International Rights of Nature Tribunal, 6th International Hearing: A New Pledge for Mother Nature 2025

Summary

In 2025, the 6th International Rights of Nature Tribunal unfolded in a three-part global process culminating in a final session in Belém, Brazil. The first hearing, titled “The End of the Fossil Fuel Era,” convened on September 24, 2024, in New York during Climate Week. The second hearing, dealing with mining and post-extractivism issues titled “The Impacts of Mining and the Post‑Extractivism Era,” took place on February 28, 2025, in Toronto, ahead of the annual Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) conference. The Tribunal’s final and decisive session, “A New Pledge for Mother Nature,” was held on November 11, 2025, in Belém, Brazil, at the Universidade Federal do Pará during the COP30 conference.

At this final session, the Tribunal’s judges, consisting of environmental and human rights experts from multiple countries, signed the “New Pledge for Mother Nature,” a document urging civil society, governments, and international bodies (including the United Nations) to adopt a legal framework recognizing nature and ecosystems, especially the Amazon, as rights-bearing entities. Key demands in the Pledge include: an indefinite moratorium on new fossil fuel and large-scale mining expansion (rejecting “green-transition” justifications that perpetuate ecologically destructive extractivism); support for a global Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty; legal recognition of nature’s inherent rights alongside the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities; protection for environmental defenders; and systemic reparations and structural changes addressing the root causes of ecological destruction which include economic, social, and political systems built on exploitation.

The Tribunal framed this declaration not just as an environmental or legal document, but as a civilizational call to shift humanity’s relationship with the Earth to affirm that ecosystems are living communities of interdependent beings entitled to exist, thrive, regenerate, and evolve, and that humans must regard themselves as part of this living community.

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