In the Heart of Wall Street, Rights of Nature Activists Put the Fossil Fuel Era on Trial

Amid the corporate events pervading New York’s “Climate Week,” an international people’s tribunal held an emotional hearing that spotlighted the ecosystems and people living in the shadow of fossil fuel projects. 

Representatives from communities around the world, scientists and advocates told stories of human and nonhuman forced displacement, degraded heath, ruined economies and lost histories to the International Tribunal on the Rights of Nature on Sunday. 

In India, coal mines are degrading the habitat of endangered elephants sacred to Adivasi Indigenous people. In Louisiana, petrochemical facilities are being built on sacred grave sites. In East Africa, construction of a new oil pipeline is displacing communities and slicing through the homes of giraffes, lions and hippopotamuses. And in Peru, communities that have endured decades of crude oil production and more than 1,000 oil spills are facing down installation of a new refinery and expanding operations.

The testimonies, sweeping in both their global reach and in the harms alleged, were gathered to create a repository of evidence linking the “fossil fuel era” to violations of humans’ and nature’s rights. 

The tribunal, now in its sixth session since 2014, is designed to probe alleged violations of the 2010 Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth, which recognizes nature as a living being with inherent rights, including the rights to exist and evolve.  

“Just as human beings have human rights, all other beings also have rights which are specific to their species,” the nonbinding declaration says. The declaration was written during a 2010 people’s conference in Cochabamba, Bolivia, following a disappointing United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen a year earlier.

The tribunal is part of the growing “rights of nature” movement, which since 2006 has also created binding laws and judicial precedent recognizing nature’s rights. Today, more than a dozen countries have such laws on the books, including Ecuador, Panama, Spain, New Zealand, Brazil, Colombia and Uganda. But few countries have taken steps to enforce the laws. 

The advocacy group Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature created the tribunal to showcase how a legal system recognizing nature’s rights might work. Past hearings have taken on cases like the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, lithium mining in Chile’s Atacama Desert and the impact of free trade agreements on the environment. In each case, “defendant” companies and governments are invited to participate but generally decline to do so. Though the rulings are nonbinding, the tribunal’s website says its work pressures governments by drawing international attention to issues. 

For Yolanda Esguerra, a Filipino activist who testified about oil spills affecting coral reefs, the tribunal provides a platform for like-minded people around the world to come together and show the appetite for Earth-centered legal systems. Esguerra said that watching testimonies of other participants strengthened her resolve to push her government to enact rights of nature legislation. “​​It gives you a sense that you’re not alone,” she said. 

The Philippines, like many of the countries represented at Sunday’s hearing, is a dangerous place for environmental defenders like Esguerra. Filipinos who peacefully resist or speak out against ecologically harmful development projects have been abducted, forcibly disappeared, hit with retaliatory lawsuits and had their personal bank accounts frozen. Increasingly, Filipino environmental defenders are “red tagged,” or branded as communists, tantamount to being labeled a terrorist in the country. 

Sunday’s hearing also focused on what the judges called “false solutions” to climate change, including geoengineering and carbon markets. Paganga Pungowiyi, an Indigenous mother from Sivungaq in the Bering Strait, spoke about an “Arctic Ice Project” designed to artificially make ice more reflective to combat melting. Beyond concerns that the long-term impacts of the process aren’t well known, local Indigenous communities have not been adequately consulted about the project, Pungowiyi said. 

“Not including us in discussions about addressing climate change is not only a form of disrespect, it is reckless and foolish,” she told the judges. 

The alleged lack of precaution and failure to respect the rights of local communities was also a theme in the context of new oil and gas projects taking place in Africa. 

In Mozambique, biologist Daniel Ribeiro said intensive gas extraction from an offshore coral reserve is affecting endangered and rare marine species like humpback whales that, due to increased industry boat traffic, endure higher incidences of painful ship-strike deaths. 

On shore, the project’s gas processing plants and other infrastructure have displaced local communities that largely depend on marine life and subsistence farming for livelihoods. Having lost land and their nature-based economy, young people have become susceptible to extremist groups like ISIS that are operating in the region, according to Ribeiro. Multinational gas companies are “making big decisions without understanding the implications,” Ribeiro said. “It’s arrogance.”

Mozambique is not alone in expanding fossil fuel production. Even as record amounts of low-carbon technologies flood into markets, governments of both wealthy and less developed countries, from the United States to Argentina and India, are intensifying oil and gas production as demand increases. 

“Our air smells like rotten eggs, we’re losing a football field of wetlands every hour and our groundwater levels are receding at an alarming rate.”

— Sharon Levine, RISE St. James director and founder

“India is rapidly expanding renewable energy, but that’s obfuscating the growth and expansion of coal,” Maduresh Kumar, an Indian climate justice activist-researcher, told the judges.

India’s state-run coal company is planning roughly 21 new coal mines or mine expansions, one of which is located in the biodiverse-rich Hasdeo Arand Forest, known as the “lungs of central India.” The region is home to more than 15,000 Adivasi Indigenous people as well as endangered and vulnerable species including elephants, sloth bears and leopards. As Adivasi traditional lands are lost to mining, traditional plants and sacred sites entwined with their culture are also lost. 

India’s government, like officials in many other developing nations, argues that the country needs to expand fossil fuel production to support the economic development of its people. But that development is at odds with Adivasi communities that want to preserve their territories and culture. According to Kumar, people opposed to coal expansion have been harassed and threatened, while coal companies have violated locals’ rights to be consulted about projects that affect them. 

“Corporations have to ask community permission before acquiring land or burning trees, but almost all of the time this is falsely claimed by hook or by crook,” he said.

Frustration with existing laws and their lack of enforcement was raised throughout the hearing. Nearly all of the communities represented there have endured decades of cumulative impacts from pollution, land degradation and related loss of culture. That includes people living along Louisiana’s Cancer Alley, where nearly 200 industrial facilities line the coast. 

“Our air smells like rotten eggs, we’re losing a football field of wetlands every hour and our groundwater levels are receding at an alarming rate,” said Sharon Levine, director and founder of the environmental justice organization RISE St. James.

The hearing didn’t just focus on harm. Julie Horinek, a member of the Ponca Nation of Oklahoma, spoke about how grassroots campaigns can successfully defend nature. That happened when a coalition of Native Americans and other other communities pressured the U.S. government to shutter the Keystone XL pipeline project. The proposed pipeline would have run through the ancestral lands of the Ponca Nation.

“In this country alone, we’ve stood up for over 500 years to the face of extinction, and we’re not going away,” she said. 

Sunday’s hearing was the first of a two-part series related to the global transition away from fossil fuels. The second hearing, “The Post Extractivism Non-Mining Era,” will take place in Toronto, Canada, in March 2025. 

The tribunal was led by President Judge Patricia Gualinga, a Kichwa leader from Sarayaku, Ecuador. Other judges hailed from the United States, Canada, the Ponca of Oklahoma and the Navajo Nation/huŋka Bdewakaƞtoƞwaƞ Dakota.