Abstract

This paper explores what the inclusion of constitutional environmental rights (CERs), specifically the rights of nature (RoN), could look like in Canada and their potential impact on the protection of endangered old-growth forests in British Columbia (BC). BC is home to some of the last remaining old-growth forests in Canada. While deemed essential by the province to the forestry industry, intact higher productivity old-growth forests hold significant cultural, social, and economic values, and play critical ecological functions on which BC’s biodiversity depends. Despite this, old-growth logging persists in the province, culminating in Canada’s largest act of civil disobedience: the Fairy Creek Blockades. Reflective of recurrent trends in BC’s forestry practices from Clayoquot Sound’s “War in the Woods,” this mobilization demands the need for stronger environmental regulations and oversight in Canada. Though CER provisions positively correlate with environmental outcomes, these rights hierarchize human property over nature’s right to exist, flourish, or be restored. I explore a potential avenue for protecting the rights of old-growth forests in BC: the stand-alone rights of nature in the Canadian Constitution. By examining rights of nature laws in Ecuador, Bolivia, and New Zealand, I will investigate what the constitutional RoN could look like in Canada. These rights might not only ensure the sustained protection of old-growth ecosystems in BC but incorporate Indigenous worldviews and legal orders into Canada’s dominant legal system.

Keywords: Rights of nature, constitutional environmental rights, old-growth forests, Indigenous legal orders, British Columbia