What does a 150-year-old plane tree in Southend-on-Sea have in common with the Salween River, which flows through China, Myanmar and Thailand? In both cases, local communities are fighting to protect a living entity. In A Barrister for the Earth, Monica Feria-Tinta, a British-Peruvian barrister practising in public international law and international arbitration, proposes that both the tree and the river should be recognised in law as having the right to exist for their conservation. “Society has granted rights to abstract entities, such as corporations and now even to software,” ...

 

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