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Do Rights of Nature actually lead to healthier ecosystems?

More and more jurisdictions around the world are granting legal rights to nature. Rivers, forests, and ecosystems are increasingly being recognized as rights-bearing entities.

But: does this legal recognition actually translate into healthier ecosystems?

In our new paper, published in Challenges, we explore this question from a planetary health perspective, viewing ecosystem health as embedded within the health of the Earth system as a whole.

Drawing on cases from Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia, New Zealand, Spain, Bangladesh, and the Netherlands, we examine what the available literature can, and cannot, tell us about the ecological effects of Rights of Nature.

What stands out is how limited the evidence still is. The studies we reviewed mainly report intermediate and institutional outcomes, such as court rulings, restoration obligations, coordination between agencies, guardianship arrangements, and composite performance indices.

Based on the literature, we identify five recurring mechanisms through which Rights of Nature may contribute to change:

·       legal empowerment

·       a shift in how the living world is valued

·       guardianship institutions

·       integration across governance sectors

·       precautionary decision-making

These mechanisms offer possible pathways from legal recognition to ecological change. But whether, and under what conditions, they ultimately contribute to healthier or more resilient ecosystems remains an open empirical question.

The available evidence currently tells us more about institutional change than about ecological recovery.

We hope the paper contributes to a broader conversation- and encourages more empirical research- on what happens after nature is granted rights, and on how we might better assess whether legal and institutional change is accompanied by measurable ecological change.

#RightsOfNature #PlanetaryHealth #EcosystemHealth #EnvironmentalGovernance #EcologicalRestoration #EnvironmentalLaw

Many thanks to Pim Martens, Marrit van der Meer and Renée Robbers for the collaboration!

Martens, P., Venhof, V., van der Meer, M., & Robbers, R. (2026). Do Rights of Nature Lead to Healthier Ecosystems? Governance, Planetary Health, and the Boundaries of Legal Reform. Challenges, 17(4), 36. https://doi.org/10.3390/challe17040036