Why in news
In a groundbreaking declaration earlier this month, Indigenous leaders of New Zealand and the Cook Islands signed a treaty, ‘He Whakaputanga Moana’, to recognise whales as legal persons.
The declaration seeks to protect the rights of whales (tohorā) to migrate freely and to use Māori knowledge’ alongside science for better protections.
It also aims to set up a dedicated fund for whale conservation.
Over the past few hundred years, legal personhood has been developed for companies as a way for individual shareholders to avoid liability.
This means a company can go to court, rather than its shareholders.
In the past decade, Aotearoa New Zealand has led the way in developing legal personhood for things in nature into a tool used as part of settlements under Treaty of Waitangi.
It is important to note that these ideas have been recognised and implemented by the Crown in partnership with Māori.
As part of the signing of the Tūhoe settlement in 2014, the former national park Te Urewera was granted legal personhood.
In 2017, legal personhood for the Whanganui river was also part of a settlement.
And last year, this idea was extended to Mount Taranaki.
These natural features are now not owned by people or the Crown, but by themselves.
Legal personhood has been praised in New Zealand and overseas by people interested in using it to protect the environment.
Cook Islands
The Cook Islands is an island country in Polynesia, part of Oceania in the South Pacific Ocean.
It consists of 15 islands
The Cook Islands' Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) covers 1,960,027 square kilometres of ocean.
Avarua is its capital
Cook Islands
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