UDTR Global Rights of Nature Radar

The Rights of Nature in New Zealand: Conversations with Kirsti Luke and Christopher Finlayson

Identification

Public canonical key

doi:10.1093/isle/isaa054

Authors

Hal Crimmel · Issac Goeckeritz

Reported year

2020

Reported language

en

Source type

article

First detected

2026-11-09T19:04:47.901438+00:00

Last metadata observation

2026-11-10T16:58:51.410971+00:00

Last HTTP verification

Not checked

Documentary abstract — original language

Industrialized nations and their legal systems tend to view nature as property, as a resource from which wealth is extracted, and as a commodity to provide for human needs. But for millennia indigenous communities have viewed themselves as part of nature. As pressures on ecosystems mount and as conventional laws seem increasingly inadequate to address environmental degradation, many are turning to a new legal strategy known as the rights of nature, which includes giving nature legal personhood status. To share this idea as widely as possible, Issac Goeckeritz (Utah), Maria Valería Berros (Argentina), and I produced The Rights of Nature: A Global Movement,1 which was filmed in Ecuador, Aotearoa/New Zealand, and the United States. While filming in February 2018, Issac and I spoke with Kirsti Luke, Chief Executive of Tūhoe Te Uru Taumatua, Ngāi Tūhoe’s Tribal Authority. The Tūhoe, a Māori tribe, or iwi, played an important role in the Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, undertaken with the New Zealand government to address historical wrongs, including the taking of Māori land under the Treaty of Waitangi, signed in 1840. We also interviewed Hon Christopher Finlayson, former New Zealand Attorney General and former Minister for the Treaty of Waitangi2 Negotiations, the government entity taking the lead on negotiations with the Māori. Both Chris and Kirsti were instrumental in finding a way forward, and they worked together over a number of years to arrive at a settlement characterized by Chris as “just and durable.”

Identifiers

OPENALEX

W3089199768

DOI

10.1093/isle/isaa054

OPENAIRE

doi_dedup___::2c8241a7c6cd715eb8e6d8f25c2fdeb6

Documentary context

Documentary family

Scholarship

Source-reported types

Article · article

Jurisdictions studied — explicit sources

NZ

Natural entities mentioned

Ecosystem

Entity mentions are not evidence of legal recognition. Jurisdiction studied is separate from author affiliation country.

Sources

OpenAIRE · Record 1

OpenAlex · Record 1 · Record 2

• DOI · https://doi.org/10.1093/isle/isaa054
• OpenAlex · https://openalex.org/W3089199768

Documented bibliographic relations

Source-declared references and links; they do not establish legal support or UGLC qualification. Up to 20 outgoing references are displayed.

• openalex:w3096997170 · CITES

4 incoming references within the detected corpus

Documentary status

Relevance pending

Library

This identity is not yet included in the Legal Library.