Mother Earth Rights

The Ecuadorian Submission to the Rio+20 process proposes, among others, an Universal Declaration of the Rights of Nature, and living well as an alternative to development. Some relevant extracts:

2. New and urgent issues

17. The Conference should encourage recognition of the rights of nature, that is to say, the right to full respect for its existence, maintenance and regeneration of its life cycles, structures, functions and evolutionary processes. States should be urged to take precautionary measures and restrict activities that could lead to the extinction of species, the destruction of ecosystems or permanent changes to natural cycles.

18. We hereby call for a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Nature, as a response that would ensure that present and future generations can live well.

19. Ecuador proposes living well as an alternative to development, as a new paradigm to replace the prevailing model based on endless economic growth, which has led to overexploitation of natural resources and to poverty, inequality and exclusion of the majority of the population. Living well is a work in progress, borrowed from the ancestral knowledge of the indigenous peoples and nationalities, which involves living in harmony with oneself, nature and others to build democratic, inclusive, plurinational and multicultural States.

(…)

27. The green economy cannot be considered an alternative to sustainable development or a new model. Contemplating a “green economy” without modifying production and consumption patterns is a way of greening protectionism; the speculation that led to the crisis of the capitalist system; disregard of the rights of ancestral peoples; appropriation and privatization of environmental services; and technological dependence of developing countries.

Click here for the complete submission

BONN – Today, Ambassador Pablo Solon of the Plurinational State of Bolivia addressed reporters at the UN climate talks in Germany. Ambassador Solon outlined a clear plan, based on submissions from other countries and civil society, on how to move the talks forward in 2011.

“The key issue at these talks is the gap between how much climate pollution we need to reduce and how much countries are committed to reducing. We call that the “gap” and it’s the difference between 4C of warming and 2C of warming. The Cancun outcome sets us on a path to 4C.” Ambassador Solon Said.

“Some countries want to talk about the ‘rules’ first, instead of this gap in commitment, but we know that rules will not reduce this gap. Fixing rules will simply prevent the gap from increasing, it won’t set about actually reducing emissions. The heart of the matter is the depth of pollution cuts.” Ambassador Solon said. Read more…

Press Briefing of Plurinational State of Boliva,

Amb. Pablo Solón

Bonn, Germany, June 13, 2011

CLICK HERE to watch via UNFCCC Website

(Suzy Chaffee) Following Bolivia’s passage of their domestic law “Recognizing Mother Earth as a living entity and giving Her the Same Rights as Humans,” the United Nations held a dialogue via an interactive webcast on its “Harmony with Nature” Day, April 20, and it is now working on adopting these rights worldwide. Read more…

Intervention in the panel: The Right to Water and Indigenous Peoples

 Ambassador Pablo Solon, Permanent Representative of the Plurinational State of Bolivia to the United Nations

 Issue 6 : Half-Day Discussion on the Right to Water and Indigenous Peoples

 New York, May 24, 2011

Thank you very much, Madam President.

The revolutionary process of change in Bolivia has its roots precisely in the struggle against the privatization of water in my country. Ten years ago, we had one of the biggest battles to defend this resource from privatization in the city of Cochabamba and to oppose and change a law that privatized the sources of potable water for indigenous peoples in farming communities that rely on irrigation. Thanks to our success in stopping the privatization of water and modifying that law, a great unity was born among the Bolivian people which later allowed us to seek even deeper changes, notably the recovery of our natural resources and the recovery of our government – our own government, not one dictated from the outside.

That is why we promoted a resolution at the United Nations last year to declare the human right to water and sanitation, a resolution that was adopted without a single vote in opposition. We have to wonder why it took 62 years to pass a resolution declaring the human right to water and sanitation when it is quite evident that without water, there is no life, and without life, there are no human rights. Nonetheless, 62 years went by between the passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Resolution on the Human Right to Water and Sanitation. Read more…

This week the United Nations General Assembly discussed international standards that grant nature equal rights to humans. Similar protocols have been adopted by over a dozen U.S. municipalities, as well as Bolivia and Ecuador. Renowned environmentalists Maude Barlow and Vandana Shiva join us. Says Shiva, “Most civilizations of the world, for most of human history, have seen the world in terms of relatedness and connection,” says Shiva. “And if there’s one thing the rights of Mother Earth is waking us to, is: we are all connected.

Maude Barlow, head of the Council of Canadians, Canada’s largest public advocacy organization. Barlow is also co-founder of the Blue Planet Project and chair of the board of Food and Water Watch. She is the author of Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water.

Vandana Shiva, world-renowned environmental leader, feminist and thinker from India, author of many books, including Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace and Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development.

AMY GOODMAN: As the world celebrates Earth Day, Bolivia is about to pass the world’s first law that grants nature equal rights with humans. The Bolivian delegation to the United Nations urged the global body to adopt a similar law during this week’s Harmony with Nature conference.

DAVID CHOQUEHUANCA: [translated] The United Nations is revolutionizing the way we look at our planet. At the moment, various issues are being receded in the United Nations, and we have begun to discuss the idea of declaring an official International Day of Mother Earth. And we will also soon be discussing what are the rights of Mother Earth. Read more…

On December 10th, the UN sponsored international climate negotiations known as COP 16 concluded in Cancun, Mexico. 194 countries were in attendance of which 193 signed a non-binding agreement approving market based solutions to forest preservation, loose commitments to send an undefined amount of aid to developing countries, and to lower greenhouse gases by 2020.

While many of the negotiators and even mainstream environmental movements are calling Cancun a success, grassroots movements, including many indigenous and campesino organizations, have denounced the final agreement, saying it will further commodify Mother Earth and not actually combat the world’s climate crisis. Read more…

(Cormac Cullinan) In the wake of failure in Cancun and the much deeper problem that humanity is no longer living within the ecological capacity of the planet, might it be time for nature to have its own legal advocates?

Psychology has become a fashionable tool in the climate world to try and understand the levels of climate denial exhibited most vocally by the rowdy cohort of climate naysayers. With the conclusion of climate talks in Cancun, a more relevant question seems to be whether our climate negotiators suffer from an even worse form of denial – one that accepts the climate science but knowingly signs agreements that do nothing to stop our rush towards runaway climate change. Read more…

(Vandana Shiva) When we think of wars in our times, our minds turn to Iraq and Afghanistan. But the bigger war is the war against the planet. This war has its roots in an economy that fails to respect ecological and ethical limits – limits to inequality, limits to injustice, limits to greed and economic concentration. Read more…

Quite simply, human-centered governance systems are not working and we need new economic, development and environmental policies.

(Maude Barlow) We all know that the earth and all upon it face a growing crisis. Global climate change is rapidly advancing, melting glaciers, eroding soil, causing freak and increasingly wild storms, and displacing untold millions from rural communities to live in desperate poverty in peri-urban slums. Almost every human victim lives in the global South, in communities not responsible for greenhouse gas emissions. The atmosphere has already warmed up almost a full degree in the last several decades and a new Canadian study reports that we may be on course to add another 6 degrees Celsius (10.8 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100. Read more…