Rights of Nature is more than legalistic extension of human “rights”, unto ecosystems and non-human species, its more than granting legal status and personhood to rivers and ecosystem(as was the case with Ganges river in India and a protected area in New Zeland). It is granting full equality and respect for indigenous communities and all their treaties and agreements, it is also a perception of Earth itsel as a living female entity that deserves full protection from exploitation and violence.
Those were the underlying principles behind Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (GARN) International Rights of Nature Tribunal in Bonn, taking place in the LVR Landesmuseum on the 7th and 8th of November 2017 attempting to recognize the rights of ecosystems to exist and the duty of humanity to respect the integrity of their life cycles.
For the two days the testimonies and presentation included representatives of indigenous, grass roots and radical resistance groups on the front lines of ecological destruction. Those were:

1st Session

First Case: Climate Change and False Energy Solutions

• Fracking, Coal and Nuclear
• Consolidation of the fossil fuel industry in North America

Second Case

• Financialization of Nature and REDD+

Third Case

• Lignite Mining: Hambach Forest

  

  2nd Session

  Defenders of Mother Earth

  • Indigenous Violations at Standing Rock, USA
  • Indigenous Violations in Russia
  • Indigenous Violations of Sami People, Sápmi (Scandinavia)

  Fifth Case

  • Water Deprivation in Almeria, Spain

  Sixth Case

  Amazon Threats

  • Ecuador’s Amazon and Sarayaku
  • The Amazon in Brazil
  • Tipnis Highway in Bolivia
  • Montagne d’Or in French Guyana

  Seventh Case

  International Trade Agreements: Implications on Nature

  The tribunal is legally non-binding, paradoxically offering a relatively free space from special interest group interference and disinformation at the same time reminding those present the importance of diversity of tactics, local forms of resistance and necessity to support indigenous communities under attack.

  In closing the importance of maintaining biodiversity thresholds was discussed, thresholds below which continuing extinction will remove the functionality of the ecosystem as the whole causing its complete collapse as is presently the case with the largest ecosystem on the planet the Earth’s oceans.