Nature's body: Will a new bill give the natural environment human rights?

Last month, a Nature’s Rights Bill entered the House of Lords.

Its aim is to make nature a legal subject, seeing nature’s rights “represented and enforced in legal and administrative processes”.

But Conservative peer Lord Frost said that taking the bill seriously would require every individual and organisation “to pay obeisance to nature and its rights, as if it were some kind of goddess”, which he called a “pagan vision”.

Although the private members’ bill, proposed by Green Party peer Baroness Bennett, is unlikely to make it into law, it sparked debate in its second reading last week.

Although the government does not support the bill in and of itself, it has said it was ‘open in principle’ to the idea of supporting new environmental rights in line with the EU.

On this week’s podcast, ECO Chamber host James Agyepong-Parsons and ENDS Report’s senior reporter Shosha Adie find out what that means.

The duo also discuss how more than 18,000 homes have reportedly been “unlocked” across some of the most-water stressed areas of East Anglia, Lincolnshire and the Home Counties.

PLUS

The biodiversity net gain market’s move to maturity.

The budgets squeezed in Starmer’s defence plan.

And the scientific breakthrough improving carbon sequestration.

The ECO Chamber is brought to you by the journalists of ENDS Report.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.