Youth Climate Activists Succeed in Montana with Rights for a Healthy Environment

We celebrate youth climate activists who succeeded with their claims for a Right to a Healthy Environment last week at a District Court in Montana. The court decided that their rights are impaired by the state government's continuous promotion of fossil fuel industries. The ruling is now more forcefully demanding policy makers action on climate change.  At least twenty-two states have some kind of environmental protection clause in their constitution, that’s Alabama, California, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan,  Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania,  Rhode Island, Utah, and Virginia. It’s shocking that Vermont is not one of them. 

Indigenous leader, farmer and renowned activist Winona LaDuke closed her keynote speech at the NOFA-VT Winter Conference earlier this year with an appeal towards constitutional amendments that grant rights to nature. One of the first examples of a constitutional shift to grant rights to nature happened in Ecuador in 2008 when it became the first country worldwide to embed Rights to Nature in their constitution under then President Rafael Correa. In an unprecedented case, Ecuador’s highest court ruled in 2021 that mining activities that threaten the rights of nature should not be carried out within the protected area. What happened was that economic privileges were superseded by Rights to Nature. This real life example shows what Winona pointed out: that corporations are considered “persons” under the law, even though they don’t have souls, and that rights to nature is about giving rights back to nature (especially given how much has been depleted or destroyed). 

The unique ruling in Montana last week is setting an unseen precedent in the United States for bringing environmental protection clauses to effect. In contrast to Rights to Nature, the constitution of Montana includes an anthropocentric version of an environmental protection by centering the protection around a human’s right to a healthy environment. This results in more traditionally defined plaintiffs that have to be affected at the courts. 

In Vermont, we do have the Global Warming Solutions Act (GWSA) of 2020 that includes timelines and deliverables towards climate goals as well as the ability of any person to place a lawsuit based upon the failure to adopt or update rules pursuant to the deadlines in the Act. Insofar, the GWSA has been the most recent attempt in Vermont to pursue enforceable climate actions and goals. 

Be in touch with Rural Vermont and let us know what you think about including environmental protection clauses in the Vermont state constitution and share what you think about the Global Warming Solutions Act and its implementation. Contact caroline@ruralvermont.org via email or join our next quarterly member forum on Wednesday, September 27th at 7:00pm where you can simply listen in to the policy discussions or speak up yourself as well. 

Learn more about the Montana Youth Case on their Right to a Healthy Environment here

Watch Winona's 2023 Keynote Speech here

Read Vermont’s Global Warming Solutions Act here

More about Rights of Nature and Ecuador’s constitution here