Two municipalities in the Peruvian Amazon have granted native stingless bees the legal right to exist, thrive and be represented in court. This is the first time any insect has been recognized as a rights-bearing entity anywhere in the world, according to a correspondence published in Nature.
The ordinances passed in the municipalities of Satipo and Nauta-Loreto guarantee the bees’ right to exist, reproduce and flourish. This establishes a legal framework allowing Indigenous groups and conservationists to sue on behalf of the bees.
The campaign was led by Rosa Vásquez Espinoza, founder of Amazon Research Internacional. She spent years traveling into the Amazon to document the bees in collaboration with Indigenous communities. Indigenous peoples have cultivated stingless bees since pre-Columbian times, and they have cultural and spiritual meaning for Indigenous groups such as Asháninka and Kukama-Kukamiria peoples.
“Within the stingless bee lives Indigenous traditional knowledge, passed down since the time of our grandparents,” Apu Cesar Ramos, president of EcoAshaninka of the Ashaninka Communal Reserve told The Guardian. “The stingless bee has existed since time immemorial and reflects our coexistence with the rainforest.”
The Nature authors noted that stingless bees pollinate roughly 80% of tropical flora. However, they face climate change, deforestation, pesticides and competition from invasive European honeybees.
Peru’s national Law No. 32235, passed in 2025, formally recognized stingless bees as a species of national interest. This milestone helped pave the way for the municipal ordinances.
“This ordinance marks a turning point in our relationship with nature: it makes stingless bees visible, recognises them as rights-bearing subjects, and affirms their essential role in preserving ecosystems,” Constanza Prieto, Latin American director at the Earth Law Center, who helped campaign for the ordinances, told The Guardian.
The Peru ordinances are part of a broader global “Rights of Nature” movement that seeks to give ecosystems and species legal standing similar to that of people or corporations. Rivers, forests and even glaciers have been granted legal rights in countries including Ecuador, New Zealand and Colombia. But insects had never crossed that threshold before.
Shi-Jie Wang and A.J.Wubie, who co-authored The Nature piece, said legal rights matter, because they give communities a way to fight back by suing those who destroy habitat or use harmful pesticides. So far, they said, insects have had almost no meaningful legal protection.
The IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority, identifies more than 1,100 insect species as threatened, including more than 20 bee species. Their loss poses systemic risks to food security, forest regeneration and climate resilience.
The researchers are calling on policymakers, particularly those governing biodiversity hotspots in Asia and Africa, to adopt similar legal models for insects.
Banner image: A bee emerging from a hive in Moyobamba, Peru. Image courtesy of Bill Salazar via Pixels/ Creative Commons.
This story first appeared on Mongabay
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