When adopting their new constitution in 2008, Ecuador became the first country to recognize the legal personhood of nature, or Pachamama. Specifically, Chapter 7 “Rights of Nature” ensures the “maintenance and regeneration of [nature’s] life cycles, structure, functions and evolutionary processes” and calls for “[a]ll persons, communities, peoples and nations” to protect this right. This clause in the Constitution has provided a legal pathhood for the conservation of nature; theoretically, any person can act as a representative of Ecuador’s environment and file a lawsuit to prevent the harmful degradation of a specific body or region. 

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The 2021 Northwest heat dome, a record-breaking weather event with temperatures reaching up to 120°F, resulted in over 650 deaths and hundreds of heat-related illnesses in the United States and Canada. Hitting the Pacific Northwest from late June to early July, the heat dome also had catastrophic effects on infrastructure, agriculture, wildlife, and flora. In response to the crisis, Multnomah County of Oregon sued seventeen fossil fuel companies, including ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, and Chevron in the Oregon Circuit Court. The county alleged that the defendants “rapaciously [sold] fossil fuel products and deceptively promote[d] them as harmless to the environment” even though they knew that their products would emit carbon pollution into the atmosphere and “would likely cause deadly extreme heat events like that which devastated Multnomah County.”

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