Canada

Intuitively this makes sense when you consider old-growth trees that have survived for hundreds of years. It's not difficult to revere those old trees in some way. The broader ethical implications are difficult though. If you have a sapling of the same species, then surely it should be given the same reverence since it could well be an old tree in the distant future. So perhaps there is a continuum of rights based on expected life-time of a plant? What is the natural lifespan of a crop plant, or a legume?

There is a decent fraction of vegetarians and vegans who eventually land on Antinatalism, though their focus is usually based on the sentience of human and non-human animals that have a capacity for suffering, not just life. However, perhaps sentience is still the crux of this concern. If an old-growth tree is felled due to an earthquake, it is still tragic but there wasn't an intentional decision responsible for its death. So maybe Antinatalism also resolves this dilemma indirectly.

Long overdue and much needed across the country to stop the destruction of our ecosystem. Ecuador, Bolivia, India, and Panama did something similar a few years back by giving nature wide sweeping legal rights. It sets a a good legal framework to push back on corporate exploitation. That said, it’s still a long way away from actively being able to stop the force of our economic objectives and definitely needs a society that’s ready to uphold them in order to succeed.

This is a good article around Bolivia’s laws that offered some apt observations on how this won’t be enough (even though I fully support it): https://revista.drclas.harvard.edu/bolivias-mother-earth-laws-is-the-ecocentric-legislation-misleading/

“The Mother Earth laws sadly have become statutory devices to legalize the exploitation of natural resources in Bolivia, instead of protecting Mother Earth. By promoting extractive activities in order to achieve the Living Well objective, on one side, and the defense of Mother Earth, on the other, these laws end up being highly contradictory, making environmental protection a secondary objective, which is contingent to the government’s prevailing economic interests. In reality these laws did not translate into any improvement in environmental policies in Bolivia and they only served to bolster the deceptive image of the Bolivian government as an international pioneer in environmental protection.

It is not enough to pass laws with abstract Indigenous visions and apparent non-capitalistic concepts if they are not coupled with concrete practices, real actions and enforceability mechanisms. These laws will never be effective if there are no new public policies to change the current non-sustainable production pattern, shifting away from extractive practices that go against Mother Earth’s survival. As long as there is this fundamental dissonance between these laws’ provisions, other legal provisions and specially the Bolivian government’s practices, there is little hope for any improvements in future environmental and animal protection efforts based on there Mother Earth Laws.”

Simply mowing the lawn is now mass murder.

What about other plants?

Plants are people so your salad is people!

Stop the plant murder!