NYU MOTH Founding Director, César Rodríguez-Garavito (center), conducting fieldwork for legal action on rights of nature with Indigenous and non-Indigenous scientists in Sarayaku territory, Ecuadorian Amazon, 2024. A broader movement to recognize rights of nature dates back to 1972, when Christopher D. Stone, a law professor at the University of Southern California, wrote an article arguing that “natural objects” should have legal rights. Since 1990, about 500 initiatives recognizing the rights of nature have been undertaken in dozens of countries and international venues, including the United Nations. Rodríguez-Garavito says he opted for the term “more-than-human rights” over “rights of nature” to emphasize that humans and their rights are not separate from nature, but nested within it. “The rights of nature and the work of MOTH are one such way.”Support SSIR’s coverage of cross-sector solutions to global challenges.