It might be one strategy to defend our pure setting from, say, a radioactive waste dump being constructed too near the water.
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You don’t need to dislike radioactive waste dumps to be spurred into wanting to guard a gem of a river, nevertheless it most likely helps. Alas, in opposition to federal authorities, the Ottawa River is defenceless. Enter the idea of authorized personhood for pure phenomena, and immediately there’s a glimmer of hope.
A brand new documentary by award-winning filmmaker Susan Fleming, I’m the Magpie River, reveals how communities can co-operate to grant a powerful physique of water the flexibility to have its rights defended, together with in court docket.
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Earlier than you snigger, keep in mind that firms, church buildings and municipalities are authorized individuals, too. If we will stay with Walmart being a authorized particular person, why not the Ottawa River?
The information earlier this month that the feds had authorized the development of the Chalk River waste disposal facility nowhere close to far sufficient upstream from Ottawa and Montreal (bonus query: how far upstream would you want your radioactive waste to be earlier than you begin feeling comfy?) has some individuals anxious about impacts on, nicely, all of us who stay downstream from the ability.
But, apparently, nothing will be accomplished.
The Magpie documentary, which premieres on CBC’s The Nature of Issues Feb. 1, explains how and why individuals close to the magnificent river on Quebec’s North Shore protected it with a authorized mechanism that may be a first in Canada however that has precedents all over the world together with in New Zealand, India and South America. Locals had been afraid Hydro-Québec may need to dam the Magpie prefer it did on the close by Romaine River.
In 2021, the Ekuanitshit Innu Council and the regional municipality of Minganie issued declarations granting authorized personhood to the Magpie and giving it 9 distinct rights, together with the fitting to be protected from air pollution and the fitting to sue, which might come in useful in a case the place individuals object to having potential leaks from actually harmful waste float previous the Library of Parliament. To say nothing of the intense impression such an incident would have on the opposite dwelling creatures that depend on the river for his or her very existence.
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Opponents to the Chalk River development embrace Algonquin First Nations and the Bloc Québécois, which sees the failure to seek the advice of First Nations as an affront to our obligations underneath United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Me, I’m largely in opposition to it for egocentric causes, like not wanting radioactive waste to ever find yourself within the river my youngsters stay by.
There’s a motion to grant the Ottawa River authorized safety. Riverkeeper Emeritus Meredith Brown and lawyer George Brown wrote about it within the Citizen practically three years in the past, and I’m advised progress is being made. I’m proper right here with my bullhorn, able to cheer this on.
Within the new documentary concerning the Magpie, lawyer and President of the Montreal-based Observatoire worldwide des droits de la nature Yenny Vega Cardenas explains that granting authorized personhood to pure phenomena falls underneath the authorized framework of the rights of nature. That’s a elaborate manner of claiming we acknowledge the intrinsic proper of pure phenomena to exist exterior of their relationship to us.
The primary particular person to recommend giving rights to nature was Christopher Stone in a 1972 ebook titled Ought to Timber Have Standing that was roundly mocked. Within the final 20 years, this discipline of regulation has taken off and now the motion is beginning to achieve pace.
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The thought isn’t to cease every part all over the place and freeze in the dead of night for lack of sources wanted for people to outlive and thrive. However absolutely we will do higher to guard our pure setting than a radioactive waste dump this near, nicely, us. Defending uniquely worthwhile rivers and pure phenomena by giving them authorized personhood and rights that may be enforced — together with in court docket — is an concept whose time, lastly, has come.
Brigitte Pellerin (they/them) is an Ottawa author. The documentary “I’m the Magpie River” debuts on The Nature of Issues Feb. 1.
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