How can the law account for the value of complex, nonhuman entities such as rivers, lakes, forests and ecosystems? At a time of runaway climate change, when the Earth’s biosphere is on the brink of collapse and species extinctions are accelerating, this has become a vital question.
... Perhaps we should take the idea of ‘the human’ as a rights-bearer and extend it to the complex, nonhuman systems that we wish to protect, that we know are deserving of care and concern.
Tempting as it is, this move must be resisted. For one thing, human rights have proven to be exclusionary – even within our own species. Its emergence as a set of legal and moral norms betrays the fact that the white, European, male property-owner is the paradigm case of ‘the human’: others, historically, have had to fight even to be seen as fully capable of bearing rights. International treaties have been required to address the rights of women, children, workers, LGBT people, indigenous communities and others, precisely because such ‘minorities’ were marginalised by the abstract idea of ‘the human’ of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Critics have also suggested that human rights norms are a Trojan horse for neo-imperialism, providing ideological cover for dubious ‘humanitarian’ interventions and capitalist plundering. In theory, human rights are for all humans, but it turns out that some people are more human than others...
Certain dangers lurk in using human rights to capture the interests of the nonhuman. First, its language and conceptual framing risk blunting attention to the distinctiveness and particularities of such dynamic beings. We risk only having respect for things insofar as they resemble human experience and characteristics.
Secondly, and just as important, is the related danger of diminishing our awareness of the human itself as a variegated mode of being in the world. This danger is already starkly present in the advent of corporate human rights, a development that has distorted the entire international human rights paradigm ... So, if we resist the idea of ‘human rights’ for nonhumans, and we carefully distinguish between ‘humanity’ and legal personhood, what is left standing?
... In a seminal paper from 1972, the legal scholar Christopher Stone asked if trees should have ‘standing’ – that is, if they could claim the necessary status to mount claims at law.
...[I]t’s important to move beyond Stone’s suggestion, and inch closer to acknowledging the complexity and liveliness of the nonhuman by admitting the porousness of our own boundaries. Perhaps we should not extend outwards from ourselves, so much as question humanity’s entitlement to act as a model. After all, it is a hubristic belief in our own singularity and exceptionalism that’s partly responsible for destroying the planet. One thing seems certain: if the law is to respond to the multiple crises afflicting the Earth, and if rights are to be deployed, we need to get rid of the notion of
a rights-bearer who is an active, wilful human subject, set against a passive, acted-upon, nonhuman object ...
...Given all that is at stake, nothing less than a radical re-storying will do; and laws and rights – for too long tools of human privilege and exceptionalism – need to be re-imagined if they are to play a full role in human-nonhuman struggles for a future worth living.
1. Which of the following best expresses the overall argument of the passage
a) Human laws need a paradigm facelift to make them more inclusive for all people.
b) Human laws must be extended to complex, non-human systems.
c) Human laws should be altered to get rid of the inherent anthropocentric prejudice in them.
d) Human laws should focus less on humans and more on saving the planet
2. All of the following explain the dangers lurking in using human rights to capture the interests of the nonhuman EXCEPT that:
a) respect may be lost for characteristics and experiences alien to humans.
b) the distinctiveness of nonhuman beings may not be highlighted by the language used to frame human rights.
c) the appreciation of the inherent heterogeneity amongst human beings may reduce.
d) these laws will reduce the empathy humans have for nonhuman systems
3. Critics have suggested that the human rights norms are a Trojan Horse
a) as a way of describing the current state of minorities marginalised by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
b) as a metaphor for neo-imperialism and capitalist plundering.
c) to prove that legal and moral norms only create more divides.
d) to highlight how they provide an ideological veil for debatable humanitarian
4. The author persuades us to resist which of the following, according to the third para of the passage?
a) Attributing the role of a rights-bearer to humans.
b) Assigning equal rights to humans and nonhuman systems.
c) Modifying existing laws after evaluating complex non-human entities.
d) Extending the framework of human rights to include non-human entities.
5. The author’s views mentioned in the passage would not be weakened by which of the following statements?
a) Human rights have succeeded in making the world a more just place.
b) Human rights serve the needs of an exclusive set of people.
c) The present framework of human laws will suffice to protect nonhuman entities, if they are implemented better.
d) Any law that does not place humanity as the rightful custodian of nonhuman entities is bound to be chaotic and futile.