Te Urewera Act 2014, Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Act 2017, Te Anga Pūtakerongo – Record of Understanding 2017
Those two Acts of 2014 and 2017 have given Te Urewera and Whanganui Awa “all the rights, powers, duties, and liabilities of a legal person”. Governing boards or offices, made up of representatives of iwi and the government, have been set up to act in their interests.
Applying the idea of legal personality to things like regions and rivers is quite new, but the idea has been applied to organisations in New Zealand and overseas law for a long time.
Registered companies and incorporated societies, for example, have separate legal personality status. Their example can give us some idea of what having this legal status may mean for natural features. Companies and incorporated societies can own property, sign contracts, pay taxes on their income, hire staff, and sue and be sued in court.
By contrast, if you get together with friends and others to set up an informal community organisation, this won’t be recognised by the law as a separate legal entity that can do things like own land in its own name – only the individual people who make up the organisation would be able to do that. But if you were to then “incorporate” your community group under the Incorporated Societies Act (which means literally to make a separate body out of it), your group would then be recognised as a separate legal person by the law.