From Theory to Practice: Advancing Rights of Nature in Law, Policy and Governance

By Rowan Watson

Achill Legal | June 2026

In early June practitioners, policymakers, financiers, and advocates gathered at the offices of Simmons & Simmons in London for an evening that marked a shift in the Rights of Nature conversation in the UK – from aspiration to action. This event brought together the two workstreams, Rights of Nature in law and policy, and Nature Finance and Risk, which were set up following the successful Rights of Nature Symposium convened by Achill Legal for London Climate Action Week in 2025. The workstreams sought to build on that Symposium and the report by developing a theory of change.

Why Rights of Nature – and why now?

Rights of Nature (RoN) is both a philosophical proposition and a practical legal response to ecological breakdown. It challenges our legal systems’ most embedded assumption: that nature is property, an asset to be owned, exploited, and managed sustainably. RoN instead asks whether rivers, forests, and ecosystems might hold legal standing in their own right, with interests that can be represented, protected, and enforced.

This is not a fringe idea. Since Ecuador became the first country to enshrine Rights of Nature in its constitution in 2008, recognising nature’s right to exist and flourish, the concept has taken root across legal systems globally. The UK context, though, is distinct. Jemima Coleman, who chaired the Law and Policy Working Group, grounded the discussion firmly in the UK context, which is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world, with around one in six species at risk of extinction.

Momentum is building at both local government and national levels from local councils taking their own initiative on nature recovery, to the river guardian movement, to experiments in deliberative democracy and interspecies representation.The River Charter movement led by Emma Montlake and the Environment Law Foundation encourages local councils to use the ‘Love our Ouse’ model and adopt a Charter for their local river and bring nature into the council chamber and decision making

At a national level the Nature’s Rights Bill had its first reading in Parliament, a historic milestone, and a sign that Rights of Nature is “no longer a theory, it’s a reality.” The topic has also debated in the EU Parliament and there is growing interest in an EU Fundamental Charter on Rights of Nature. The Philippines, meanwhile, has enacted groundbreaking nature governance legislation embedding ecological integrity into its national accounting systems.

Yet despite these advances, the urgency of the moment cannot be overstated. UNEP’s State of Finance for Nature report (January 2026) revealed that in 2023, finance directly harmful to nature reached US$7.3 trillion, compared to just US$220 billion invested in nature-based solutions, a ratio of more than 30:1. Seven of the nine critical Earth system boundaries have now been breached. The degradation of natural ecosystems is no longer solely an environmental matter; it carries profound consequences for business continuity, financial stability, and the conditions for human life itself.

An evolving approach and Theories of Change

The Law and Policy session opened with a compelling introduction to the Rights of Nature movement: its philosophical origins, its implementation challenges, and the remarkable diversity of legal approaches emerging around the world. A recurring theme was the unique responsibility lawyers carry in this moment. Human-centric laws are reaching the limits of what they can achieve. The shift toward nature having its own rights is accelerating, and there is a role for everyone in driving it.

Paul Powesland, a barrister at Garden Court Chambers and a river guardian of the river Roding, put the UK approach into context -while we can draw on the international experiences such as those pioneered in Ecuador, we cannot have the same approach. Ecuador still has large tracts of untouched wilderness, so it’s appropriate to focus on rights and protections: the UK must do something harder. and work to restore what has been lost while recognising the scale of the challenge: this is not simply about protecting what remains but actively restoring what has already been severely diminished.

The session also featured a screening of the Nature’s Rights Bill video, a striking reminder that what was once considered a radical legal concept is now entering mainstream parliamentary debate. Mumta Ito who has led the work on the bill shared her systems-level analysis arguing that current systems are stuck in crisis management which treat symptoms rather than causes and her aim is to restructure decision making and design regenerative outcomes by default.

Nature Finance and Risk

The Nature, Finance and Risk group, convened and chaired by Imogen O’Rorke, considered the harder, more contested terrain of what it means to give nature financial value and why, despite the philosophical discomfort it may cause, that work is essential. 

Heather Buchanan opened by drawing attention to the age of our accounting frameworks: the first book on modern accounting is some 500 years old, and it was not designed with nature in mind. Bringing nature onto the balance sheet is therefore not a technical tweak but a fundamental reimagining of how wealth is measured. She pointed to the striking implication: if nature-rich countries were properly valued, the global map of wealth would look very different and so would government priorities.

The central tension of this session was captured in a phrase that resonated across the room: “You can’t put a price on living systems, but we must try.” If nature’s value, including the enormous losses avoided when ecosystems function, is not quantified, it will be ignored by financial institutions. The group has therefore worked on making nature measurable: exploring how RoN can intersect with existing financial frameworks, support science-based ecosystem integrity thresholds, and inform prudential regulation.

Paula Pagniez (Executive Director, Climate Risk & Resilience, Howden Re) cut to the heart of the finance challenge: how do you put a number on nature in a way that actually moves capital? Intrinsic value arguments matter, but they rarely land in a boardroom. What does land is economic reality; the cost of losing a coral reef to the tourism industry that depends on it, the reduction in insurance claims where healthy ecosystems act as natural buffers, the effect of green space on property values.

Susan Twining (Country and Land Business Association) spoke from the perspective of rural land management and the intersection of Rights of Nature with Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG). She was clear that clean water is non-negotiable, and that nature management does not come for free. Farmers, she noted, are willing, but nervous. Communication is key. BNG offers a practical route to rewiring financial systems to reflect the value of nature, but it requires genuine collaboration, careful balance of trade-offs, and a recognition that land managers need to want to deliver it.

The session concluded with a frank acknowledgement that we are only scratching the surface of how to rewire financial systems to integrate Rights of Nature. The UK is depleted, but not beyond recovery. What is needed is the right language in the right places: language that makes the financial case for nature impossible to ignore. Stranded asset risk. No nature, no economy. No jobs on a dead planet.

Who Speaks for the Sea?

By Tom Appleby and Lucy Lennard

The sea beneath our feet

Eight thousand years ago, the Dogger Bank was not a sandbank at all. It was land: a wide, wooded plain stretching between what is now the UK and the continental coast of Europe, crossed by rivers, inhabited by animals and, eventually, people. As sea levels rose at the end of the last ice age, it was slowly inundated. The North Sea swallowed it.

That geological history matters. The organic richness of what was once terrestrial soil, preserved under relatively shallow water, makes the Dogger Bank unusually fertile. It supports a range of marine life that is, in the context of the North Sea, extraordinary: cold- water corals, sea pens, anemones, sharks, rays, long-lived shellfish, and the spawning and nursery grounds for cod, haddock and sole. It is even home to migrating salmon smolts, who head south from Scotland along the former coastline, before heading north again to their feeding grounds in the Arctic. It is not just ecologically significant. It is one of the most historically layered stretches of seafloor in European waters.

Until recently it was also heavily trawled, altering the whole structure of the seabed.

The largest ecosystem on Earth

The ocean covers more than two thirds of the planet’s surface. It generates roughly half the oxygen in the atmosphere, absorbs around a quarter of all CO2 emissions, and regulates temperature and weather systems across the entire globe. It is, by any measure, the largest and most consequential ecosystem on Earth.

It is also, legally speaking, one of the least well protected.

The international framework governing the high seas, UNCLOS, was negotiated in 1982. It is a remarkable achievement of international law, but it predates the scientific consensus on the ocean’s role as a carbon sink and a planetary life support system. It was built on an assumption, widespread at the time, that the ocean’s capacity to absorb damage was essentially unlimited. Decades of evidence since then have shown otherwise. The legal architecture has not kept pace.

Even where UNCLOS sets out sensible criteria for environmental protection and sustainable fishing, the legal mechanisms generally require a coastal state to launch proceedings. Where everyone is breaking the rules, which coastal state is going to complain?

A living experiment

In 2019, Blue Marine Foundation started a legal case against the UK Government, challenging the continued permission of bottom trawling inside the UK’s section of the Dogger Bank.

Upon the UK’s departure from the European Union, wording in the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy which had granted the bloc’s fishing vessels a perceived exemption from environmental law fell away. UK fisheries authorities suddenly found themselves liable to conduct the kind of management practices in offshore marine protected areas which applied to all other industries. The UK could only issue fishing licences if they could demonstrate no harm was caused to the sites.

The UK closed its section of the Dogger Bank to bottom-towed fishing gear in 2022, and undertook to take management measures for all of its other offshore sites for fishing within three years, a promise it has failed to keep: the tranche three proposals, particularly in the South West of England, remain to be managed.

What has happened since is, in scientific terms, a natural experiment unlike any other in the North Sea. Fishing pressure has fallen by 98% and life is returning. Just this year, orcas have been seen back on the Dogger, which is a good sign of a recovering ecosystem, and Blue Marine and others are obtaining a licence to restore the horse mussel beds which used to be present throughout the site. On the Dutch side, trawling continued, and the difference has become visible.

That contrast, and the legal precedent established by the UK case, formed part of the basis for the next step.

Protected means protected

On 11 May this year, the District Court of The Hague ruled that Dutch bottom trawlers can no longer operate in the Dutch section of the Dogger Bank without a permit and a full environmental impact assessment. Blue Marine was one of the four organisations that brought the case, alongside Doggerland Foundation, ARK Rewilding Nederland and ClientEarth.

It was the first ruling in Europe confirming that governments have a legal responsibility to regulate bottom trawling in offshore marine protected areas. The court found that blanket exemptions for fishing inside Natura 2000 protected areas are contrary to nature protection legislation. The burden of proof has shifted: vessels wishing to fish in the protected zone must now demonstrate that their activities cause no harm. For vessels unable to do that, access will be withdrawn.

The problem remained that the EU parts of the Dogger Bank in France and Germany were unprotected. Blue Marine and its collaborators used a different part of the EU Common Fisheries Policy, which placed the burden of proof onto member states to comply with environmental law. Until then, compliance had taken the form of an endless talking shop between member states and the EU, which had few legal teeth to enforce actual management.

The Dutch ruling has significance well beyond the Dutch courts as it is a ruling on European law, which should be applied by other member states to their vessels. It is only a first instance decision, but since it is the first ruling anywhere in the EU on this novel process, and the wording in the legislation is very clear, other member states would be expected to follow similar processes. There will be another case in Germany later this year, which the Dutch case expedited. This is a landmark decision with much broader ramifications.

“This case is important in the UK too, which is why we, a UK charity, were one of the litigants,” Tom Appleby said after the ruling. “We have all signed up to the same international obligations, and protecting the North Sea benefits the environment of the entire region. Seabirds, salmon, cetaceans and seals do not recognise national boundaries.”

What this means for lawyers

The Dogger Bank story is, at its core, a story about what lawyers can do. A campaign that began with a legal challenge to the UK Government produced management measures against one of the most harmful activities we carry out at sea: bottom trawling. That legal action formed part of the factual basis for a ruling that will carry implications across Europe. Similar cases are already active in six other jurisdictions.

Tom Appleby’s point to legal audiences is that the work is not confined to environmental specialists. Blue Marine relies on pro bono legal support across a wide range of disciplines: competition law, to challenge industry exemptions and market distortions; property law, on coastal access and foreshore rights; criminal law, in cases involving illegal fishing and wildlife crime; tort law, on nuisances; and international and European law, to navigate the treaty frameworks governing high seas protection. No specialism is too remote.

“Pretty much every single legal discipline can help,” he told an LSA audience earlier this year. “The system is such a mess, there’s room for us all.”

Lawyers also advise the clients whose decisions shape what happens to the ocean: energy companies, financial institutions, shipping firms, food retailers and developers. The question of marine impact, of emerging regulatory risk around MPAs, of supply chain exposure to illegal or unsustainable catch, is relevant across those transactions. Raising it does not require specialist knowledge. It requires awareness of the direction of travel.

Two things to avoid

The first is accepting the weakening of existing protections. There is real political pressure, in the UK and internationally, to soften environmental obligations in the name of growth and energy security. For the ocean, that pressure manifests in proposed extensions of fishing exemptions, diluted MPA designations, and delayed implementation of the High Seas Treaty. Each concession, in an ecosystem already under stress, compounds.

The second is treating the interests of fishing communities as something to be argued past rather than addressed. The transition to sustainable fishing practice is necessary, but it needs to be a just one. Inshore fishing communities in the UK have already borne significant losses from decades of quota decisions that prioritised short-term yield over stock health. A legal and policy settlement that does not account for that history will not hold.

We can also be overly legalistic in our application of environmental laws. Ocean ecosystems are remarkably dynamic, so approaches such as like-for-like environmental compensation are extremely challenging to achieve, particularly on energy projects. Early engagement with environmental NGOs and other specialists can speed the process up. In reality, court cases such as the Dogger Bank case are relatively rare and a last resort.

Recovery is possible

The Dogger Bank demonstrates this as directly as anything in recent marine conservation. Given genuine protection, the seabed recovers. Species return. The nursery of the North Sea can function again as a nursery.

The law can be part of that. The Dogger Bank case, and the Dutch ruling that followed from it, shows what is possible when legal expertise is brought to bear on the right questions at the right moment. More of those moments are coming. Cases are being built, consultations are open, and organisations like Blue Marine are doing work that the whole legal profession can contribute to, whatever the practice area.

We have seen a huge amount of legislation to protect the environment over the last two decades, but in many places it has fallen short and simply become a record of what is there. The question for us all is: what do we want our oceans to be like? Let’s use the law to bring that about.

Further reading

Blue Marine Foundation: bluemarinefoundation.com

MCS Good Fish Guide: mcsuk.org/goodfishguide

Dogger Bank ruling (11 May 2026): Oceanographic Magazine

Lyme Bay recovery case study: Blue Marine Foundation

UK MPA network: JNCC

Dogger Bank map: Wikipedia

To mark World Environment Day 2026 on 5 June, we call on firms to highlight what they are doing to tackle the climate and nature crises on social platforms. We have created three LSA graphics which are available to download below. Send the message #NowForClimate.

Ideas on how you might use this free resource:

• Create a simple internal hub or page where people can browse the library of infographics and look forward to the release of new ones
• Create a weekly “climate moment” through your internal comms, making each infographic part of a predictable rhythm. They are self-contained and self-explanatory but you can build on their power by adding a simple takeaway and or question
• Build a gallery of printed images in your communal areas
• Print a limited run onto playing cards for colleagues who sign up to collect, they’ll end up with a pack of 52
• Turn them into conversation starters for monthly informal discussions; using 3–4 of the infographics prompting questions such as What surprised you? Why is this relevant to our work?
• Use them to support bigger moments, launch them during London Climate Action Week or offer versions for Earth Day

Copyright & Usage Notice

LSA member firms are licensed to download and use these images for educational purposes, including training and upskilling colleagues through internal communications. This license does not permit use in external presentations, commercial marketing materials, or on social media platforms, except when such use is separately permitted under the original copyright terms of The Climate Trunk – ie when using platform generated link previews or unaltered screenshots.