From Bees to Soil: Why Legal Rights for Nature Are Emerging – But Not (Yet) for Soil

Progress That Exposes a Gap

The recent decision to grant legal rights to stingless bees in the Amazon marks a symbolic turning point in environmental law. For the first time, an insect species is no longer protected merely because it serves human interests, but because it has a right to exist, thrive, and be defended in court. This is part of a broader shift: nature is slowly moving from being an object of regulation to a subject of law.

At first glance, Europe seems to be moving in the same direction for soil. In 2025, the European Union finally adopted its first Soil Monitoring Law, after decades of scientific warnings about soil degradation, erosion, contamination, carbon loss, and biodiversity decline. For soil scientists and environmental advocates, this law is undeniably historic: soil has, at last, entered EU legislation as something that must be systematically monitored, assessed, and discussed at policy level.

But when we place these two developments side by side – legal rights for bees and soil monitoring for soil – an uncomfortable contrast emerges.

What the EU Soil Monitoring Law Actually Does

The EU Soil Monitoring Law represents a major institutional step forward. It requires Member States to:

• establish harmonised soil monitoring systems,
• assess soil condition using shared physical, chemical and biological indicators,
• identify degraded and contaminated soils,
• and support land managers through guidance and voluntary improvement measures.

Crucially, it also acknowledges something long ignored: soil degradation is systemic, widespread, and incompatible with long-term food security, climate resilience, and ecosystem stability.

In that sense, the law is a victory. Soil is no longer entirely invisible at the European level. Data will be generated, trends will be tracked, and soil will finally appear in the same institutional conversations as air and water.

Yet, the law is also revealing in what it does not do.

Monitoring Without Legal Standing

Despite its importance, the Soil Monitoring Law does not grant soil any form of legal status, legal standing, or intrinsic protection. Soil remains something that is:

• measured
• classified
• reported on

but not something that can be legally defended for its own sake.

There is no recognition of soil as a living system with a right to maintain its functions. No obligation to restore degraded soils within binding timelines. No possibility for citizens, communities, or future generations to legally challenge soil destruction as a violation of soil itself.

In legal terms, soil is still treated primarily as a substrate tied to land use, property, and productivity, not as a foundational ecosystem.

This is where the contrast with the stingless bees becomes striking.

Bees as Legal Subjects, Soil as a Technical Variable

In the Amazon case, stingless bees are recognised as rights-bearing entities. Humans can act as guardians on their behalf. Harm to bees is not just poor environmental management, it is a violation of rights.

Soil, meanwhile, even under Europe’s most ambitious soil law to date, is still framed as a technical object of monitoring, not as a subject deserving protection in its own right.

This raises a paradox:

We are legally prepared to defend the rights of insects – yet we hesitate to recognise legal value in the very system that sustains them.

Bees depend on soil for flowering plants, nutrient cycles, water regulation, and landscape stability. Without functioning soil, pollinators collapse. Yet soil itself remains legally voiceless.

Why Soil Still Falls Through the Legal Cracks

This gap is not accidental. Soil has long been difficult for legal systems to grasp:

• It is slow, not spectacular.
• Its degradation is often diffuse, not catastrophic.
• It is deeply entangled with private property, agriculture, and economic interests.

As a result, soil law has evolved as management law, not protection law. Even the EU Soil Monitoring Law reflects this logic: improve knowledge first, then encourage better practices — but stop short of enforceable ecological limits.

The stingless bees case shows a different legal imagination. It does not wait for perfect data. It starts from a simple premise: this living system matters enough to deserve rights.

What This Means for Soil Security

From a soil security perspective, the EU Soil Monitoring Law is a necessary foundation but not an endpoint.

Monitoring answers the question “What is happening to soil?”
Rights would answer the question “What is unacceptable to do to soil?”

Until soil crosses that threshold, degradation remains negotiable. Soil loss can be weighed against short-term economic gain. Soil contamination can be tolerated within thresholds. Soil erosion can be “managed” rather than prevented.

The recognition of legal rights for bees exposes this imbalance. It shows that environmental law can evolve beyond human utility, when political will and moral clarity align.

Conclusion: A Question the Bees Force Us to Ask

If a society can recognise legal rights for insects because they are essential to ecosystems and cultural identity, then a deeper question emerges:

Why does soil – finite, non-renewable on human timescales, and foundational to all terrestrial life – still lack comparable legal recognition?

The EU Soil Monitoring Law is progress. But it also makes the absence of stronger soil legislation more visible than ever. Data without rights is not protection. Monitoring without legal consequence is not security.

The bees remind us that environmental law is not limited by science – it is limited by imagination. And soil, perhaps more than any other system, is still waiting to be imagined as something worth defending in its own right.

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