Te Urewera

A national park since 1954, in 2014 Te Urewera was at the centre of an unprecedented global legal landmark: through a historic settlement with the Tūhoe people, its ancestral owners, the New Zealand government granted it its own legal personality, making it the first natural area on the planet legally recognised as an entity with rights of its own, rather than being the property of the state or of anyone else. This model, drawn directly from the Tūhoe worldview in which Te Urewera is a living ancestor and not a resource to exploit, has since influenced similar legal decisions in other countries, including the recognition of legal personality for New Zealand's Whanganui river in 2017 and for several rivers in India and Colombia.