The advent of Rights of Nature (RoN) marks a new paradigm shift in the philosophical approach to nature. As such, the concept has generated enthusiasm amongst environmentalists and legal scholars. This is not surprising since granting legal personhood to nature seems to present itself as a relative easy fix for the multitude of deficiencies of “modern” environmental law. However, when critically assessed, many of the underlying assumptions justifying a shift towards rights-based approaches to nature are open to challenge. In this paper, which takes a more critical stance on the topic of RoN, it is submitted that also the much-criticized modern environmental law is moving towards a recognition of the intrinsic value of nature, puts breaks on property rights, offers remediation actions for pure ecological damage and also increasingly grants environmental ngos wide access to courts. Moreover, on a second level, it is argued that RoN are not a legal revolution and that many of the problems Rights of Nature tries to cure – such as a lack of enforcement – will simply re-emerge if not adequately assessed within this novel paradigm.

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Ecological disasters are, at their foremost, human disasters which also affect the environment. Sudden and immediate impacts as well as those more gradual or long term affect both humans and the environment, tragically confirming that humanity and the environment are "inseparable," as stated in the Rio Declaration, or "indissociable" as stated in the preamble to the March 1, 2005 french Charter of the Environment. If the effects of disasters on the environment are issues of environmental law, the effects on humans belong to human rights law, with the particularity that they concern both classic human rights and the new human rights to the environment recognized both at international level and in many national constitutions and laws. An ecological disaster brings the irreversibility of death, as well as physical injury and destruction of property. Victims usually must flee whether they wish to or not. After a factory explosion, flooding or a tsunami, the only choice is evacuation and therefore the forced departure from one's home. It is impossible to remain alongside the AZF factory in Toulouse nor in New Orleans after Katrina's passing, nor in Port-au-Prince after the Haitian earthquake of January 12, 2010. Departure is inevitable. The result is a new type of widespread population displacement, not caused by war, as in Poland and Germany in 1945, nor by civil war, as in the Congo, but by the violent effects of a disaster, whether natural (including climate change) or accidental, as with Bhopal or Chernobyl. The flight of environmental displaced persons is a manifestation of their fundamental right to life, expressed as the right to survive by fleeing.

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Confrontée à l'exigence de neutralité axiologique, comprise comme le rejet de tout jugement de valeur, la doctrine environnementaliste ne fait pas preuve d'une particulière originalité. Elle porte peu d'intérêt à cette exigence, son discours est inéluctablement affecté par les mêmes biais que ceux qui touchent les autres catégories de doctrine et elle y apporte aussi des réponses comparables. Elle met d'une part en place des processus d'objectivation dont la portée est limitée en raison de l'étroitesse de la communauté scientifique du droit de l'environnement. D'autre part, elle expose peu ses méthodes et sa posture théorique alors même que ces deux éléments seraient de nature à améliorer sa réflexivité. Mais là encore, on ne peut déceler aucune véritable spécificité de la doctrine environnementaliste par rapport aux autres. Elle apparaît donc ni plus ni moins critiquable que les autres au regard de l'exigence de neutralité axiologique. Au-delà, une première phase de la doctrine environnementaliste s'achève probablement, phase qui ressemble d'ailleurs à ce qu'ont connu d'autres catégories de doctrine, entre défense de son objet et recherche de légitimité. Il s'agit désormais d'ouvrir une nouvelle phase que nous souhaiterions à la fois plus théorique et plus méthodique.