Episode 26: Rights of Nature, an Earth Day special with Mari Margil

In celebration of Earth Day, Ellina Yin speaks with Mari Margil about climate solutions happening around the world and how we can bring some of them home. This episode is from our unreleased archives and was originally recorded March of 2022.

Mari Margil is the Executive Director of the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights (CDER).  She works with civil society, governments, as well as Tribal Nations and Indigenous communities in the U.S., Ecuador, the Philippines, Nepal, and elsewhere, to advance Rights of Nature frameworks. She consulted with Ecuador’s Constituent Assembly, helping to draft the world’s first Rights of Nature constitutional provisions in 2008.

Margil received her Master’s degree from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and is a co-author of The Bottom Line or Public Health, Exploring Wild Law: The Philosophy of Earth Jurisprudence, and Bearing Witness: The Human Rights Case Against Fracking and Climate Change.

Her writing has also been featured in publications including The Guardian, YES! Magazine, Earth Island Journal, Mongabay, Democracy Journal, World Policy Journal, and Common Dreams, and her work has been featured in the New York Times, and The New Yorker. 

Episode Notes:

1. Public Comment Remix by mias
2. Santa Clara County Reid-Hillview Airport Study
3. The New Constitution Project
4. Democracy in the United States
5. Orange County Florida Charter Amendment Update