Putting Nature To Rights

More countries are enshrining the right to a clean environment into law. So if a company or government is impinging upon that right, you could take them to court

- Chris Baraniuk

An Asian megacity partially locked down because of pollution. Acres of farms in Africa destroyed by extreme weather. Ancient Arctic cultures disappearing with melting ice.

This isn’t the future. It’s happening now. “I have a lot of problems with coughing as soon as I go out of the room,” says Mukesh Khare, professor emeritus at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. In November 2021 authorities in New Delhi closed schools, temporarily banned construction activities and advised people to work from home. A response to choking smog.

In Africa, extreme weather has become far more common than it once was, from blistering heat and drought to erratic, torrential rainfall and the devastating floods that ensue, says Dr Catherine Nakalembe at the University of Maryland, in the US. “These extreme 1-in-30-year events have become one-in-every-three-year events. People don’t have time to adjust.”

And in the cultural region of Sápmi, which stretches across parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, Saami reindeer herders have told postdoctoral researcher Dr Klemetti Näkkäläjärvi at the University of Oulu in Finland that the threat of climate change is dissuading young people from learning traditional herding techniques. “They fear the effects and the future,” one of his sources told him. “If they don’t start, then our reindeer herding culture will disappear.”