Should Plants Have Rights? A Conversation with Alessandra Viola

In recent years, scholars across law, philosophy, environmental science, and Indigenous studies have ignited a vibrant debate over whether legal rights can—and should—be extended to plants. Historically treated as property or a passive backdrop in Western legal systems, plants are now being reimagined as beings with intrinsic value and possibly even legal standing. Proponents of plant rights argue that recognizing flora as subjects of rights could help address biodiversity loss, strengthen environmental protection, and reflect an evolving moral community that includes non-human life. Critics, however, raise practical and philosophical concerns: How can we define a plant “person”? What does it mean to represent a tree or a species in court? And how should such rights be balanced against human interests?

These debates unfold within a larger global movement to recognize the legal rights of nature—a movement that has already reshaped law and policy. From Ecuador’s constitutional recognition of nature’s rights in 2008 to India’s 2017 decision granting legal personhood to the Ganges and Yamuna rivers, ecosystems are increasingly being treated as rights-bearing entities. Within this

 broader landscape, some initiatives have focused explicitly on plants. In 2018, the White Earth Band of Ojibwe in the United States passed a groundbreaking law granting legal rights to manoomin (wild rice), affirming its status as a living relative and enabling tribal authorities to advocate on its behalf in court.

Underlying many arguments for plant rights are the remarkable scientific advancements in understanding plant behavior and communication. Leading the charge in communicating these findings is Italian botanist Stefano Mancuso, a pioneer of “plant neurobiology.” In the popular science book Brilliant Green: The Surprising History and Science of Plant Intelligence (2013, English trans. 2015), Mancuso and co-author Alessandra Viola present evidence that plants can solve problems and exhibit forms of memory and communication. They conclude that “plants are intelligent”. 

Rachael Petersen, Program Lead, Thinking with Plants and Fungi, and Russell Powell, Research & Program Specialist, Thinking with Plants and Fungi, sat down with Alessandra to learn more about her passion for plant rights. Her passion grew from her reflections on the idea that plants are sentient, intelligent, and socially capable beings and from the question that naturally followed: Why don’t they have rights?

The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity. 

Russell Powell: Let's start back in 2015 when you co-authored Brilliant Green with Stefano Mancuso. What first drew you to the discussion of plant intelligence?

Alessandra Viola: At the time, I was pursuing a second PhD in environment and agriculture at the University of Florence while working as a science journalist. My advisor was Stefano Mancuso, a plant neurobiologist studying how plants communicate and respond to their environment. Even then, we had substantial scientific evidence showing how remarkable plants are. They can recognize their kin, learn, and communicate in subtle ways we're still discovering.

Mancuso was inspired by Charles Darwin, who theorized that plants have the intelligence of lower animals. If we look at the vast body of research over the past 200 years, it’s clear that plants meet evolutionary definitions of intelligence. If intelligence is the ability to solve problems, then no life form that survives can be called unintelligent. From that perspective, we argue in the book that plant intelligence is real and should be recognized.

Rachael Petersen: In your more recent book, Flower Power, you argue that plants should have rights. Can you summarize why?

Viola: It’s simple: if plants are intelligent if they can learn, remember, and communicate, and if our lives depend on them, why shouldn’t they have rights? Plants make up over 80 percent of Earth's biomass. Excluding them from moral and legal consideration is a massive oversight. Historically, we placed ourselves atop a hierarchy of life. But that idea is rooted in prejudice, not fact.

We began expanding moral consideration to animals in the 1970s based on their capacity to suffer. But is suffering the only basis for rights? Some humans can’t feel pain yet still have rights. So, the question becomes: why do we have rights at all? After World War II, Eleanor Roosevelt led a UN commission to define human rights. They surveyed experts globally and found no consensus, only that rights were necessary. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights begins without justification. That taught me that rights don’t need an unshakable foundation to be meaningful or powerful.'

Petersen: What definition of rights are you working with when thinking about plants?

Viola: I tried drafting a “Declaration of Plant Rights,” a sort of exercise to test the framework. I modeled it after existing human and animal rights documents. It worked surprisingly well. But my point isn’t to dictate which rights plants should have; it’s to spark a conversation. Recognizing rights changes not only the lives of the beings protected but also the quality of life for everyone. When we granted rights to children, women, and animals, society improved. Imagine how our world would change if we granted protection to 86 percent of the planet’s living matter.

Powell: If plant rights were taken seriously, how might society operate differently?

Viola: Initially, people laughed when I mentioned plant rights. But the same happened with women’s suffrage or abolition. It’s important to remember that rights evolve, as they have many times in the past. These ideas take time. But when plant rights are recognized, we’d have to consider them in decisions like building projects. Should we pave over a forest for a parking lot? Is it necessary? And what about food waste? Whether we eat plants directly or animals that eat plants, all food is ultimately plant-based. Do we think about wasting lives when we throw them away? We need more study and open debate. Things will change, I’m sure of it.

Petersen: That example about waste is powerful. For many, the idea of sentient plants creates cognitive dissonance. If plants feel, then eating a salad becomes an ethical issue. But waste offers a different lens. It’s not about avoiding harm altogether but respecting what we take.

Viola: Exactly. We need points of entry to this conversation that don’t provoke guilt but invite reflection.

Petersen: There’s also the question of individuality. Western rights frameworks rely on individual entities. But many plants don’t fit that model. They reproduce clonally, are networked with fungi, or survive division. How do we apply rights to beings that aren’t individuals in the usual sense?

Viola: That’s one of the main objections to plant rights. Plants aren’t “individuals” in an etymological sense; they can be divided and continue to live. A vine can break and grow elsewhere with the same genetic material. This challenges our assumptions. How many trees are we planting when we plant one tree? How many are we cutting when we fell one?

But instead of using this as a reason not to pursue plant rights, we should see it as a reason to rethink our assumptions. A better world starts with a shift in perspective. We don’t need money for this revolution, just imagination and courage.

Powell: What risks do you see in incorporating plants into the broader “Rights of Nature” framework?

Viola: The Earth jurisprudence movement is doing vital work—Ecuador, Bolivia, and New Zealand have all granted rights to rivers, glaciers, and ecosystems. But in Europe, we’re late to this conversation. One concern is that when we say “nature has rights,” it’s unclear who or what within nature holds those rights. With humans and animals, we protect individuals. But nature is complex and interconnected. If we include plants in these frameworks, it could make legal systems more complicated. But that’s not a reason to avoid it.

Petersen: This reminds me of the concept of prefigurative politics—living as if the world you want already exists. Recognizing plant rights can be aspirational, a gesture toward the kind of future we want.

Viola: Yes, it’s about building a world aligned with our values.

Petersen: To close, which current conversations are you most excited about?

Viola: I consider plant intelligence a fact. Now, we need to move the conversation toward rights. I hope to translate Flower Power into English soon to reach more readers.

I’m also fascinated by how we understand pain. Pain is often used to justify moral status. But our knowledge of pain—even in humans—is limited. There are over 100 clinical definitions of human pain. It’s deeply subjective and hard to measure. So, how can we confidently say plants don’t suffer?

We’ve seen calcium ion waves travel through plants after injury, similar to pain signals in animals. They don’t have brains, but they do transmit signals. This doesn’t mean they suffer like us—but we shouldn’t assume they don’t. We need more research. And we need humility about what we think we know.

Alessandra Viola is an Italian science writer, journalist, and television producer. She holds PhDs in Communication and in Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and teaches Environmental Communication at Vita-Salute San Raffaele University in Milan. She is the author of several science books, including Brilliant Green: The Surprising History and Science of Plant Intelligence (with Stefano Mancuso, Giunti, 2013), Flower Power: Plants and their Rights (Einaudi, 2020), and Ask a Plant: How Seeds, Trees, and Flowers Teach Us to Be Happy (Laterza, 2025). She has written and hosted two science TV programs on RAI: Clorofilla and Racconti verdi. Her work has received multiple awards, including the Armenise-Harvard Foundation Prize for Best Science Journalist (2007), the Austrian Ministry’s Wissenschaftsbuch des Jahres (2016), and the Italian National Award for Science Popularization (twice).