Maine Overview

What is The Maine Green Amendment?

Green Amendments are self-executing provisions added to the Bill of Rights section of a constitution that recognize and protect the rights of all people, including future generations, to a clean and healthy environment including pure water, clean air, a safe climate, and healthy environments.

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What’s Happening in Maine?

Green Amendments For The Generations is working with our leading partners in the state – Down To Earth Storytelling and individual community activists – to reinitiate a Green Amendment effort in Maine.

You are invited to join us for the Reboot of a Maine Green Amendment effort! You’ll hear from legislative champion Rep. Laurie Osher, leading Maine advocates, and national Green Amendments for The Generations movement Founder Maya K. van Rossum about this new phase of the movement, including new language and how YOU can get involved. Learn more about the event and sign up here.

We are looking forward to robust engagement in 2026.

The proposed Amendment would add the following Section 25 to Article 1 of the Maine Constitution:

Section 25. Environmental rights. All people have the right to a clean and healthy environment, including pure water, clean air, a safe climate and healthy ecosystems, and to the preservation of the natural, cultural and healthful qualities of the environment. The State including each branch, agency and political subdivision, shall not infringe upon these rights and shall protect these rights equitably for all people, regardless of race, ethnicity, tribal affiliation, age or socioeconomic status. The State including each branch, agency and political subdivision, shall serve as trustee of Maine’s natural resources, including, but not limited to, its air, water, land and ecosystems. The State including each branch, agency and political subdivision, shall conserve, protect and maintain these natural resources, for the benefit of all the people, including generations yet to come. The rights stated in this section are self-executing, inherent, inalienable and indefeasible and are among those rights reserved to the people.

Stay Tuned to this website to keep abreast of where things stand and how you can get engaged.

But meanwhile:

–> Learn more about how the Maine Constitution is amended here.

–> See our Frequently Asked Questions here.

–> Check out our Resources page to explore more.  

What Has Happened So Far to Advance the Maine Green Amendment? Here’s the History.

On March 24th, 2022 the Maine Green Amendment (previously referred to as the Pine Tree Amendment) secured support from a majority of the Maine House of Representatives in a vote of 77 to 59.  In Maine, a 2/3 majority is needed for the proposal to advance — while the Green Amendment came close to the mark, it didn’t quite get there but this demonstrates a powerful foundation from which to build.

The Pine Tree Amendment was re-proposed for the 2023 legislative session as LD928. The Amendment had a good hearing before the Environment and Natural Resources Committee. In the end the committee adjourned without taking a vote.  

Efforts continued in 2024 and 2025 but did not have the legislative and grassroots leadership important for vibrant success. While communities and organizations continued to vocalize incredible support, a Maine Green Amendment did not advance.

But 2026 is a new year and things are happening!

Organizations Signed in Support of the Maine Amendment Over The Years

Some of the Senators & Representatives who have Sponsored the Amendment in past years

• Representative Margaret O’NEIL of Saco
• Representative Lydia CRAFTS of Newcastle
• Representative Rebecca JAUCH of Topsham
• Representative William PLUECKER of Warren
• Representative Ambureen RANA of Bangor
• Senator Richard BENNETT of Oxford
• Senator Matthea DAUGHTRY of Cumberland
• Representative Morgan RIELLY of Westbrook
• Representative Sophia WARREN of Scarborough

Check Out Senator Bennett’s 2022 Testimony (R-19)

“Senator Brenner, Representative Tucker and esteemed colleagues of the Joint Standing Committee on Environment and Natural Resources: My name is Rick Bennett, I live in Oxford, and I have the honor of representing the beautiful foothills and lakes region of western Maine in the Maine Senate. I am pleased to cosponsor LD 489, “RESOLUTION, Proposing an Amendment to the Constitution of Maine To Establish a Right to a Healthy Environment”—also known as the Pine Tree Amendment. The proposed Amendment is predicated on the fact that a core condition of human life and core to our state’s identity is a healthy environment and a clean outdoors. This Amendment will hold our government accountable to protect these as basic rights.

The Pine Tree Amendment would be added to Article I., the Declaration of Rights in the Maine Constitution. This enumeration of rights therefore precedes the mechanisms and applications of governmental powers, the checks and balances, the legal definitions which follow. Indeed, the expression of these rights foremost in our founding document is designed as a limitation on the governmental power that is thereafter constructed. The Declaration of Rights are the bedrock principles and legal protections that you can expect if you live in Maine. The Pine Tree Amendment fits comfortably and contentedly in this context. What commonality is more important for Mainers than our bountiful, beautiful outdoors – the clean winds of Katahdin, the lapping waves of Sebago, the bends of coastal shoreline? What says Maine more than cross-country skiing on a crisp March morning, dipping your paddle in Chesuncook Lake, feeling the earth awaken around your tree stand in November, traversing the boulders of Mahoosuc Notch, or hearing the buoy bell at eventide? Our way of life in Maine demands recognition and protection as a right of the people. Sadly, our government has shown that it cannot always be trusted. Sometimes its policies are swayed unduly by centers of influence, such as globe-straddling corporations that may think of Maine as a market, as a means to an end, rather than as the unique place it is, where there is a special interconnectedness between the people and the lands and waters on which we live, play, work, and find sustenance. Thus, the Pine Tree Amendment will help safeguard the harmonizing elements of our way of life, our shared values and our common culture. I ask for your favorable consideration and thank you for your attention.”

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National Green Amendment Movement

Find out where else we are working.