Currently, there are five counties in Florida, including Orange, Lee, Alachua, Brevard, and Osceola with advocacy groups working to have the intrinsic rights of their local ecosystems recognized by law. The Center for Earth Jurisprudence’s Advisory Board Member, Lucinda Merritt, recently wrote a piece pertaining to her work advocating for those rights in Alachua County and the Santa Fe River ecosystem stating, “The particular philosophy of law that benefits commerce at the expense of natural systems and community rights made sense to lawmakers when our country was young and unpopulated, but times have changed. We need new conversations about whether those laws serve us well today.” https://www.gainesville.com/opinion/20190902/lucinda-faulkner-merritt-legal-system-isnt-set-up-to-protect-environment. To stay up to date on the latest developments, please follow these groups on Twitter at @SAFEBOR, @CalR_O_N, and of course @earthjurist.
