In an already approved bill of rights, notes The Guardian, the new laws change the legal status of Ecuador’s tropical forests, islands, rivers and air from being property to being rights-bearing entities. The proposed bill states: "Natural communities and ecosystems possess the unalienable right to exist, flourish and evolve within Ecuador. Those rights shall be self-executing, and it shall be the duty and right of all Ecuadorian governments, communities, and individuals to enforce those rights."

Thus, for possibly the first time on the planet, a lawsuit may be able to be filed on behalf of an ecosystem rather than, as is the case in current anthropocentric legal frameworks, a person having to prove a link between environmental degradation and personal injury – an often extremely difficult task – before measures to protect the environment can be ordered by a court.

In the last issue of Mind Shift internationally acclaimed environmental attorney Cormac Cullinan provided a strong critique of up-to-now universally accepted anthropocentric law, stating: “…in the eyes of the law all other species and aspects of nature are objects, and consequently, incapable of having any legal rights.”