”
Councillor Oli Henman (Walcot, Liberal Democrats) warned that the rights of nature would be “unenforceable”.
He said: “The Liberal Democrat group will not be supporting this motion. We are focussing on our ambitious targets to improve biodiversity in the ways that can already be measured and tracked.”
Bath & North East Somerset Council was one of the first councils to declare a climate emergency in 2019 and was the first city in the country after London to bring in a clean air zone.
It has a target of achieving net zero by 2030 — although more work is needed to hit this target.
The council also declared an ecological emergency in 2020, and brought in requirements for new housing developments to deliver a net gain to biodiversity a year before the rules came in nationally.
It was recently ranked joint first out of all local authorities for its action on biodiversity by Climate Scorecards UK.
John Wimperis, Local Democracy Reporter
