'I Am An Ecosystem': Recognizing the Rights of Nature Without Humanizing Non-Human Life
This article is part of a series, in collaboration with the Civic Paths working group at the University of Southern California.
Every living person is more than human.
We could not survive without the microbes that inhabit our bodies. The bacteria and other microorganisms lining our gut and skin are as indigenous as the cohort of animal cells classified as Homo sapiens.
Our individuality is a fiction. Each of us is an ecosystem.
In order to protect nature, activists have sought to classify nature as a person. Legal recognition of personhood might provide nature with a basis for claiming rights equivalent to the legal protections accorded to people. Although this legal strategy has had limited success, most municipalities and nation-states have resisted the legal reasoning or refused to make the political transition.
There have also been philosophical consequences. Much as the logic of ecosystem services reinforces the misperception that nature is merely infrastructure, the logic of personhood may inadvertently have reinforced the misconception that other organisms become worthy only by becoming more like humans — that other species need to be anthropomorphized in order to earn our respect.
By recognizing ourselves as ecosystems, we can ensure that other species and living systems have rights on their own terms. In other words, we can recognize rights of nature — and situate rights within nature — by making the concept of personhood obsolete for everyone.
The legal argument is straightforward, though admittedly challenging in the present juridical climate. If everything I do includes my microbiome — and couldn't be done without it — then my microbiome is implicitly included in all of my legal arrangements.
When I cross a border, my microbiome travels with me on the same passport as the portion of my body that is Homo sapiens. My microbiome is also part of the entity that holds a lease, appears in court or is sent to prison.
The law treats each of us as an ecosystem in fact, even if not in name. The courts might be convinced to grant equivalent standing and rights to ecosystems that contain different combinations of species. Even if a court were to require a human cohort, most ecosystems would be protected since most ecosystems include human members.
However the greater impact is likely to be cultural, with vast potential for behavioral change and legislative action. By encouraging people to call themselves ecosystems — recognizing their more-than-human status — we can upset the hierarchy that has marginalized all other species and put the majority of life into jeopardy. With the simple declaration that "I am an ecosystem," each of us will undergo a transformation.
Instead of anthropomorphizing or othering nature, we can appreciate ourselves as a biome amongst biomes.
Over time, new legal arrangements may be expected. The population of microbes within our bodies shifts over time, much as organisms may move through forests and other ecosystems. A microbe within me may live within another habitat in the future, and the animal portion of that habitat may be a different species.
Even the human-centered notion of habitat is problematic. Our animal selves are habitat for microbes, and our microbial selves are habitat for the animal within us. We ignore our microbial perspective on life at our own peril.
This migration of our selves, and ultimate distribution of our selves over the whole planet, has repercussions for traditional ideas ranging from citizenship to the possession of property.
We will recognize what we are when we are no longer certain of who we are. We will finally become what we have always been.
