Stingless bees from the Amazon granted legal rights in world first
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/dec/29/stingless-bees-from-the-amazon-granted-legal-rights-in-world-first
Loosely explained as follows - more detail in the article…
What happened: Two Peruvian municipalities—Satipo (passed an ordinance in October 2025) and Nauta (approved a matching ordinance on 22 December 2025)—granted stingless bees legal rights, described as a world first for an insect.
What “rights” mean in practice: The ordinances recognise rights including to exist and thrive, to maintain healthy populations, to a habitat free from pollution, to ecologically stable climatic conditions, and to legal representationwhere threats or harm occur—creating a basis for enforceable protections and policy obligations.
Why it was pursued: Stingless bees are presented as primary pollinators and culturally significant to Indigenous communities, but are under a “confluence” of pressures: deforestation, pesticides, climate change, and competition from introduced honeybees.
Who drove it: The push combined research and advocacy led by Rosa Vásquez Espinoza (Amazon Research Internacional) and the Earth Law Center (Constanza Prieto), including chemical analysis of stingless-bee honey and field expeditions with Indigenous partners.
Key scientific/policy backdrop: Mapping work linked deforestation to decline and helped support a 2024 Peruvian law recognising stingless bees as native bees, which is important because Peruvian law requires protection of native species.
A notable additional threat described: The article highlights competition from Africanised honeybees (originating from a mid-20th-century breeding effort in Brazil) as a direct displacement pressure in some areas.
What’s next: A petition calling for national adoption reportedly reached hundreds of thousands of signatures, and groups outside Peru have shown interest in using the ordinances as precedents.
