Justifying Legal Rights of Nature : An ideational analysis of the Te Awa Tupua Bill debate in New Zealand

In 2017, the Whanganui River in New Zealand gained legal personality, a potentially norm-breaking legislation that could challenge society to view nature differently. It is thus important to understand the reasons and justifications behind such a decision. This is an explorative case study that aims to examine the interplay between different philosophies on legal rights of nature and minority rights within the context of a political discourse by investigating how the implementation of the Te Awa Tupua Bill in 2017 in New Zealand was justified. The arguments were identified in the three parliamentary readings of the bill through argument analysis and analyzed through ideational critique. The Te Awa Tupua Bill was justified through anthropocentric, animistic and ecocentric arguments. A majority of the arguments related to protecting the indigenous Māori culture. Further, the results from the ideational critique suggests that the argumentation at times was rather weak and that many arguments were not fully developed. This study shows how the practical political debate on legal rights of nature relates to the theoretical one. It also provides insights on how big part protecting minority rights play when implementing legal personality for natural objects. This study contributes to an emerging field of research with many open doors for future studies