Environmental Personhood

Abstract

The emergent trend of granting legal personhood to natural entities – environmental personhood – is a promising approach to nature's conservation. This inquiry explores its philosophical foundations and prerequisites for successful implementation. It argues that, along with a strong legal framework, its efficacy largely depends on the transition from anthropocentric to ecocentric values and on the appearance of a new ecological identity or eco-self. Critical for implementing the rights of nature are the ecocentric shift in culture and the consequent abandoning the “skin-encapsulated ego” in favor of the ecological self. This shift is what environmentalists strive for but couldn't achieve until now. To fill this gap, attention is given to one among the several traditions which can practically guide the identity transformation, namely Tantra yoga with its embeddedness in the natural world. It explains Tantra yoga's psycho-somatic methodology as a promising eco-spiritual practice to deal with current ecological challenges and to restore our planet's health by evoking biophilia.