In this article, we explore rights of nature (RoN) as an emerging rights-based environmental governance that intends to reframe nature from property to an entity with a right to exist unharmed. Its proponents claim this is a paradigm shift that reworks the imbalanced human–nature hierarchy. We interrogate this claim using data collected from more than 60 U.S. communities where RoN ordinances have been implemented. Our analysis identifies three reoccurring themes within the U.S. settler colonial context, including a coconstitution of rights for nature alongside a community’s right to a healthy environment, the emphasis of self-governance and individual community empowerment, and the overwhelming Whiteness of settler communities that implement RoN laws. We put these themes into conversation with critical race scholarship, which evaluates the racialized impacts of a liberal legal system of rights to examine how within the U.S. settler colonial context RoN mobilizes Western White liberal conceptions of legal rights to address our current environmental crises. In analyzing these themes through the lens of critical race scholarship, we contend that rights-based environmental governance in the form of RoN laws appears to reinforce many of the entrenched social-legal-environmental relations that characterize White liberalism recast through a language that claims universal rights.

在本文中，我们探讨了自然权利 (RoN) 作为一种新兴的基于权利的环境治理，旨在将自然从财产重新构建为有权不受伤害地存在的实体。它的支持者声称这是一种范式转变，它改变了不平衡的人与自然等级制度。我们使用从已实施 RoN 条例的 60 多个美国社区收集的数据来审问这一说法。我们的分析确定了美国定居者殖民背景下三个反复出现的主题，包括自然权利与社区健康环境权的共同构成、自治和个人社区赋权的强调，以及实施 RoN 的定居者社区的压倒性白人法律。我们将这些主题与批判性种族奖学金进行对话，它评估了自由法律权利体系的种族化影响，以研究在美国定居者殖民背景下 RoN 如何动员西方白人自由主义的法律权利概念来解决我们当前的环境危机。在通过批判性种族奖学金的视角分析这些主题时，我们认为，以 RoN 法律形式出现的基于权利的环境治理似乎加强了许多根深蒂固的社会-法律-环境关系，这些关系通过一种声称普遍的语言重塑了白人自由主义的特征权利。