For the first time in history, the law is recognizing an insect as a rights holder. In Peru’s central Amazon, officials in Satipo approved an ordinance recognizing native stingless bees as legal subjects with inherent rights.
The ordinance focuses on pollinators that help keep the rainforest alive. Stingless bees pollinate roughly 80 percent of native Amazonian plant species, from forest trees to crops that support wildlife, Indigenous food systems, and global markets. By recognizing them as legal subjects rather than biological resources, the law enables authorities to act when colonies or habitats are threatened, reframing how conservation law defines protection.
“This ordinance marks a turning point in how we understand and legislate our relationship with [n]ature,” said Constanza Prieto Figelist, director of Earth Law Center’s legal program for Latin America, in a press release.
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The Bees That Keep the Amazon Alive
Globally, wild bees play a role in pollinating more than 90 percent of the crops that feed the world, according to the Earth Law Center.
In the Amazon, stingless bees are among the most important of these species. Nearly half of the world’s roughly 500 stingless bee species live in tropical forests, many of them in the Amazon, where their decline has immediate ecological consequences.
As stingless bee populations decline, fewer flowers turn into fruits and seeds. Forest regeneration slows, wildlife loses food sources, and crop yields drop — particularly for fruit-bearing plants that depend on animal pollinators.
For Asháninka communities in the central Amazon, stingless bees are part of daily life. Families have practiced meliponiculture — the stewardship of stingless bees — for centuries, harvesting honey and wax for food, medicine, tools, and ritual use. Knowledge of nesting trees, seasonal cycles, and bee behavior is passed down through generations and is closely tied to observations of forest health.
Those same traits leave stingless bees especially vulnerable to habitat loss. Many species rely on specific tree species for nesting and occur in small, patchy populations. When forests are cleared or degraded, entire colonies can disappear at once.
Deforestation, pesticide use, land conversion, invasive species, and climate-driven extremes — including floods and prolonged droughts — are accelerating these losses. As colonies decline, traditional beekeeping practices become harder to sustain, threatening both biodiversity and the transmission of Indigenous ecological knowledge.
What the Ordinance Does
Conservation laws typically focus on protecting land or regulating how resources are used. But those tools often fail to protect pollinators from cumulative harm — especially when damage comes from many small actions rather than a single threat.
The Satipo ordinance takes a different approach. Instead of treating stingless bees as resources to be managed, it recognizes them — and their ecosystems — as subjects of rights. Under the law, stingless bees are entitled to:
the right to exist and thrive
the right to maintain healthy populations
the right to a healthy habitat free from pollution
the right to ecologically stable climatic conditions
the right to regenerate their natural cycles
the right to be legally represented in cases of threat or harm
This allows authorities to intervene when activities such as deforestation, pesticide use, or habitat destruction threaten bee colonies. Harm to pollinators can now be treated as a legal injury.
A Test Case for Conservation Law
Similar legal frameworks have granted rights to rivers and forests in parts of the world, but insects have largely remained invisible in law. By extending legal recognition to a pollinator, Satipo’s ordinance tests whether conservation law can protect not just landscapes, but the species that keep those landscapes functioning.
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