Bengaluru: Indigenous leaders of the Pacific Islands of New Zealand, Tonga, Tahiti, and the Cook Islands have signed an international treaty this week granting cetaceans like whales, dolphins and porpoises legal personhood. But India was among the first countries to declare dolphins and whales as “non-human persons” in 2013 — three years after an international Declaration of Rights for Cetaceans — according them personhood rights to prevent their import and use for commercial entertainment.
In India, the declaration supplements protections accorded to cetaceans under the Wild Life (Protection) Act of 1972.
The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change recognises cetaceans as having high levels of intelligence and complexity of life, prohibiting their shows in water parks, dolphinariums or aquariums since the 2013 declaration.
India has taken particular care of dolphins over the last decade. It is illegal in India to capture cetaceans like river dolphins, violating their personhood rights. Along with that, India has also renewed conservation efforts for the Ganges river dolphin.
Project Dolphin was announced in 2020 to boost marine and freshwater river dolphin populations. Last year, the Ganges river dolphin was declared India’s official aquatic animal.
According to media reports, the number of Ganges river dolphins has steadily increased.
Personhood rights aren’t extended only to dolphins. Different states have attempted to provide these rights to different animals.
The Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organisations (FIAPO) has been pressuring courts to give personhood status to elephants, among the most intelligent animals on the planet.
The Uttarakhand High Court noted in 2018 that “the entire animal kingdom, including avian and aquatic, are declared as legal entities having a distinct persona with corresponding rights, duties, and liabilities of a living person”.
Similarly, in 2019, the Haryana High Court ruled that animals in India are entitled to the “fundamental right to freedom” under Article 21 of the Constitution.
Animal rights organisations in India are seeking personhood for goats and cows as well.
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Personhood for plants, water bodies, nature
Indian courts have also dabbled in declaring personhood for the Ganga and Yamuna rivers.
A 2017 ruling by the Uttarakhand High Court accorded human rights to the rivers, recognising them as legal, living, and moral persons.
The judge cited the precedent set by the New Zealand government a week earlier when the Whanganui river was declared a living person with full legal rights.
The court appointed three officials in Nainital to act as legal custodians for the rivers and their tributaries, giving them the responsibility for setting up a management board to protect the rivers from pollution and industrial waste.
However, the Supreme Court overturned this ruling a few months later, arguing that legal status did not lead to only rights but also “duties and liabilities”, and there were major uncertainties over who would be liable to pay damages in the event of flooding or drowning.
The Uttarakhand High Court has also recognised Himalayan glaciers, lakes, and forests in the state as legal persons.
In 2020, the Punjab and Haryana High Court bestowed personhood on the Sukhna lake — a key reservoir in the Himalayas.
Most recently, the Madras High Court ruled in 2022 that nature and the environment have rights, and the government has an obligation to protect them. The court exercised the parens patriae jurisdiction, i.e., its right, to call upon the government to act as a guardian for those who cannot care for themselves.
While the above judgments are binding at the state level, there’s no countrywide legal personhood law for animals, plants, water bodies, or nature.
The Supreme Court has not granted personhood status to any animal but noted in the landmark 2014 Jallikattu bull-taming case that animals have the right to live with dignity and privacy and protection from unlawful attacks. But last year, the judgment was overturned, citing “judicial adventurism”.
Many experts have argued it is hard to enforce the rights of natural or non-human entities like human rights.
Some countries like Bolivia, however, have given rights to nature, such that the different aspects of the rights apply to non-human entities, depending on their nature of existence.
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Great ape rights came before
The treaty signed by the Pacific Islands of New Zealand, Tonga, Tahiti, and the Cook Islands allows large marine animals the right to freedom, life and movement, freedom of natural behaviour, and freedom to live in a healthy environment.
These animals are protected not only for their high cognition and complex thinking but also for their importance to ecosystems.
The island nations are hardly the first to make legal changes to give more rights to animals. Many countries like Pakistan, the US, Spain, Germany, and Argentina have given rights to animals, and some, including Switzerland, have done that by amending their Constitutions. Such efforts focus mainly on animals of high intelligence and the “self-aware” ones.
The strongest cases for personhood have come from the great apes — orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos — owing to their high intelligence, human-like behaviour, and how close in the evolutionary tree we are. Humans are the fifth great ape. Proponents of great ape rights include Jane Goodall, the world-renowned primatologist and expert on great apes.
Goodall’s arguments followed scientific studies, which have continuously shown that great apes can imagine their future or remember the past in a process called “mental time travel”. Its most common test is the ability to delay gratification, requiring imagining a future self with a better reward.
Great ape rights have disallowed the use of apes in research or testing or shows such as circuses or TV commercials. Countries like Austria and Sweden, among others, first instituted a complete ban on the use of great apes in animal testing. Austria also banned experiments on lesser apes (gibbons). Subsequently, the entire EU banned testing on great apes.
The great ape equivalents of the water are the cetaceans. Humans are slowly realising the incredible complexity of intelligence, communication, and emotion of the cetaceans. They live in large social groups for decades, forming bonds with their lifelong family. They communicate with complicated sounds, including producing structured and layered songs. They are known to approach humans to ask for help if their fellow members need it and love playing with boats.
Cetacean rights are becoming more commonly discussed in international courts in the face of more findings, with sea parks and dolphinariums like SeaWorld that raise these animals in captivity to perform tricks, facing some tough questions.
Panama, meanwhile, has granted legal rights to sea turtles.
Many courts, recognising the dire environmental situation, have also been giving rights to nature and the environment as a being.
Ecuador was the first country in the world to bestow legal rights to nature, followed by Bolivia, Uganda, Panama, and others.
Many major communities and even cities such as Pittsburgh have recognised the rights of nature.
Some courts have even granted rights to environmental entities — water bodies in most cases. The Magpie river in Canada, the Atrato river in Colombia, the Whanganui river in New Zealand, Spain’s saltwater lagoon Mar Menor, and the Klamath river in the US have rights, which range from the right to exist as an ecosystem to the right to regenerate or evolve naturally.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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