Needs of Nature ? Environmentalism, Human Rights Law, and the Global Corporation _______________________________________________________ Consider two recent cases filed in US law courts:- In 1970 the Sierra Club sued Walt Disney Enterprises, alleging that Disney was disturbing the aesthetic and natural equilibrium of the wild "Mineral King" valley in the Sierra Nevadas. The judges considered arguments that "we give legal rights to forests, oceans, rivers and other so-called natural objects in the environment--indeed to the natural environment as a whole." This argument was based on legal research by Christopher Stone, a radical ecologist law professor, who wrote: "Perhaps the injury to the Sierra Club was tenuous, but the injury to Mineral King--the park itself--wasn't. If I could get the courts thinking about the park itself as a jural person--the way corporations are persons--the notion of nature having rights would here make a significant operational difference." Between1972-1992, Texaco drilled oil in Ecuadorian Amazon, cutting18,000 miles of trail and 300 miles of road through pristine rainforest. Ignoring the standard industry practice of pumping waste back into wells, Texaco dumped toxic byproducts of its drilling operations onto local roads, streams, and wetlands. Water resources which had been used by the locals for drinking , fishing, and bathing were rendered toxic. Texaco filled 600 pits with toxic waste; these regularly washed out in heavy rain, causing rashes, flu, and swollen throats in locals, and contaminating farm land and water supply. Ecuadorian residents filed a suit against Texaco (Sequiha v. Texaco, Inc) for damages caused by environmental contamination from Texaco's oil development in the Ecuadorian Oriente region. These two vignettes from recent U. S. legal history illustrate a growing contradiction between First and Third World interpretations of environmental needs. This paper studies the "real-world" application of two academic theories of the environment: biocentrism (which argues that nature has intrinsic needs) and political ecology (which argues that humans need their environmental resources). Recent trends in international human rights law have begun to represent the right to a viable environment as an inalienable human right. A new trend in litigation against U.S. corporations for human rights and environmental abuses abroad will contribute, I suggest, to a growing body of legal evidence that will strengthen the connection between the right to environment and the right to life. However, it remains to be seen which political philosophy will offer the dominant legal interpretation of the "right to environment." Environmental theorists in the field of Political Ecology have long argued for a model of environmentalism based on the conviction that viable ecological relations are inseparable from the struggle for more just arrangements of power, and from a sense of historical accountability. What are the implications, for international legal discourse, of this theoretical argument about the meanings of environmentalism? There are few indications that international human rights practitioners are influenced by writings in the field of Political Ecology, and it might seem at first that such assertions remain in the ivory tower of academia. However, a close look at some recent cases of environment-related litigation suggest that the political ecological argument has indeed been heard in Law Courts around the world, articulated not by academics, but by Southern activists and their legal counsel. Understanding environmental rights as human rights from the point of view of Third World Political Ecology implies a fundamentally different notion of environmentalism from the one propounded by liberal environmentalist organizations such as the Sierra Club, and even from the so-called radical first world environmental groups such as Earth First! Because Third World Political Ecology is inextricable from social justice, it evokes fears among liberal Human Rights advocates that the assertion of communities' right to their environment can go "too far," undermining the competitive force and globalizing drive of capitalism, and interfering with the liberal reform agenda, which proclaims the spread of democracy through free trade. Attempts to find solutions to rights-violations by revealing their links to economic or social injustice are regarded by free marketeers as threats to the economic freedom of entrepreneurs and corporations. Third World "environmental rights activism" in the near future may, this paper suggests, force the re-evaluation of some of the neo-colonialist assumptions on which the U. S. State's Human Rights agenda currently operates. ____________ k. p h i l i p 363 Skiles Phone 404 894 1160 Fax 404 894 1287 kavita.philip@lcc.gatech.edu ____________ Asst. Professor, School of LCC, Georgia Tech, Atlanta GA 30332-0165