Can lands and rivers be people? In New Zealand they can

Can a national park be a person? How about a river? In the eyes of New Zealand law, they can.

The country’s third largest river is being granted the same rights as a citizen. And in 2014, Te Urewera, a 2,000-square-km national park on the North Island was granted legal personhood.

That means the land has “all the rights, powers, duties and liabilities of a legal person,” the law reads.

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The Te Urewera Act came into effect to resolve a dispute over who owned the land: the government or the local indigenous tribe, the Maori. There was no solution so the act gave the land human rights, so nobody could control it, which essentially removed its national park status.

Officials are saying the ruling could set a precedent for land rights and conservation around the world.

“This is a profound alternative to the human presumption of sovereignty over the natural world,” Pita Sharples, former minister of Maori affairs, said in a statement.

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "This is a profound alternative to the human presumption of sovereignty over the natural world," Pita Sharples, former minister of Maori affairs, said in a statement.

Personhood means the land has “maximum protection” and lawsuits can be filed on the land’s behalf. And visitors can still enjoy Te Urewera the same way as they would if it were a park. But permits for hunting are now issued by Maori tribe representatives.

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“The law reflects a new societal goal that seeks to reconcile with Indigenous peoples for the past wrongs of taking their lands,” Jacinta Ruru of the University of Otago said in the Maori Law Review.

“We believe that we come from the land and that the land has its own personality, its own heartbeat, its own health and its own soul,” Ruru said.

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "We believe that we come from the land and that the land has its own personality, its own heartbeat, its own health and its own soul," Ruru said.

Next will be the Whanganui River legislation in New Zealand, which is making its way through parliament. Like the stretch of land, the river will be considered a person.

But could this legal approach to the environment go beyond New Zealand? The lawyer who spearheaded the Te Urewera case told the New York Times that he had talked about the idea to Canada’s Minister of Justice and Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould.

Asked whether this sort of approach could come to Canada, Wilson-Raybould declined to comment.