Summary
On September 24, 2021, citizens in Bavaria, in collaboration with the national German Network for the Rights of Nature, launched a referendum initiative to amend Bavaria’s Constitution to recognize the Rights of Nature. The proposal is to amend Article 101 and expand the original text to read: “Everyone has the freedom, within the limits of the laws and good morals, to do everything that does not harm [the rights of] others [and the rights of the natural environment].” Since then, supporters have been gathering signatures to advance the proposal. Their goal is to secure enough support to hold an official referendum on the constitutional amendment.
German law provides a process for state constitutions to be amended via citizen referendums, which occurs in three stages. Advocates of the initiative are currently collecting signatures for the first phase of the referendum, which requires 25,000 valid signatures. If this is achieved, the process will move to a second phase requiring 1,000,000 signatures, followed by a third phase of the referendum, which will require a simple majority and a quorum of 2,500,000 votes in favor for the new, amended article to be included in the Bavarian constitution.
For this reason, the group states that they will only submit the application for this referendum if they have collected at least 250,000 signatures for the application instead of the 25,000 signatures actually required, in order to obtain appropriate publicity and to spark as broad a debate as possible. [as of February 2025]