Mari Margil

Mari Margil

Mari Margil is Executive Director of the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights where she leads the international rights of nature work.

Articles by this author

Students of the Pambilino Forest-School look at plants as they walk to school in San Jose de Mashpi, Ecuador on October 31, 2019. - Children learn the importance of nature at a forest-school located in a biosphere reserve in Ecuador. The area is a unique territory in which the social and economic development of communities tends to an harmonious relationship with the natural environment. (Photo by Cristina Vega Rhor / AFP) (Photo by CRISTINA VEGA RHOR/AFP via Getty Images) Views
Friday, July 17, 2020
Recent Developments in Ecuador: Rights of Nature
When we think of Ecuador, the first thing that may come to mind are the Galapagos Islands—a place out of history, where Charles Darwin thought big thoughts amidst giant tortoises, iguanas, and finches. For others, Ecuador may conjure images of the Amazon or the Andes, mangroves or rainforest. All...
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A doctor checks the body temperature of a man returning from Iran at a quarantine zone to test for the COVID-19 coronavirus in the Pakistan-Iran border town of Taftan on February 25, 2020. (Photo: Banaras Khan/AFP via Getty Images) Views
Wednesday, April 01, 2020
Advancing Change in a Time of Disruption: Forging a New Pathway for Nature
I first traveled to Nepal in 2012 to meet with members of the Constituent Assembly drafting the country’s new constitution. The central question we discussed was how to tackle global warming from a Rights of Nature perspective. Home to Mt. Everest, Nepal has witnessed the Himalayas become the...
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The rights of nature represents necessary legal and cultural shifts in which we understand ourselves as part of nature, and not, as Colombia’s Constitutional Court explained, "a ruler of nature." (Photo: Jim Liestman/Flickr/cc) Views
Thursday, September 26, 2019
Legal Rights of the Natural World: Beyond Personhood
What does it mean to be a person, legally? Aren’t people persons? Yes. But, are only people persons? Most definitely not. A human being is considered a "natural" person under the law, whereas certain other entities, including corporations and ships, are considered “legal” or “artificial” persons...
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