A ‘Rights of Nature’ Tribunal Puts the Mountain Valley Pipeline on Trial

In a sunlight-filled conference center at the Haw River State Park in Guilford County, North Carolina, Russell Chisholm stood and clicked through a PowerPoint presentation with photographs of broken streambeds and construction equipment, mud-brown water and flooding.

“Some of these images are distressing,” the environmental activist told about 100 observers in the room and watching online, the atmosphere wavering between sadness and anger as he spoke.

Though the conference hall was laid out like a courtroom, this gathering near the Haw River was far from a standard judicial proceeding or meeting of a local bar association. This was a “peoples’” tribunal, patterned after the citizen-made International War Crimes Tribunal. It was created by environmentalists and lawyers who are part of a growing “rights of nature” movement based on the premise that nature—forests and rivers and wild animals and ecosystems—has inherent legal rights to exist and regenerate, just as humans possess human rights by virtue of their existence. 

A group of American lawyers initially took these ideas and crafted the first on-the-books rights of nature law in 2006, written into a rural Pennsylvania town’s municipal code. While no U.S. court has yet to recognize the rights of nature, the movement has snowballed, culminating in Ecuador’s 2008 recognition of nature’s rights in its constitution. Today, at least 37 countries and numerous U.S. municipalities recognize the rights of nature in some form; in North Carolina, a state representative filed a bill in April to recognize the rights of the Dan River, and sponsored a similar bill for the Haw River last year.

The peoples’ court proceedings this month in North Carolina were affiliated with the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature, the movement’s organizing body, which in 2010 drafted the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, a charter similar to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The alliance created such investigative tribunals out of concerns that today’s national and international legal systems are not protecting the natural world. Over the years, the tribunals have investigated the most difficult international, regional and local cases, from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, to destruction of the Amazon, to the climate change crisis. 

The “judges” who gathered in North Carolina, all members of Indigenous communities in North America, had come to take testimony on something they and all of the observers in the conference room considered a scar on the land: the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a highly contested natural gas conduit running from West Virginia to Virginia, with a proposed extension that would continue into North Carolina. 

As it happened, the Mountain Valley Pipeline entered service for the first time on Friday, with the gas flow increasing enough to meet “long-term capacity agreements” by the end of the month.

Opponents of MVP still believe the pipeline is not safe. At a recent press conference on Wednesday denouncing federal regulators’ final approval of the pipeline, they highlighted a May 1 incident at Bent Mountain, Virginia, where a pipe burst during hydrostatic testing; they say they were not informed about the breach until community members experiencing the resulting flooding reported it. 

In the final federal order clearing the MVP to begin operations, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission found that the pipeline “has adequately stabilized the areas disturbed by construction and that restoration and stabilization of the construction work area is proceeding satisfactorily.” 

Regardless of that order, the judges who conducted the rights of nature tribunal are considering bringing the Mountain Valley Pipeline case and evidence forward at a meeting of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature in New York City this September as part of Climate Week, focusing on the impact of fossil fuels on frontline communities.

The Long Road to the MVP

The Mountain Valley Pipeline is a 303.5-mile, 42-inch diameter natural gas pipeline bringing fracked gas from West Virginia to Virginia. The proposed Southgate extension would connect to the pipeline in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, and bring the gas to North Carolina, ending in Rockingham County. The Southgate extension has not yet begun construction and failed to secure required state water and air permits, contributing to significant changes to the project’s design late last year.

Supporters of the project have argued the pipeline is essential for energy reliability and security amid rising demand, and that it would bring economic and employment benefits to the region. 

“Natural gas is an essential fuel for modern life, and, as a critical infrastructure project, Mountain Valley Pipeline will play an integral role in achieving a lower-carbon future,” said Diana Charletta, president and chief executive officer of the pipeline’s lead developer, Equitrans Midstream, in a press release. 

Initially announced in 2014, the MVP route crosses more than 1,000 rivers, streams and other water bodies, and impacts nearly 28 acres of wetlands, according to the watchdog group the Environmental Integrity Project. The pipeline has also been constructed through karst, a unique landscape of soft limestone that erodes and dissolves in water, weakening the land over time; this area of Appalachia is steep and prone to landslides.

Environmentalists and communities along the pipeline’s route have previously raised concerns with state and federal agencies that the terrain poses significant risks to the safe operation of the pipeline; those concerns have been shared by some federal regulators, who filed a proposed safety order in 2023 noting the conditions—including potential pipe corrosion—may pose a risk to public safety and the environment.

However, prior to that order, Congress accelerated the final steps of MVP in the 2023 Fiscal Responsibility Act, which fast-tracked outstanding federal permits and changed the jurisdiction of any legal challenges.

Witnesses at the North Carolina tribunal repeatedly and forcefully took aim at the Fiscal Responsibility Act, which they argued ignored legitimate environmental and structural concerns that had not yet been thoroughly vetted, because the permits were fast-tracked. 

The tribunal’s five judges heard from scientists, academics and conservation experts, who provided data detailing the potential threats to unique mussels and fish in Appalachian waterways, as well as the unknown consequences for larger ecosystems due to disruptions in water flow. 

Activists and members of community organizations also targeted the larger issue of building more fossil fuel infrastructure amid the climate crisis; both Virginia and North Carolina have laws that require phasing out fossil fuels and transitioning to renewable energy within the next few decades.

Most of the witnesses gave first-hand accounts of how the pipeline has affected their communities. Elizabeth and Anderson Jones, who own a farm in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, told the tribunal about their inability to get information about the pipeline or to engage with its developers. 

They reflected in their testimony on how residents in some of the most heavily affected areas are, like them, people of color. On their own farm, Anderson Jones said an MVP pipe was installed running about 600 yards across his land, with a large mound that blocked off an access road and other areas of his property.

“We had a gravesite with the ancestors, and they blocked it off,” he said.

Standing before the tribunal, Chisholm, co-director of the West Virginia advocacy group Protect our Water, Heritage, Rights (POWHR), was one of 13 witnesses called to describe environmental harm and safety hazards tied to the pipeline. 

The witnesses went into detail about sediment build-up, pollution in drinking water, the negative impacts on individual riverine species and whole ecosystems, and what they view as a lack of clear information before and throughout construction.

They also alleged that the pipeline’s developers did not secure appropriate consent from local communities. 

The goal of the forum—called the Yesah Tribunal—was not only to raise awareness of issues related to the Mountain Valley Pipeline, but specifically to investigate them as violations of the “rights of nature,” said Crystal Cavalier-Keck, co-founder of the Indigenous advocacy group 7 Directions of Service, based in North Carolina, and one of the tribunal’s coordinators and witnesses. 

The tribunal also specifically focused on the impact the MVP has had on Indigenous communities, since the rights of nature movement since its inception has taken much of its inspiration from Indigenous peoples’ views on humans’ relationship with nature.

During the proceedings, citizens and members of several tribes spoke about how the disruption of the pipeline and the associated pollution, both from construction and from methane emissions, infringe on their traditional, spiritual and cultural practices tied to lands and waters; the rights of Indigenous people to continue these practices are protected by the non-binding United Nations Declaration of Indigenous Peoples.

This was the first rights of nature tribunal to be conducted by an entirely Indigenous panel of judges from tribes in North America: Casey Camp-Horinek, of the Ponca; Heather Milton Lightening, of the Anishinaabe, nêhiyaw, Blackfoot and Dakota; Hartman Deetz, of the Mashpee Wampanoag; La’Meshia Whittington, of the Apalwahči Mvskoke and Afro-Indigenous; and Patrick Suarez, of the Meherrin Nation. 

“The pipeline is going through our community, affecting our current homeland as well as our ancestral homelands,” testified Cavalier-Keck, a citizen of the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation. 

In her testimony, she said developers of the pipeline, and especially the Southgate extension, had never received permission from Indigenous people living in the path of the projects. “We need to educate people about what it means, free, prior, informed consent,” said Cavalier-Keck, referring to the United Nations-backed principle that states any company or state that wants to take action that would affect Indigenous people or their lands must first meaningfully engage with those communities and receive their consent. 

“While the MVP consulted with tribal government, they didn’t consult with the people in the communities, the people who actually live there,” she told Inside Climate News after the tribunal. 

No one who attended the tribunal spoke in defense or support of the MVP project. Tribunal organizers said they invited pipeline developers and representatives from the affected states, but all either declined to attend or did not respond. 

In response to inquiries from Inside Climate News, a communications officer for West Virginia’s Department of Environmental Protection said the invitation to the tribunal was overlooked, but would have been declined, as it would have been inappropriate for the department to speak on behalf of the entire state government. The deputy secretary for public affairs at the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality said she was not aware of an invitation reaching the head of the department; she also disputed an accusation from the international tribunal’s judges assembly that an email invitation was blocked, saying if that response was received it means the email was sent to an invalid address.

A communications officer with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality said the department monitors concerns related to certain MVP construction activities and that there have been many opportunities for public participation in the MVP project over the past 7 years; they did not acknowledge the tribunal’s invitation.

Equitrans Midstream, the pipeline’s lead developer, did not respond to inquiries about the tribunal. But in the press release last week announcing the start of service for MVP, Thomas F. Karam, executive chairman of Equitrans Midstream, said the company was grateful for the efforts of the state and federal agencies that worked “to ensure MVP’s construction activities met or exceeded all applicable permitting requirements.”

A Verdict

In the end, the tribunal’s ultimate verdict from the panel surprised no one, and was met with cheers. In a 13-point ruling, the judges declared the MVP a violation of the rights of nature and the rights of Indigenous people that should be stopped. They also demanded international attention be brought to the case, as options for legal challenges in the U.S. have largely been exhausted.

“The Yesah Tribunal recognizes there are many issues that still need to be investigated, and will endeavor to research and include those as this case is elevated to higher, international tribunals,”said Camp-Horineck, the Ponca leader from Oklahoma, calling for action at the International Rights of Nature Tribunal, the United Nations, and other bodies. 

Natalia Green, an Ecuadorian activist who is global director of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature, said in an interview the day after the tribunal that the forum was conducted as an alternative means of fact-finding in the absence of action by courts in the U.S., which have yet to recognize any of the rights of nature ordinances passed by local governments. 

“We are replacing the state,” she said, “because the state is not complying with the rights of nature.”