Lindsay Branham is an environmental psychologist, Emmy-nominated filmmaker, and founder of NOVO and The Heartwood Institute, initiatives that address ecological and human rights crises through film, culture, and community engagement. Her work explores how humans can restore a sense of kinship with the living world, weaving together environmental psychology, storytelling, spirituality, and ecology. ELC has been collaborating with Lindsay on initiatives related to the rights of rivers and broader efforts to reimagine our legal and cultural relationship with nature.

On July 3, 2025, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) issued its historic Advisory Opinion OC-32/25, declaring that the climate crisis has escalated into a “climate emergency” and affirming for the first time that States have clear obligations under human rights law to confront it. The opinion also marked the first time an international court has formally recognized Nature as a subject of rights.

The 2002 Diné Fundamental Laws is the first known codification of the Rights of Nature in a legal context. The Fundamental Laws outlines different rights and laws of the Navajo Nation and its people. It codifies the Diné Life Way. Diné, translating to “The People,” is the traditional name the Navajo people use to identify themselves. The Fundamental Laws addresses a myriad of priorities of the Navajo People and turns ancient, unwritten Navajo philosophy and laws into a more recognized form of law (at least a recognized form by Western standards). The Fundamental Laws also mentions different types of laws: natural law, customary law, common law, and traditional law.

Defra’s “firm position” that rights cannot be given to Nature falsely conceives of the law as a static entity bound by predetermined “fundamental principles.” On the contrary, the UK’s uncodified constitution gives lawmakers a great deal of flexibility to enact statutes that reflect the evolving understanding of who or what has intrinsic value and deserves rights.