Panama’s highest court delivered a unanimous ruling in November 2023 C.E. that ordered the closure of one of the world’s largest open-pit copper mines — and it did so by invoking the country’s own Rights of Nature law. The decision is one of the most direct applications of Rights of Nature legislation by a national supreme court anywhere in the world, and it sets a precedent that legal scholars and environmental advocates are still unpacking.
At a glance
- Rights of Nature law: Panama passed Law 287 in February 2022 C.E., formally recognizing nature as a subject of rights — including the right to be protected, restored, and to regenerate its life cycles.
- Supreme Court ruling: On November 28, 2023 C.E., Panama’s Supreme Court unanimously declared the Cobre Panamá mining concession unconstitutional, citing the mine’s failure to include strict measures to prevent environmental damage.
- Mine closure process: A formal closure process was set to begin as soon as the ruling was published in Panama’s official gazette, ending operations at one of the hemisphere’s largest copper mines.
What the court actually said
The Supreme Court’s ruling did not simply void a contract on procedural grounds. It reaffirmed that nature holds legal standing — that it is a subject of rights, not merely an object of regulation. The court found that the mining concession for Cobre Panamá failed to meet the standards set by Law 287 because it lacked sufficient measures to prevent environmental damage to the surrounding ecosystems.
That framing matters. Most mining disputes are resolved through environmental impact assessments and regulatory permits — administrative tools that weigh costs against benefits. This ruling applied a different standard: nature’s right to be protected and to regenerate, treated as a legal threshold the concession simply did not clear.
Law 287, passed just under two years before the ruling, had not yet been tested at this scale. Its invocation by the full court — unanimously — marks the law’s transition from a policy aspiration to an enforceable constitutional instrument.
What was at stake on the ground
The Cobre Panamá mine, operated by First Quantum Minerals through its subsidiary Minera Panamá, had become one of the most contested industrial projects in Central American history. Opponents pointed to the mine’s degradation of coastal rainforests that supply freshwater to surrounding communities, its potential harm to endangered species, and its impact on Indigenous populations in the region.
Weeks of nationwide protests preceded the ruling. Demonstrators blocked roads, shut down supply chains, and demanded that the government act. The protests drew participation from a wide cross-section of Panamanian society — teachers, students, health workers, and Indigenous community leaders — united around concerns that the concession had been approved without adequate public or community consent.
That pressure matters as context, though the court’s reasoning stood on legal — not political — ground. The ruling’s basis in Law 287 means it cannot be easily dismissed as a response to public opinion; it is anchored in statute and constitutional interpretation. This is part of a broader wave of climate progress being driven not only by policy but by law.
A growing body of Rights of Nature law
Panama is not alone in this direction. Ecuador enshrined Rights of Nature in its constitution in 2008 C.E. Bolivia passed framework legislation in 2010 C.E. New Zealand granted legal personhood to the Whanganui River in 2017 C.E. Colombia’s Supreme Court recognized the Colombian Amazon as a subject of rights in 2018 C.E.
What distinguishes the Panama ruling is the directness of its application. The court did not gesture toward Rights of Nature as a philosophical backdrop — it used Law 287 as an operative legal standard and found the mining concession wanting against it. The Eco Jurisprudence Monitor, which tracks Rights of Nature cases globally, documents the ruling as a significant milestone in the movement’s legal history.
Legal scholars note that the ruling creates real precedent for how future concessions and contracts must be evaluated in Panama. Any project that cannot demonstrate it meets the standards set by Law 287 — protection, restoration, and support for natural life cycles — faces the same constitutional risk that ended Cobre Panamá. That shifts the burden in a meaningful way.
Indigenous-led land and water protection has driven much of the Rights of Nature movement’s momentum globally, including efforts like Bolivia’s Amazon rainforest protection initiatives. Panama’s ruling reflects a similar pattern: Indigenous communities and their allies using legal systems to enforce protections that administrative processes failed to deliver.
What remains unresolved
The mine’s closure is not instantaneous. Open-pit copper mines of Cobre Panamá’s scale require complex decommissioning processes — managing tailings, rehabilitating land, and addressing the economic disruption for workers who depended on the operation. First Quantum Minerals, a Canadian company, contested the outcome and has pursued international arbitration, meaning the legal dispute extends beyond Panama’s borders and domestic courts.
The broader question — whether Rights of Nature laws can consistently withstand the economic and diplomatic pressures that accompany large extractive projects — remains open. A landmark ruling is a beginning, not a conclusion.
Still, what happened in Panama in November 2023 C.E. represents something genuinely new: a national supreme court, acting unanimously, using a Rights of Nature law as the operative basis to shut down a billion-dollar mining operation. The legal architecture for a different relationship between states and the natural world is being built, case by case, in courtrooms across the hemisphere.
Read more
For more on this story, see: Eco Jurisprudence Monitor — Panama Supreme Court case
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Bolivia’s Indigenous-led Amazon rainforest protection
- China’s fusion plasma record: EAST holds plasma for 17 minutes
- The Good News for Humankind archive on Panama
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