Summary
In 2018, the group Déclaration Universelle des Droits de L’arbre began a global petition to draft a universal declaration of tree rights. In 2019, the French National Assembly adopted its own version of the declaration spearheaded by Delphine Batho, president of the French political environmentalist party Génération écologie. The declaration recognized that a tree “should be respected throughout its life and have the right to develop and to reproduce freely, from its birth to its natural death, whether it be a town tree or a country tree. A tree should be considered as a subject of law, including when laws regarding human property are involved.”