By Maximilian Nawrath, Eléonore Maitre-Ekern, Bård Hobæk, and Isabel Seifert-Dähnn

The Kerala coastline, where green cliffs meet the Arabian Sea. Photo credit: Maximilian Nawrath

This Plain Language Summary is published in advance of the paper discussed. Please check back soon for a link to the full paper.

Around the world, more and more countries are passing laws that give ecosystems legal rights, such as the right to exist, to be restored, or to evolve. These “rights of nature” aim to strengthen environmental protection and help tackle biodiversity loss and climate change. But there’s a problem. The terms lawmakers use in these laws often have different meanings in science and law.

We studied ten rights-of-nature laws from five continents and interviewed experts from different fields, including law, ecology, philosophy, economics, anthropology, and Indigenous knowledge systems. We found that people interpret many of the key terms in very different ways, such as “restoration” or “evolutionary processes.” For example, ecologists see ecosystems as dynamic and changing, so they question rights that sound static, such as “preservation.” Legal scholars, on the other hand, prefer concepts that are clear and enforceable in court, even if they are scientifically vague. The Indigenous scholar in our study rather framed these rights in relational terms, focusing on responsibilities and cultural connections.

These differences matter because unclear or conflicting concepts can make laws hard to apply. Addressing these challenges requires deeper collaboration across disciplines, and not just law and science, but also philosophy, anthropology, and Indigenous scholarship. No single viewpoint should dominate. Instead, co-creation can help reconcile tensions and support laws that are both sensitive to different knowledge systems and applicable in practice. Future work should also involve more Indigenous voices and explore ways to make rights-of-nature laws flexible enough to fit diverse cultural and ecological contexts.

In short, giving nature legal rights is not just a legal challenge, it is also a social and scientific one. Understanding how different groups interpret these concepts can open pathways toward laws that better reflect ecological realities and diverse cultural perspectives.