Shannon Biggs

USA

Shannon Biggs co-founded Movement Rights in 2014 to work with tribes and primarily communities of colour to align human laws with the laws of the natural world. Prior to that she was with Global Exchange for twelve years, where she directed the Community & Nature’s Rights program. At that time, she was among a handful of US organisers to articulate and spread the ideas that have become a vibrant global movement for the Rights of Nature. She is a co-founder and Executive Committee member of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (GARN). In addition to working with communities in California to pass rights-based laws, in 2017 Movement Rights assisted the Ponca Nation of Oklahoma to make history as the first tribe to recognise the Rights of Nature in tribal law. Since then, five other tribes in North America have recognised legal standing for tribal ecosystems. Globally, she has worked with Indigenous communities, led Rights of Nature fact finding delegations in India, New Zealand, Bolivia and Ecuador, and organised and participated in international Rights of Nature Tribunals. She is the co-author of two books, ‘Building the Green Economy: Success Stories from the Grass Roots’ and ‘The Rights of Nature: Making the Case for the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth’. She was a senior staffer at International Forum on Globalisation (IFG) and a Lecturer in International Relations and Environment at SFSU and holds a Masters in Economics, Empire and Decolonisation from the London School of Economics.