‘Pollute us and we’ll sue you’: The quest to give Europe’s lakes and forests legal rights

Should a lake be allowed to hire its own lawyer and sue a company?

It may sound unlikely, but that’s the goal of a group of European conservationists.

A newly-registered European Citizens’ Initiative petition calls on the European Union to come up with legislation that would let polluted rivers or deforested woodlands “take” their polluters to court, giving natural bodies legal rights akin to those of a company.

If the petition’s backers gather more than a million signatures across at least seven EU countries, the European Commission must at least consider the proposal.

“We’re trying to invite everybody to think about a future where we don’t destroy nature, but work together with it,” the petition’s chief organizer, Emmanuel Schlichter, told POLITICO in a phone interview.

The petition lands as political ambition to protect Europe’s biodiversity wanes.

The EU mobilized against nature destruction during the Green Deal years of 2019 to 2024 — but shifting priorities in Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s second term have changed that.

Now, Brussels is keen to cut red tape in the name of competitiveness, paring back laws intended to protect the bloc’s natural resources. In a bid to clear the path for new industrial projects, earlier this month countries considered a proposal to loosen rules prohibiting companies from killing protected wildlife.

That makes Brussels an increasingly hostile environment for initiatives like Schlichter’s. But that, he argues, only emphasizes the urgency of his mission.

“[This is] the right time because we see a backlash in environmental policy everywhere in Europe, especially on the EU level,” said the lawyer. “A lot of environmental organizations are fighting against the backlash and we want to give hope.”

A lagoon heads to court

The petition is part of a broader, global conservationist-led movement that seeks to grant basic legal rights to nature to help protect it from pressures like deforestation, biodiversity loss, chemicals pollution and climate change.

Schlichter and his co-organizers hope to build on a 2022 Spanish bill which gave a lagoon in the southeastern region of Murcia the right “to exist as an ecosystem and to evolve naturally.” The Mar Menor is represented by a group of custodians including scientists, local politicians and citizens — all of whom are now taking a company to court for allegedly contributing to the ecosystem’s deterioration.

The public prosecutor is seeking a seven-year prison sentence for the entrepreneur in question, as well as over €500,000 in compensation.

“We see this movement gaining ground in many countries,” said Green MEP Jutta Paulus in a comment to POLITICO. “I believe it is an important step if we want to preserve our livelihood.”

Similar initiatives are being put forward across the bloc, from France’s Loire River to Sweden’s Lake Vättern — with varying levels of success. A bid to get the Irish government to give constitutional rights to nature gathered momentum back in 2023 before losing steam.

A core aim of Schlichter’s petition is to unite and strengthen this patchwork of proposals which, he pointed out, often run on limited resources. They need EU-level support to help enforce environmental laws on the ground — which can be strict in theory and badly implemented in practice.

The idea is to “enable all citizens to engage and protect their own ecosystems” with a bottom-up approach.

Into the weeds

Still, while the European Citizens’ Initiative urges the Commission to adopt an EU directive “acknowledging that ecosystems possess intrinsic value and fundamental rights,” Schlichter acknowledged he isn’t yet sure how that would work in practice.

“I feel like it’s still a work-in-progress,” he said. “We don’t have that directive in our pocket to say: ‘This is how we want it.’ We tried to make that, but we have not been there yet. There are multiple starting points, let’s say.”

And the movement is not without its critics.

Some researchers and academics have questioned the added value of granting ecosystems legal personhood. One academic paper argues the content of such rights risks being “vague and incoherent” and highlights the difficulty of defining the boundaries of natural entities. Limits should, instead, be imposed through existing frameworks of law.

The problem, Schlichter says, is that’s not happening. Some of the EU’s strictest environmental laws — like the Water Framework Directive — are simply not being implemented by member countries.

Meanwhile, although Schlichter insists his goal is not to add levels of bureaucracy, but rather better enforce existing laws, industry groups warn against potential impacts on EU competitiveness.

“While it is still unclear what the future of this Rights for Nature initiative will be in the EU, the consequences for mining activities could be substantial — particularly due to the increased demand for domestic raw materials to secure the EU’s strategic autonomy and resilience linked to the green and digital transitions in the current fragile geopolitical context,” said Cynthia Mestanza Fernandez, specialist in environmental and safety affairs for mining lobby Euromines.

“In practice, mining projects, including strategic projects under the [Critical Raw Materials Act], could become legally impossible,” she said, adding that “permits could be challenged on behalf of ecosystems themselves.”

And some NGOs have told Schlichter they might only be able to support the petition next year; their resources are currently focused on combating EU Green Deal backlash.

Still, Schlichter persists.

“Non-democratic voices are getting louder and we don’t know how much time we have left to bring environmental policy to the table at all,” he said.