It will be interesting to see how other countries follow or incorporate New Zealand leadership in conservation.
The law passed Thursday gives Taranaki Maunga all the rights, powers, duties, responsibilities and liabilities of a person. Its legal personality has a name: Te Kāhui Tupua, which the law views as “a living and indivisible whole.” It includes Taranaki and its surrounding peaks and land, “incorporating all their physical and metaphysical elements.”
A newly created entity will be “the face and voice” of the mountain, the law says, with four members from local Māori iwi, or tribes, and four members appointed by the country’s Conservation Minister.
Nice to see NZ in your blog. Recognizing the mountain’s personhood (and rivers and other entities) is about decolonisation not conservation, though that’s a benefit. It’s like Mauna Kea, where one of the protectors’ key messages was along the lines of, if you want to support us, first understand that the mountain is a living entity to us, and that’s not a metaphor.