When we heard that Mónica Feria Tinta was coming to Bath to promote her new book ‘A Barrister for the Earth’, we grabbed our chance to meet her for a conversation on the banks of the Avon. Mónica is a leading expert on environmental and climate change law. She has crafted daring legal arguments that draw on constitutional, human rights, and international legislation.
Several of her winning cases have hit the headlines, such as the protection of the Los Cedros cloud forest in Colombia against a Canadian mining company. With no indigenous people inhabiting the forest to represent, Mónica’s client became the forest itself. On the basis of detailed scientific research that showed how irreplaceable the forest was in terms of biodiversity, she successfully claimed them as a legal personality, able to take up law against their own destruction. Los Cedros has become a beacon of hope for people in Britain, as we fight to end the pollution of rivers and desecration of lands and trees. Many groups now look to Rights of Nature law with hope, and in the case of Love Our Ouse (see earlier podcast with Matthew Bird) Mónica was a key advisor.
We talk about her winning cases have hit the headlines, such as the protection of the Los Cedros cloud forest in Colombia against a Canadian mining company. With no indigenous people inhabiting the forest to represent, Mónica’s client became the forest itself. On the basis of detailed scientific research that showed how irreplaceable the forest was in terms of biodiversity, she successfully claimed them as a legal personality, able to take up law against their own destruction. Los Cedros has become a beacon of hope for people in Britain, as we fight to end the pollution of rivers and desecration of lands and trees. Many groups now look to Rights of Nature law with hope, and in the case of Love Our Ouse (see earlier podcast with Matthew Bird) Mónica was a key advisor.
What are we doing to the world? A lot of harm. Why do we seek happiness in the acquisition of things instead of living a good life? Mónica brings passion to the legal process with values that draw on her Andean ancestry (she moved to the UK as a refugee from the civil war in Peru) and her love of nature in England. She lives in Surrey and speaks movingly about her grief at the loss of her friend the oak tree outside her bedroom window, and how it helped her understand the fight for Chester, a London Plane tree in a coastal town in Essex that was under threat of felling for development.