There’s no divergence in terms of goals, but, in my opinion, there’s a divergence in terms of strategy. I’m not just a lawyer; I also have a background in political science, legal science and environmental science. As I see it, in terms of effectiveness, the challenge is to see where we can make things happen as realistically as possible, on the one hand. On the other hand, it’s a question of determining whether these changes are effective.
I come from a human rights background. If there’s one area where you can see that, in terms of human rights, the important thing is not the right but the obligation, it’s this one. That’s why I’m working much harder to strengthen the responsibilities and obligations of public authorities. I’d like to share Hannah Arendt’s famous statement with you. She said that, when it comes down to it, we only have one right, and that is the right to a political community that is able to guarantee rights. The same would apply in the case of a river.
My first objection is strategic. I think we’re more likely to achieve our goal by strengthening responsibility and imposing sanctions than by asserting rights. I draw on the last 50 years in saying this.
I’ll now don my political science hat to talk about the second aspect. The obsession of political scientists is power and the granting of legal personhood to non-human entities. The law itself is human fiction. If we look at the past, we can see that granting legal personhood to companies has not been limited to positive effects. In Canada, between 1982 and 2000, the majority of lawsuits under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms were brought not by human beings, but by legal persons, i.e., corporations. We have therefore witnessed the misuse of this tool.
It’s in our own interest to establish a balance. The main argument is that, insofar as we have granted these rights to legal entities, to companies, we need to establish a balance by also giving them to nature. That’s a valid argument, but strategically, I still think that… Forgive me, but we only have to look at the current situation in Israel and Gaza. I think the only tools we have are obligations and responsibility, because the application of stated rights has always required political will. We can write all we want into law, but as long as we don’t have the political will to apply it, we won’t achieve the desired outcome.
Finally, when it comes to responsibility, we can just as easily draw on Indigenous concepts. Basically, Indigenous people use the language of rights because it’s ours and it’s what we understand, but, in their eyes, true responsibility is about being custodians.