Resources and Publications

Rights of Nature · Spiritual Governance · Relational Ontology · Guardianship

This page brings together publications, research, charters and practical resources relating to Rights of Nature, spiritual governance, sacred natural sites, relational ontology and community guardianship.

Rights of Nature is an interdisciplinary field. It draws upon environmental law and ecology, but also anthropology, Indigenous knowledge, philosophy, theology, geography and understandings of the relationships between people and place.

The resources collected here provide both the intellectual background to Rights of Nature and practical examples of how its principles can be translated into environmental governance.

Publications by Dr John Studley

My research over many years has explored relationships between Indigenous peoples, sacred natural sites, spiritual agency, environmental governance and the possibility of recognising natural and spiritual-natural entities within contemporary legal systems.

A recurring theme has been the contrast between an understanding of nature as property and relational ontologies in which humans exist within networks of relationships with places, animals, plants, ancestors and spiritual beings.

Indigenous Sacred Natural Sites and Spiritual Governance

The Legal Case for Juristic Personhood

John Studley

This book examines whether sacred natural sites — including sacred mountains, rivers, forests and other spiritually significant natural places — might receive greater protection through legal recognition and juristic personhood.

Drawing particularly upon research among Tibetan communities in southwest China, it explores sacred natural sites, spiritual governance, relational ontology, reciprocity, spiritual agency and guardianship.

It also examines international examples in which rivers, mountains and other natural entities have acquired forms of legal recognition.

The central question is:

Can contemporary law accommodate ways of understanding nature in which the more-than-human world is recognised as possessing agency, relationship and standing?

Spiritual Governance as an Indigenous Behavioural Practice

Implications for Protected and Conserved Areas

John Studley and Peter Horsley

Published in Cultural and Spiritual Significance of Nature in Protected Areas: Governance, Management and Policy.

This chapter explores spiritual governance as a system through which relationships with sacred natural sites and spiritual beings influence human behaviour towards nature.

It considers how attachment, ritual, customary behaviour and spiritual responsibility can contribute to the protection of biologically and culturally important landscapes.

The work challenges conservation approaches that recognise sacred natural sites for their biodiversity while overlooking the spiritual governance systems that helped conserve them.

Juristic Personhood for Sacred Natural Sites

A Potential Means for Protecting Nature

John Studley and William V. Bleisch

Published in PARKS: The International Journal of Protected Areas and Conservation.

This paper examines the development of legal personhood for natural and spiritual-natural entities.

It considers whether juristic personhood could provide an effective means of protecting sacred natural sites while respecting Indigenous relational ontologies.

The paper explores an important meeting point between:

Indigenous worldview · spiritual governance · environmental law · Rights of Nature

Ritual Protection of Sacred Natural Sites on the Tibetan Plateau

My research has also examined the continuing ritual protection of sacred natural sites on the Tibetan Plateau and the importance of local participation in maintaining these traditions.

Sacred natural sites can provide refuges for biodiversity, but their ecological significance cannot always be separated from the cultural and spiritual relationships through which communities protect them.

This provides an important lesson for contemporary conservation:

Protecting a place may also require protecting the relationships that sustain it.

Rights of Nature

Rights of Nature literature examines the growing international movement to recognise ecosystems and natural entities as possessing rights or legal standing.

Important themes include:

• legal personhood for rivers and ecosystems;

• Earth jurisprudence;

• ecological jurisprudence;

• guardianship and representation;

• Indigenous legal traditions;

• relational ontology;

• community environmental rights;

• restoration and regeneration; and

• moving from anthropocentric towards ecocentric law.

Important examples internationally include legal and constitutional developments concerning rivers, forests, mountains and ecosystems in countries including Ecuador, Bolivia, New Zealand, Colombia, India and elsewhere.

These examples differ considerably in their legal foundations and effectiveness, but collectively they demonstrate a growing willingness to reconsider nature's position within law.

Relational Ontology

Relational ontology provides an important philosophical foundation for understanding Rights of Nature.

Rather than treating humans and nature as entirely separate categories, relational approaches recognise beings as embedded within networks of ecological, social, cultural and sometimes spiritual relationships.

This perspective has particular relevance to my research into Indigenous sacred natural sites and spiritual governance.

It also provides an intriguing lens through which to revisit medieval Welsh literature, where humans, animals, trees, rivers, landscapes and the Otherworld frequently participate within a relational rather than entirely human-centred world.

Rights of Nature can therefore be approached not simply as a question of giving legal rights to environmental objects, but as part of a deeper reconsideration of what our relationships with the more-than-human world actually are.

Welsh Resources

A Welsh approach to Rights of Nature should draw upon more than international legal precedents.

Relevant resources include:

• Welsh environmental legislation and policy;

• biodiversity and ecosystem-resilience guidance;

• the Well-being of Future Generations framework;

• Welsh literature and cultural traditions;

• research into cynefin and relationships with place;

• community environmental initiatives;

• citizen science;

• river and habitat restoration;

• Nature Guardians; and

• local Rights of Nature charters.

Together these provide the possibility of developing a distinctively Welsh expression of Rights of Nature, rooted in both contemporary ecological understanding and older relationships between people and place.

Cwmaman Rights of Nature Charter

The Cwmaman Rights of Nature Charter, adopted by Cwmaman Town Council in June 2026, provides a community-level example of putting Rights of Nature principles into practice.

The Charter is supported by practical initiatives including:

Nature Guardians

Habitat-loss reporting

Epicollect5 citizen-science recording

EcoWatch Monitor

Children and schools activities

Biodiversity monitoring and restoration

The Charter demonstrates that Rights of Nature need not exist only at the level of international law or national constitutions.

It can begin within a local community.

Practical Resources

Nature Guardians

Guidance for people who wish to watch over a river, woodland, meadow, hedgerow or other part of their local environment.

Reporting Habitat Loss

Guidance on recording environmental change objectively and safely.

Epicollect5

A citizen-science platform used to record structured environmental observations, including habitat, location, photographs and other field information.

EcoWatch Monitor

A monitoring system complementing Epicollect5 by helping ensure that new environmental reports are noticed and can be reviewed.

Children & Schools

Resources introducing younger people to Rights of Nature, wildlife observation, citizen science and Young Nature Guardians.

Ted's Travels

A child-friendly approach to exploring the living landscape through the Owl, Otter, Hedgehog and Butterfly, encouraging children to discover the needs of other species and the habitats upon which they depend.

Further Reading

For visitors wishing to explore Rights of Nature more deeply, useful subjects include:

Rights of Nature and Earth jurisprudence

Legal personhood for natural entities

Sacred natural sites

Indigenous environmental governance

Spiritual governance

Relational ontology

Ecological guardianship

Citizen science

Welsh environmental law and policy

Medieval Welsh relationships with the more-than-human world

From Research to Practice

The purpose of this collection is not simply to provide a bibliography.

Research becomes particularly valuable when it changes how we understand and care for actual places.

The ideas explored in these publications — relational ontology, spiritual governance, legal personhood, guardianship and Rights of Nature — converge around a common principle:

Nature is not simply an object of environmental management.

Rivers, woodlands, grasslands, mountains, wildlife and human communities participate within interconnected living systems.

Research helps us understand those relationships.

Rights of Nature asks us to recognise them.

Guardianship gives us a way to act upon them.