It’s Tuesday, March 1, and Panama just recognized nature’s “right to exist.”

Panama’s president, Laurentino Cortizo, signed into law far-reaching protections for the natural world last week.

The legislation, which was debated for more than a year in Panama’s National Assembly, recognizes the natural world as a “unique, indivisible, and self-regulating community of living beings” with its own suite of intrinsic rights. It validates nature’s rights to “exist, persist, and regenerate its life cycles” and to “be restored” following damages from human activity.  More…