"Standing" as a legal term means the ability of a party to bring a lawsuit in court based upon their stake in the outcome.  In other words, standing is the person's right or ability to sue someone in court. Then our question will be whether animals or plants or environments have a standing? I would like to introduce a historic litigation in Korea where salamander brought a lawsuit to prevent tunnel construction for the high speed train (KTX: Korea Train eXpress) which might have destroyed the swamps in the Chun-Sung Mountain.  

In 2002, Korean government had a plan to make a tunnel going through the Chun-Sung Mountain where salamanders, endangered species, were living in 22 natural swamps and 12 valleys in the Chun-Sung Mountain. Green Korea, one of the representative environmental organizations, initiated the movement resisting the construction of the tunnel and they finally filed a lawsuit to stop the construction, in which salamanders along with the two temples located in the Chun-Sung Mountain and an environmental group, "Friends of Salamanders", were plaintiffs. This case went all the way to the Supreme Court in Korea and one of the issues in the case was the question about whether salamander can bring a lawsuit to stop the construction. Even if the judges decided that "salamanders are natural objects and it is the right decision that the salamanders have no legal standing to carry out this case", this case became a monumental case in Korean legal history.   

Compared to the laws in Europe which enacted Constitutional rights for animals just like human beings, Korean law still looks at animals as an object or property in legal concept.  Thus, there are not many legal protections for animal rights and prevent unexpected harm to the environment. Such legal treatment has made animals and plants "minority of the minorities" with almost no legal rights to be properly protected. Now, more and more people call their pet "companion animals" or "family".  Certainly it is the time to face up to reality that we live together with all living creatures in our environment so that all animals and plants can be legally protected, not just as objects and properties.