Right to resilience
Nature has rights and the rights of Nature are easy to understand and teach
Nature is a living system which supports harvest, but when its resilience is damaged, natural systems are unable to recuperate. Humans are reliant on the resilience of Nature. Respecting this right supports human existence.
Right to resilience in Kemëntsah, Wonaan, Embera, and Cofán Indigenous languages.
“The Earth will not continue to offer its harvest, except with faithful stewardship. We cannot say we love the land and then take steps to destroy it for use by future generations.”
Rights are enforceable claims. The right to resilience defines the scope and boundaries of human harvest that does not exceed the rights of encompassing and interdependent systems. It also defines the tangibility and form of reparations to natural systems, monetary and verbal compensation does not translate to a form of repayment Nature can accept.
If overharvest has occurred, damages dictate the restoration of Nature to a state of natural resilience (ability to recover autonomously) within the same timeframes.
The planet has lost more than a third of its old-growth forests; approximately two-thirds of marine habitats have been significantly altered by human activity; and even desert habitats are under threat. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Over the past six years, Germany has lost more than 500,000 hectares of woodlands due to pests, floods, and droughts. Scientists and environmentalists alike now recognize that these record losses are due to treating the forest as a tree farm rather than as an ecosystem.
As agroforestry expert Josef Holzer says of the mountains facing his permaculture farm: “That’s not a forest. It’s a plantation.” He notes that fortunately, when tens of thousands of hectares of die-off ensue from this practice, simply leaving the forest to restore itself is the only practical option, and from Nature’s perspective, it’s the healthiest one as well.
Humans are not great at restoring Nature. Resilience in ecosystems is often dependent on complex synergistic relationships. Not simply one species. Which is why the conservation of natural ecosystems is so critical, it establishes patterns for complex life that Nature can restore, remodel, and expand itself from.
However humans can learn from Nature, and human-aided restoration is often the only options when ecosystems have been pushed beyond the limits of this right.
Why does Nature have the right to resilience?
“Not just beautiful, though — the stars are like the trees in the forest, alive and breathing. And they’re watching me.”
When a person is physically and emotionally resilient, they are less susceptible to illness and able to bounce back, recover from, and heal injuries. When Nature is resilient, it is able to support harvest, protect itself, handle unexpected situations, and recover fully from interruptions and unexpected events.
Healthy ecosystems resist flooding and erosion, provide shelter for animals in the case of storms, and recover quickly from weather damage.
Like all rights of Nature, the right to resilience is synergistic with human rights. Nature’s right to resilience corresponds to human rights to adequate food. Evidence shows that there’s a direct correlation between ecosystem degradation and food insecurity. Of course, this is no surprise. Nutritional food comes from plants and animals, and when the ecosystem is damaged, it’s more difficult to grow healthy food and raise healthy animals. Therefore, it’s in every human being’s interest to respect Nature’s right to resilience.
Furthermore, ecosystem resilience is increasingly important as climate change causes an uptick in outlier events such as floods and storms. Ecosystem resilience can protect rural communities from some of the impacts of climate change. Policymakers are increasingly taking note and despite loss of habitat, species reintroduction efforts are showing results even in highly industrialized nations.
For planetary health, it is urgent to limit harvest to the boundaries of Natures resilience, retain natural ecosystems for replication, and compensate damage beyond resilience in tangible outcomes for Nature.
Nature’s right to resilience in natural law
Natural systems need interdependent relationships for resilience and homeostasis.
An important aspect of this right is that it belongs to Nature, in other words mechanical solutions are not a priori in restoration, but a secondary necessity when ecosystems are damaged beyond repair.
This means that drone-seeding of the Amazon in reforestation would be secondary to the propagation of natural forest via natural seeding, tapirs, monkeys and birds. Nature has the right to propagation aligned with its right to natural evolution.
Resilient systems are often defined by keystone species that not only fulfill a niche, but actually play a more active role in molding the environment, like beavers in North America and Europe.
Here are some examples of how Nature’s right to resilience has been violated, and the natural consequences.
Passenger pigeons passenger pigeon or wild pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) are a species that was overharvested beyond their natural resilience and became extinct in North America. In the early 1800s, they were the most abundant bird in North America (perhaps the world), but they were extinct in the wild by 1900. The combination of relentless commercial slaughter for meat, shipping via new railroad networks, and habitat loss caused the extinction.
Permafrost: Although there is debate about the tipping point related to melting of arctic ice, one thing that isn’t debatable is that the impacts on resilience are irreversible.
Ocean flow: The circulation of currents in the Atlantic Ocean are being observed for potential collapse, which would dramatically change ecosystems worldwide.
Floods: Deadly and disastrous floods in Pakistan caused major landslides in part because the natural ecosystem had been replaced by housing, which was unable to retain resilience in the face of extreme weather events.
Nature’s resilience is being compromised, not just on local levels, but on a planetary level.
Nature’s right to resilience in human law
Nature’s resilience is related to human inequity. Colonialism enabled stripping natural resources from Indigenous lands and the Global South, taking advantage of people with low incomes, or those who have already suffered from natural disasters brought on by prior land exploitation.
When land is overly exploited, it creates a downward spiral where Nature is no longer able to recover and impoverishes the people who live there.
The world is waking up to the problem and developing strategies and funding to defend Nature’s right to resilience
Resilience research: Scientists are developing strategies for resilience that are gaining ground with policy makers.
Moratorium: An international moratorium on whale hunting was imposed in 1986 and stands to this day.
Bans: Use of hydrofluorocarbon is being phased out in both Europe and the United States.
Legislation: International legal frameworks preventing overharvest, identifying endangered species and levying penalties for violation.
However it is critical to Nature’s right to resilience that these legal frameworks extend beyond financial penalties, to tangible outcomes for Nature. In many cases the financial cost of restoring Nature to resilient levels is poorly characterized, impossible to execute on human timescales, and poorly cost-optimized or underresearched.
Nature’s right to resilience in spiritual law
Indigenous cultures worldwide advocate for the recognition of nature’s right to resilance, defined by principles of balance, interconnectedness, and the natural cycles of life.
Most have protocols and solutions including cultural protocols for harvest, science to identify over-harvest, and provision of reseeding, or restoration during harvest.
A critical part of the teaching is human responsibility for this right. Where Nature’s right to resilience has a corresponding human responsibility to restore after harvest.
Indigenous teachings stress that nature must have the space to heal and regenerate. Practices like controlled burning or cool burning used by Aboriginal Australians are traditionally used to rejuvenate ecosystems.
The Zapatista movement in Mexico incorporates a holistic view of land, emphasizing the importance of self-regenerating ecosystems for community resilience.
Similarly, the Yurok and Karuk tribes of Northern California view their responsibility as restoring balance to rivers and forests, especially after ecological damage caused by external forces.
A healthy environment reflects respect for all living beings, where biodiversity thrives, waters flow cleanly, and natural rhythms remain undisturbed. Their wisdom suggests that human well-being is inseparable from the health of the environment, requiring reciprocity and care at every level.
In conclusion, Nature’s right to resilience
Nature’s right to resilience corresponds to human rights, and sets the limits of human harvest and the form of reparations. While we may not be adept at respecting the boundaries of this right, we can learn and many Indigenous cultures can teach. Like all principles, rights language represents boundaries we ignore at our own peril.
“Wilderness is not a luxury but necessity of the human spirit.”
Co-written by Grace Rachmany and Drea Burbank. Grace is a professional writer and civtech expert, and Drea is an MD-technologist.
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