The Right of Nature: Lessons from Panama for Mangrove Protection in Miami

Authors

• Jayson Fry, University of Miami School of Law

Abstract

Mangrove ecosystems are indispensable to climate resilience, yet traditional environmental governance has repeatedly failed to prevent their decline. This Note employs a comparative framework to examine Panama and Miami, two rapidly developing coastal regions facing parallel pressures of urbanization and sea-level rise, to demonstrate that mangrove loss persists not because law is absent, but because existing frameworks structurally authorize regulated degradation. Panama’s 2022 Rights of Nature Law, which grants ecosystems legal personhood and enforceable rights, represents a departure from anthropocentric environmental regulation. Its early judicial application in the Cobré Panamá mine case shows how rights-based protections can override extractive economic priorities and impose affirmative duties on the state. Miami, by contrast, remains confined within a fragmented regulatory model constrained by state-level preemption and procedural permitting frameworks that do not necessarily prevent destruction. This Note argues that a Rights of Nature framework, if adopted in Miami, would provide both substantive rights and due process protection, enabling residents and advocates to litigate directly on behalf of mangrove ecosystems. Although Florida law currently prohibits local recognition of nature’s rights, the Panama example demonstrates that such a framework could close enforcement gaps and secure long-term climate resilience in Miami.

Recommended Citation

Jayson Fry, The Right of Nature: Lessons from Panama for Mangrove Protection in Miami, 57 U. MIA Inter-Am. L. Rev. 347 (2026).
Available at: https://repository.law.miami.edu/umialr/vol57/iss2/5