Environmental personhood
Environmental personhood or juridic personhood is a legal concept which designates certain environmental entities the status of a legal person. This assigns to these entities, the rights, protections, privileges, responsibilities and legal liability of a legal personality. Because environmental entities such as rivers and plants can not represent themselves in court, a "guardian" can act on the entity's behalf to protect it. Environmental personhood emerged from the evolution of legal focus in pursuit of the protection of nature. Over time, focus has evolved from human interests in exploiting nature, to protecting nature for future human generations, to conceptions that allow for nature to be protected as intrinsically valuable. This concept can be used as a vehicle for recognising Indigenous peoples' relationships to natural entities, such as rivers. Environmental personhood, which assigns nature (or aspects of it) certain rights, concurrently provides a means to individuals or groups such as Indigenous peoples to fulfill their human rights. Background The United States Professor Christopher D. Stone first discussed the idea of attributing legal personality to natural objects in the 1970s, in his article "Should trees have standing? Towards legal rights for natural objects". A legal person cannot be owned; therefore, no ownership can