"At a time of bio-climatic crisis, recognising the rights of nature is essential to rethink our relationship with life. The health of rivers, sources of sustenance, fascination and fear, requires a legal shift to enable the Guardians of Nature to act and turn the page on the Anthropocene." Marine CALMET, President of Wild Legal
The purpose of Wild Legal is to develop and adopt an ecosystem law to act in favour of the preservation of nature and its elements. It aims to facilitate and encourage citizen action by providing its partners with technical support, particularly in legal proceedings, court cases, pleas and mobilisations aimed at promoting the rights of nature.
Wild Legal also develops concrete proposals (citizen consultations, legislative proposals, etc.) and promotes them to the general public and decision-makers. To this end, it works with a network of associative and institutional partners and conducts local experiments in order to encourage a virtuous evolution in our society.
"The Caring Gallery's curatorial work brings the voices of nature to us in their own way. As ambassadors of the emotions of the living, through art, song, painting and storytelling, their works allow us to hear and understand the messages of other creatures and the elements. Their mission is essential to cultivate an imaginary world that finally restores links and puts man back into the community of the living."
To achieve its goal, Wild Legal organises various awareness-raising events to give citizens the training and tools they need to become involved in the evolution of society. To this end, it organises annual moot courts, aimed at highlighting the shortcomings of our current law in order to explore the controversies of our time and the prospects for better protection through the recognition of the rights of Nature.
Our current law is incapable of dealing with the destruction of life and the climate crisis. On the contrary, it gives a blank check to many polluting projects.
Faced with this situation, the rights of nature movement proposes a new legal and democratic model in which laws based on the functioning of living organisms are at the centre.
This is why the rights of nature movement is attracting growing interest. In particular, numerous mobilisations have been taking place along rivers at the international level for several years. In February 2021, the Magpie River in Canada, for example, was recognised as a legal person by the local Canadian authorities and given its own rights and guardians to defend it in court. In September 2022, the Spanish lagoon of the Mar Menor was recognised as a natural entity with rights to protection, conservation, maintenance and, if necessary, restoration.
It is the latest to join the list of dozens of rivers recognised as having rights around the world: the Whanganui in New Zealand, the Klamath in the United States, and many others.
Whanganui in New Zealand, the Klamath in the United States, the Atrato in Colombia, etc.
.
This international movement has taken root in France for several years now. The Loire, the Rhône, the Seine, the Maroni and the Tavignanu are now the subject of demands from a wide range of actors - citizens' groups, associations, local authorities, etc. - who are working to have their waters recognised. - These various collective mobilisations have made it possible to achieve recognition of their rights. These various collective mobilisations have made it possible to include this issue in the public debate and to anchor it permanently in the political agenda.
Fully invested in the defence of living beings, Wild Legal is campaigning for the recognition of the rights of France's wild rivers, jewels threatened by global warming, pollution and artificialization linked to human activities.
To do this, the association is joining the Wild Rivers network, a pioneering tool that brings together actors from all walks of life: watershed managers, institutions, local authorities, companies, associations for the protection and management of natural environments, and local residents.
To carry out this campaign, Wild Legal is mobilising its legal expertise alongside the guardians of France's wild rivers. A real life-size experiment, this campaign will provide new tools to rethink both the protection of these natural jewels and local democracy, inspired by indigenous restorative justice circles and the victories of the rights of nature movement around the world.
In the face of future crises, Wild Legal and its partners want to give hope. Recognising the rights of nature means starting a democratic revolution to represent non-human interests and inventing together a biomimetic law to ensure the balance of our territories for present and future generations, human and non-human.
The funding will also allow us to finance a collaborative project with the photographic collective MYOP and the social and environmental biennial Photo Climat in Paris to document and make visible the face of France's beautiful wild rivers.
"Thank you to The Caring Gallery, a true artist ambassador, who has been committed to the rights of nature since we met. It is thanks to art that we will succeed in giving a voice to our rivers, because in order to translate their words into law, it is still necessary to reweave this indispensable link of empathy and wonder with others than humans...."