Anja Murray: Will we add 'Rights of Nature' to our Constitution?

Ireland had a very early set of rules, or legal tracts, called the 'Brehon Laws’. These had detailed rules for the management and protection of trees, fisheries, wild birds, seaweed, and other ‘resources’ essential for people

The Citizens’ Assembly on Biodiversity Loss calls for us to recognise that nature has a right to exist, to flourish, perpetuate itself, and be restored if degraded. Picture: Andrew Brown/Shutterstock

For much of known history, human beings were considered property. Assaulting or killing a slave was a matter of property law, not a matter of human rights. Now, our concept of ownership has evolved and our attitudes and conscious approach, as a society, to fellow humans is radically different to what it once was.

We have even come so far as to universally recognise that all human beings have the right to life and liberty, freedom from slavery and torture, freedom of opinion and expression, the right to work and education, and more. When it was first proposed that these fundamental human rights would be enshrined in law, the idea was a radical one.