Event Details
Date & Time
Thursday, Oct 22, 2026 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM
Department
Institute for Climate, Water, and the Environment
Cost
Free and Open to the Public
About This Event
For Our Common Home Lecture Series
For decades, environmental law in the United States has operated primarily within a conservation framework that regulates pollution and extraction while continuing to treat the natural world as property for human use. As climate disruption intensifies and biodiversity loss accelerates, this model is increasingly criticized as structurally incapable of preventing ecological harm at its roots. This lecture examines an emerging jurisprudential shift: the movement from protecting nature as an object of regulation to recognizing ecosystems as subjects of legal rights. Focusing on Rights of Nature as both a legal and philosophical development, the presentation will explore how this framework challenges anthropocentric assumptions embedded in conventional environmental and property law. It asks what follows when rivers, watersheds, forests, and other ecosystems are understood not merely as resources, but as living systems with interests the law should recognize and protect. The lecture will also consider how this shift reframes the relationship between human communities and the natural world, emphasizing that human health, stability, and flourishing are inseparable from the flourishing of the ecosystems on which communities depend. Alongside developments in Washington State, the talk will situate these questions within a broader global movement, tracing how jurisdictions and communities around the world are advancing new legal approaches to ecological governance. The result is not simply a new environmental doctrine, but a deeper challenge to the assumptions that have long structured modern law.
About the Speaker:
Rachel Kurtz-McAlaine is an attorney and advocate focused on environmental law, democracy, and systems change. She is the co-founder and board president of Standing for Nature, a nonprofit dedicated to public education and legal advocacy in support of the rights of nature and legal standing for ecosystems, and she also contributes pro bono legal work to support its mission.
Her work centers on helping communities understand why conventional environmental law so often fails to prevent harm and how stronger legal tools can better protect ecosystems and the people who depend on them. She has experience in legal research, litigation support, public education, and policy development, with a focus on translating complex legal ideas into practical strategies for civic and community action.
Rachel has been closely involved in efforts to advance and defend watershed rights in Washington State, including work related to the Snohomish River Watershed initiative in Everett. Her work brings together legal theory, democratic process, and a commitment to rethinking the relationship between human communities and the natural world.