Reimagining Participation in International Environmental Law for the More-Than-Human: A Multi-Species Toolkit Applied to the Whanganui River
Strauss, Michelle (2025) Reimagining Participation in International Environmental Law for the More-Than-Human: A Multi-Species Toolkit Applied to the Whanganui River. Doctoral thesis, Birmingham City University.
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Michelle Strauss PhD Thesis_Final Version_Final Award June 2026.pdf - Accepted Version Download (2MB) |
Abstract
This research critically examines the structural and conceptual limitations of international environmental law (IEL). It argues that IEL remains constrained in its response to accelerating ecological crises due to its deep entrenchment in anthropocentric, Eurocentric worldviews dominant in the Global North. Although IEL has expanded significantly since the 1970s, its foundational frameworks continue to prioritise human concerns, thereby limiting its capacity to respond meaningfully to the interconnected challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss, and ecological degradation.
Drawing on feminist legal scholarship, the thesis positions participation as a key site through which to challenge dominant legal logics. The research adopts a multidimensional methodology informed by ecofeminism, posthumanism, and Indigenous scholarship to interrogate whose voices are recognised within environmental decision-making and whose remain structurally excluded. It explores how legal subjectivity might be reconceived to include ecosystems, species, and non-human entities.
To operationalise this analysis, this thesis introduces a novel multispecies participation toolkit designed to both diagnose structural exclusions and to guide participatory redesign. Building on established human-centred participation models, the toolkit provides a structured framework for evaluating the quality and legitimacy of participation, and for identifying opportunities for institutional transformation.
The toolkit is applied to an in-depth longitudinal case study of the Whanganui River in Aotearoa New Zealand, which was granted legal personhood in 2017 following decades of Māori advocacy. This case offers valuable insights into the possibilities and limits of the current legal approaches to non-human participation. It demonstrates how participatory architecture can either enable or constrain meaningful multispecies recognition within existing institutional settings.
The thesis concludes that meaningful ecological governance requires a fundamental reorientation of IEL’s participatory foundations. It argues that only by engaging seriously with pluralist and multispecies perspectives can environmental law begin to respond more adequately to contemporary ecological crises and to the wider community of life affected by environmental decision-making.
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