For the First Time, Part of the Ocean Has Been Granted Legal Personhood

By affording rights to its iconic waves, a Brazilian city is paving a new path to marine protection.

The Brazilian city of Linhares has legally recognized its waves as living beings, marking the first known time part of the ocean has been granted legal personhood.

In early August 2024, the coastal municipality passed a new law that gives the waves at the mouth of the Doce River, which runs to Brazil’s Atlantic coast, the intrinsic right to existence, regeneration, and restoration. This means the waves should continue to form naturally and their water must be clean.

The new law requires the city to protect the physical shape of the river, the ecological cycles that make the waves unique, and the water’s finely balanced chemical makeup through public policies and funding. It also codifies respect for the waves’ cultural and economic role in the community, explains Vanessa Hasson, an environmental lawyer and executive director of the Brazilian NGO Mapas, which advocates for the country’s nascent rights-of-nature movement.

Linhares has also appointed guardians to watch over the waves and act as their representatives in public decision-making. City officials selected Hauley Silva Valim, a surfer and cofounder of the Doce River Alliance, and two others with special relationships with the waves: a representative from the local Indigenous community and a member of the city council’s environment committee.

The prized waves are long and tubular—qualities sought out by surfers—and famous worldwide. But about eight years ago, the tight-knit local surf community began noticing changes, and two of the waves eventually stopped breaking altogether.

Valim explains that the waves at the Doce River mouth were damaged when the Mariana dam collapsed, which devastated the region—killing 19 people, flooding villages, and making headlines around the world. The dam held back waste from an iron ore mine near the inland city of Mariana, Brazil.