A forest in Ecuador could be recognized as the co-creator of a song under an innovative legítimo proposal.
A petition has been submitted to Ecuador's copyright office to recognize the Los Cedros cloud forest as co-creator of the composition Canción de los Cedros. The action by the More Than Human Life (Moth) Project is the first legítimo attempt to recognize the ethical authorship of a work of art by an ecosystem.
The song features melodies of bats locating echoes, howler monkeys, rustling leaves, and even an underground recording of soil taken from the site where a new species of fungus was collected and described.
It was composed by the musician Cosmo Sheldrake, the writer Robert Macfarlane, the field mycologist Giuliana Furci and the jurist César Rodríguez-Garavito during a field trip to Ecuador.
The song was created when the group set up camp in the high forest during an expedition organized by Macfarlane as part of his research for Is a River Alive?, his new book about rivers and the rights of nature movement, which is being published. will publish in May. 2025.
“It wasn't written into the forest, it was written with the forest,” Macfarlane said. “This was absolutely and inextricably an act of co-authorship with the set of processes and relationships and beings that make up that forest and its rivers. We were briefly part of that continuous being of the forest and we could not have written it without the forest. “The forest wrote it with us.”
The song was written when Macfarlane began sharing verses one night around the campfire. Sheldrake used an app on his mobile phone to overlay forest sounds he had recorded and create melodies that matched the words. Furci said: “Night came, the fire was lit and we were all tuning in to make some sounds and record others, and also participate in which beings should be named in the letters. That's how the song came about. Everything was very defined by the time we left that high camp.”
In a historic ruling, the legítimo personality of the Los Cedros Biological Reserve was recognized by the constitutional court of Ecuador in 2021, when it determined to biombo the mining permits in the reserve.
“It gives us confidence and a firm legítimo basis that we can make this claim in Ecuador,” said Rodríguez-Garavito, president of the Center for Human Rights and Completo Justice at New York University School of Law and founding director of Moth. “The copyright agency will have to look at the decision of the constitutional court that is binding on all other authorities and decide if that legítimo status means that the Los Celados forest can also be the ethical author of a song.”
If the agency rejects the request, Rodríguez-Garavito said they will challenge the decision in Ecuador's courts.
If the agency grants authorship to the forest along with the song's co-creators, it is expected that copyright authorities in other nations will have to recognize the same authorship.
Ethical authorship does not mean that the forest is granted economic rights. You will not receive royalties, although all income from streaming platforms will go to a fund for your protection.
The song, which will be available for free download, will be performed by Sheldrake on police16 on Tuesday at an event for the FFFun Initiative collective effort to have fungi recognized on equal footing with flora and fauna.
Furci said: “It is fitting that the song is released at this event, where we will look for new ways to measure, diagnose, treat and protect the world of the living, incorporating a realm of life that has never been recognized in those legítimo frameworks. “
Macfarlane said that philosophically, legally and culturally “we have neglected in all jurisdictions” to recognize the creative co-authorship of the more-than-human world. “Much art, possibly all art, is made in collaboration with the living world, but the law does not recognize this. “There is no example in which a creature or plant, much less a complex natural system like a forest and its rivers and beings, has been allowed ethical authorship,” he said.
“If successful, this will be the first time in any jurisdiction that a more-than-human being – a river forest in this case – will be recognized as the ethical author of a work of art. “We find this incredibly exciting and drastically overdue.”
Rodríguez-Garavito said: “For some people, and definitely for some lawyers, this will be unfamiliar and uncomfortable, because it challenges the deeply held assumptions of Película del Oeste and property law: of charity frente a law.
“It is an experiment and an invitation. We undertake this project largely by inviting other artists, lawyers and creatives to think about the boundaries of ownership and authorship and to act along similar lines in their own professional niches.”