The new Earth Charter Podcast episode features Jessica den Outer, a leading Dutch advocate for the Rights of Nature. She has participated in the international movement since 2017 and founded the Dutch NGO Stichting Rechten van de Natuur in 2024. Her official biography also notes that her expertise has informed legal and policy discussions in the Netherlands, Aruba, and Ireland.
In this thought-provoking conversation with Earth Charter International Executive Director Mirian Vilela, Jessica explores what it means to recognize rivers, forests, oceans, mountains, and other ecosystems as subjects of rights rather than merely as property or resources. She explains how this shift can give nature legal standing and allow guardians to represent the interests of ecosystems in decision-making.
Jessica traces her own journey from childhood visits to the garden with her grandfather, where she discovered the insects and “micro-worlds” moving through the grass—to her later studies in environmental law. Frustrated by the widening gap between laws intended to protect nature and the accelerating ecological crises she saw around her, she became fascinated by the legal recognition of the Whanganui River in Aotearoa New Zealand.
The episode examines how Rights of Nature can contribute to both legal and cultural transformation. Jessica emphasizes that the movement is not a “silver bullet,” but a tool that can help Western legal systems move toward a worldview based on care, reciprocity, responsibility, and respect for the living world.
She highlights the Whanganui River as a powerful example and reflects on the Indigenous knowledge at the roots of many Rights of Nature initiatives. She describes Rights of Nature as a “pragmatic bridge” through which legal systems can begin to honor principles such as kinship, duty, reciprocity, and responsibility, while ensuring that Indigenous peoples can tell their own stories and speak for their own worldviews.
Throughout the conversation, Jessica highlights the close relationship between the Rights of Nature movement and the Earth Charter. While Rights of Nature can translate care for the community of life into legal structures, the Earth Charter offers an ethical foundation for transforming how human beings understand their place and responsibilities within the larger living world.
“I profoundly believe in this moral, philosophical obligation of humans to express our voice for those that don’t have a human voice. … I really like that it’s sort of this legal translation of the Earth Charter into a legal tool.”
The episode concludes with an invitation to action. Businesses can bring nature into governance; educators can introduce learners to the Earth Charter and evolving legal approaches; citizens can speak on behalf of local ecosystems in municipal processes; communities can join guardianship initiatives; and artists can help people encounter nature’s voice through the heart as well as the mind.
Looking ahead, Jessica reminds us that legal recognition and cultural change take time. By advancing Rights of Nature at the local level and planting seeds for future generations, communities can help build a society that recognizes nature not as a collection of objects, but as a living community of which humanity is a part.
