ABSTRACT
Placing the Rights of Nature at the heart of a revised legal system, beginning with enshrining it in the federal Constitution and all state Constitutions, is ultimately the only way to ensure that humans retool our living systems to provide long-term, social-environmental sustainability. But as we have said, not even this, by itself, is enough. Nature must be the primary rights-holder, above all human-oriented rights. This is not because we advocate an “anti-human” legal system, far from it. Placing Nature’s Rights first is the only way that human life can thrive sustainably. Human use of the global ecosystem must first allow Nature to flourish. Then, to ensure continuing social-environmental sustainability, all human activities must abide by Nature’s Laws of Reciprocity. It is our responsibility to tackle this unprecedented problem for the sake of all generations.
