Recognize everyone's right to walk into forests, fields, and riverbanks, no matter who owns the land
In short
- Everyone may walk through, and rest in, forests, fields, and riverbanks.
- In return, people may not enter farm fields, gardens, or the area around a home.
- Landowners are not held responsible when a person who enters gets hurt.
- Using fire, leaving trash, and harming living things are strictly banned.
If this comes true
A twelve-year-old girl who grew up in an apartment crosses a hillside pasture on the edge of town with three friends, reaches a stream, takes off her shoes, and counts tadpoles with her feet in the cold water.
Perhaps
A stranger out for a walk might leave a gate open, letting sheep out onto the road, and an old shepherd might search all night for them.
Water so far 💧 0
The proposal in detail
This proposal would recognize in law a right for people, whoever owns the land, to walk into, pass through, rest in, swim in, and camp overnight in forests, fields, mountains, the shores of lakes and rivers, the seaside, and similar places outside the homes where people live and the fields where crops are grown. Excluded from this right would be a set area around a home, gardens, fields with growing crops, pens where livestock are kept, factory and business grounds, and places and seasons that are officially designated to protect animal breeding or rare nature. People who enter would be forbidden to use fire, leave trash, leave a fence or gate open, pull plants out by the roots, or chase animals, and violations would carry fines. The right does not include driving in on cars or motorbikes. Owners could not put up fences or signs meant to keep people out, but the law would also state that owners are not responsible if someone who enters is hurt by natural terrain or tree branches, for example. The only exception is when the owner acts on purpose or with serious negligence. Owners of land that suffers heavy damage from visitors would receive public money to build up paths and compensation for the damage. Sacred sites and ceremonial places of Indigenous peoples could be excluded by the decision of their own community.
BenefitsNature right nearby becomes a place to play and learn for everyone
The strength of this proposal is that it opens nature that already exists to everyone, without buying new land or building new facilities. Even without a car or travel money, people can spend time in forests and on riverbanks they can walk to from home, so the chance to experience nature depends less on how wealthy a family is. When owners are not blamed for injuries, they have less reason to put up fences, and schools and community groups can take children outdoors without the trouble of asking for permission. Walking through a field on your own feet, touching water, and finding living things builds a sense that picture books and screens cannot give, and it lays the foundation for caring about nature. Time among trees and soil also helps adults rest their minds and bodies. When people know the nature close to them well, they are more likely to speak up to protect a place if it is about to be lost to development. By clearly setting out what is forbidden and backing it with fines, the proposal also shows a way to let people enter freely while not harming nature or the owners' lives.
DrawbacksIt cuts into owners' property, and help for the injured becomes thinner
This proposal takes away from landowners the right to decide who may enter their own land. Owners could no longer refuse strangers who come and go almost every day in a forest their family has protected for generations. As more people come, trash, trampling, and the risk of wildfire from unattended campfires rise; if fences are opened, livestock get out, and sheep chased by a visitor's dog may die. Compensation for damage is limited, and owners keep carrying the burden and the worry. If people wander into places where birds nest or animals raise their young and designations to protect them cannot keep up, nature itself may be harmed. Because an owner cannot be held responsible when a visitor falls off a cliff or is crushed under a dead branch, the path for injured people and their families to receive compensation becomes narrow. If land values fall, farmers and families who borrowed money using that land as security would also feel the effects. The closer a place is to a city, the more people crowd in, and conflict with people who moved there for a quiet life might never end.
Learn the background
Both children and adults spend less and less time in nature. The cause is not only long hours spent in city life and in front of screens, but also that people cannot enter nature even when it is nearby. In many societies, most of the forests, fields, and riverbanks on the edge of town are private land, and if an owner puts up a fence and a no-trespassing sign, local people cannot walk there. One big reason owners do not want to let people in is the worry of being held responsible if a visitor gets hurt. Schools share the same worry, and a growing number of teachers hold back from outdoor activities because they think they will be blamed if an accident happens. There are efforts to create more parks and protected areas, but buying land costs a great deal of money, and those places tend to be far from towns. As a result, only children from families who own a car and can travel to a distant nature park get to touch nature, while other children grow up never having walked through a field, even one right next door. Between the rights of landowners and the wishes of people who want to be in nature, change has been slow.
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This proposal was written in Japanese by AI (claude-opus-5-5, policy version 2026-10-23a) and translated by AI (claude-sonnet-5-5). Nobody has checked the facts. Read the original (日本語) How the AI writes