Giving Nature a Voice: Legal Personhood for Environmental Protection in Malaysia. Lessons From New Zealand, Colombia, and Pathways to Reform.

Malaysia's environmental legal framework remains fundamentally anthropocentric, treating nature as property rather than as a rights-bearing entity. Unlike New Zealand and Colombia, Malaysia lacks constitutional recognition of environmental rights and statutory mechanisms for granting legal personhood to ecosystems. This omission, combined with weak enforcement mechanisms and restricted judicial access, has contributed to severe environmental degradation including deforestation of primary rainforests, pollution of critical river systems like the Klang River and accelerating biodiversity loss where Malaysia is well known for its forests, nature, and biodiversity. This article examines how New Zealand's statutory guardianship model exemplified by the Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Act 2017, and Colombia's constitutional ecocentrism, demonstrated through landmark Constitutional Court decisions recognizing nature as a subject of rights, offer viable pathways for Malaysian legal reform. Drawing on comparative analysis and Malaysia's constitutional structure, Islamic legal traditions, and indigenous rights contexts, this article proposes a phased implementation strategy for recognizing nature's legal personhood, including constitutional amendments, statutory reforms, and pilot projects in iconic ecosystems.