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POLICY AND PRACTICE REVIEWS article

Front. Ocean Sustain.
Sec. Sustainability in Marine Conservation Ecology
Volume 2 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/focsu.2024.1454751

How Legal Personhood and Markets Can Partner to Help Save the Whale

Provisionally accepted
Ralph Chami Ralph Chami 1*Michelle Bender Michelle Bender 2Belinda Bramley Belinda Bramley 3Thomas Cosimano Thomas Cosimano 3*Roger Iles Roger Iles 4*Dinah Nieburg Dinah Nieburg 3Elena Rosa Elena Rosa 3*Mere Takoko Mere Takoko 5*Connel Fullenkamp Connel Fullenkamp 6
  • 1 Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts, United States
  • 2 Other, Seattle, United States
  • 3 Blue Green Future, LLC, Falls Church, Virginia, United States
  • 4 Other, Twyford, United Kingdom
  • 5 Conservation International, Arlington, Virginia, United States
  • 6 Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Recently, the Māori People of Aotearoa, Cook Islands, and Tahiti supported a resolution to endorse their ancestors, humpback whales, as Ocean Ambassadors to the United Nations and to protect their legal personhood. This historic action aims to help protect the whales against dangers such as ship strikes as they migrate through their South Pacific waters. This paper explores how legal personhood and markets could interact to further strengthen this declaration by providing incentives that reward responsible behavior of maritime vessels as they navigate Māori waters. The legal and ethical bases for extending personhood to whales and other species are discussed, followed by the legal steps needed to engender market support and extend protection to other species and localities. By combining personhood declaration with legal actions and market-based incentives, we describe how this novel approach could enhance conservation outcomes and reshape the market in favor of protecting whales as well as other species and habitats.

    Keywords: Legal personhood, Market discipline, whale protection, rights of Nature, public goods, International Cooperation

    Received: 25 Jun 2024; Accepted: 23 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Chami, Bender, Bramley, Cosimano, Iles, Nieburg, Rosa, Takoko and Fullenkamp. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Ralph Chami, Williams College, Williamstown, 01267, Massachusetts, United States
    Thomas Cosimano, Blue Green Future, LLC, Falls Church, Virginia, United States
    Roger Iles, Other, Twyford, United Kingdom
    Elena Rosa, Blue Green Future, LLC, Falls Church, Virginia, United States
    Mere Takoko, Conservation International, Arlington, 22202, Virginia, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.