Groups fighting it how to#

The others include Liwa Fath al-Sham, Liwa Tawhid al-Islam and Liwa al-Ansar. More than 30 of the brigades in Jaysh al-Islam were already operating under the banner of Liwa al-Islam. Zahran Alloush, a former imprisoned Salafist activist whose group Liwa al-Islam (Battalion of Islam) is the most prominent and powerful member of the alliance, said it had been formed to 'achieve unity among the units of the mujahideen and avoid the effects produced by the divisions within the National Coalition'. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.Jaysh al-Islam (Army of Islam) was formed by some 50 Islamist factions operating in and around Damascus in September 2013. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at for further information. Foster says, if corporations get legal rights in the U.S., why shouldn't rivers?įor NPR News, I'm Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco in the Quad Cities.Ĭopyright © 2023 NPR. They hope to use it to challenge industrial-scale agriculture and deep-mining operations. RAMIREZ-FRANCO: So the tribe created a resolution calling for the rights of the Missouri River to be recognized. LANCE FOSTER: And we wondered, why hasn't the big rivers - the Missouri River and the Mississippi River - have those rights? He's a member of the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska and says the success of rights of nature around the world got his tribe and others thinking, why not us?

That type of opposition doesn't deter Lance Foster. RAMIREZ-FRANCO: And some states like Idaho, Florida and Ohio have taken steps to ban the possibility that nature or ecosystems can have legal standing.

Groups fighting it how to#

MICHAEL LIVERMORE: Without a notion of how to actually define the interests that are affected and how to compare them against each other, the idea of nature's rights is just extraordinarily indeterminate. But there are limitations according to University of Virginia law professor Michael Livermore, who has studied the rights of nature movement. RAMIREZ-FRANCO: Just a few months ago in April, the city of Seattle settled a case with the Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe over the claim that salmon had the right to spawn, among other rights. LINZEY: The work has spread to other countries and, in the U.S., to about over three dozen municipalities at this point. Linzey was also a consultant for the Ecuadorian government in 2008 when it drafted its new constitution - the first in the world to ratify the rights of nature. RAMIREZ-FRANCO: Ultimately, locals were able to stop sewage sludge from being dumped in Tamaqua using the new ordinance. THOMAS LINZEY: It may be a radical concept, or it was 20 years ago, but we're rapidly coming to a place where, without this kind of new system of environmental law - that we're all kind of done. Thomas Linzey is a senior attorney at the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights and drafted the document to get rights for the small borough. That's exactly what happened in Tamaqua, a small town in Pennsylvania about 90 miles northwest of Philadelphia. Companies could be taken to court for damaging the river or its ecosystem. RAMIREZ-FRANCO: The idea is that natural entities, like rivers, trees or wildlife, have the same rights as humans. And it would allow us to have more power to keep it safe. SIKOWIS NOBISS: The Earth is really suffering, and rights of nature would basically give personhood to the river. She says the group's goal is to build a coalition of people who will work to create a legal framework that protects the river. Sikowis Nobiss is the founder of the Indigenous rights organization. She and about 80 others joined the Walk for River Rights held by the Great Plains Action Society. RAMIREZ-FRANCO: That's Glenda Guster from Davenport, Iowa.

Our nature have rights, and it's up to us to preserve these rights. GLENDA GUSTER: The river have rights just like human rights. UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER #2: Ain't no power like the power of the people. RAMIREZ-FRANCO: On this day, a group of environmentalists chant as they cross the river, marching on a bridge that connects the Quad Cities, four towns in Illinois and Iowa that border the Mississippi. UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Chanting) Water is life. JUANPABLO RAMIREZ-FRANCO, BYLINE: The Mississippi River flows through 10 states and spans over 2,300 miles, from its headwaters in northern Minnesota down to New Orleans, where it empties into the Gulf of Mexico. We get the story from Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk.

One such campaign seeks to protect the Mississippi River. to grant natural entities like forests and rivers the same legal rights as humans.