2,000 people make a human banner on the beach in Rio. Photo credit: Amazon Watch

With over 50,000 accredited participants registered, Rio+20 was the largest gathering in the history of the UN. And yet, despite the participation of heads of state officials, experts, media, corporate titans and tens of thousands of civil society representatives, the United Nations Rio + 20 Earth Summit was a tragic, if predictable, failure. Get a recap of what was at stake in Rio here.

Predictable because the outcome document was all but written before the heads of state entered the RioCentro compound, a mere 2-hour journey by taxi or shuttle bus from the People’s Summit — itself a 2 mile stretch of bustling action, noise, confusion and speakers tents along the Flamenco beach.

Participants convene at the People’s Space

Tragic because rather than shifting course, the so-called Green Economy strategy unveiled at the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development drives nature further into the global marketplace by defining an economic value on what the Earth “does” for humans, detachedly called “ecosystem services.” Proponents of this scheme of “commoditizing” soil, forests, and fresh water profess that by putting a price on the natural world, it can be ‘saved’. The reckless drive for unlimited growth on a finite planet is itself a legalized Ponzi scheme perpetrated on communities around the globe, future generations and Earth’s biosphere.

The future we want banner at Rio+20

The Future WHO wants?

The official negotiated outcome document was largely an uninspired retread of ideas from the original Earth Summit in 1992, with very little new, other than a commitment to  fulfill the corporate wishlist of commoditizing (pricing) nature’s processes, paving the way for the commodification (selling) of those “services.” As ETC Group’s Neth Daño noted, “Many delegations are genuinely embarrassed by the title of their outcome document, ‘The Future We Want,’ which sets sights on a future that can’t be achieved by the haplessly short-sighted initiatives proposed.”

Shannon at the People’s March

Over at the Peoples Summit, with its beautifully hectic congestion of platforms—from women’s issues, to economic solidarity, to poverty, to food sovereignty to land grabs and more were unified in protesting the Green Economy and the financialization of nature, and diverse in presenting visions for change—though far from the UN site, speaking truth to power seemed remote, and networking somewhat haphazardous.  The People’s March, though a bit drizzly, was emblematic of both the chaos and harmony of civil society present at Rio. Thousands lined the streets, signing, dancing and chanting in favor of a new world order, however colorfully defined.

At the Indigenous Kari-Oca venue

At the Indigenous Kari-Oca venue, an additional 45 minutes from the official RioCentro space, over 500 grassroots Indigenous Peoples held their own summit, ceremonies, events, press conferences and gatherings, and wrote their own The Declaration of Kari-Oca, condemning the UN agenda: “We see the goals of UNCSD Rio+20, the ‘Green Economy’ and its premise that the world can only ‘save’ nature by commodifying its life-giving capacities as a continuation of the colonialism that Indigenous Peoples and our Mother Earth have faced and resisted for 520 years.” Download the entire declaration here.

• To read the People’s media and updates from Rio visit the Global Justice Ecology Project’s Climate Connections website.

Rights of Nature Presents an Alternative

Global Exchange blogged from Rio about the activities of the various members Global Alliance for Rights of Nature on the ground, including a symbolic signing ceremony of the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth and the release of the GX report Rights of Nature: Planting Seeds of Real Change  featuring visionary thinkers such as Maude Barlow, Vandana Shiva, Thomas B.K. Goldtooth, Pablo Solon, Cormac Cullinan, Mari Margil and others who address questions like: What would it look like to truly take on the root causes of climate change and put forward a system of law that places humankind in living balance with the carrying capacity of the Earth’s systems?

• View and download a copy of the report here.

Watch our video blog from Rio+20:

Indigenous groups sign the Universal Declaration on Rights of Mother Earth

The signature campaign gathering  over 120,000 signatures in support of the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth was turned over to UN Secretary General Ban-Ki-moon, and there was growing synergy with rights of nature advocates and large portions of the civil society.  Strategy meetings with new allies were held, interviews were taken, and some progress was made towards introducing rights of nature language within major groups of the UN, including the Womens Major group, in which GARN member Osprey Orielle Lake and WECC held a special heartfelt and inspiring forum entitled Women Leading the Way.

Altogether our experience was mixed as activists seeking to put forward laws recognizing rights for ecosystems.

Finding Inspiration at Rio + 20

Youth respond to UN outcomes document. Photo Credit: Ben Powless

Somewhere between shuttling back and forth to the Peoples Space and the UN site, frustratingly spotty internet connections and getting my wallet swiped on a public bus, there were moments of exhaustion, exasperation and yes, doubt.  Doubt that as a civil society we will ever be bold enough to leave the comfort zone of summit hopping, critiquing the world as corporate elites designed it, and truly just dig in, work together and just create the world we want. Doubt that we will grab the reigns, and impose the laws that make our ideas real in the world, and defend our right to live within the carrying capacity of the Earth, no matter what the Monsantos, the Exxons and the Pepsi Co’s of the world dictate.

Yet at the Women Leading the Way forum, I was first introduced to a spark of light at Rio 20 —a beautiful, poised 11-year old soul named Ta’Kaiya Blaney. From the stage of the Forum, with Ted Turner in the audience and the likes of movement superstar Dr. Vandana Shiva on stage with her, Ta’Kaiya, a member of the Sliammon First Nation spoke eloquently about the need for a different path—humans recognizing their own existence depends on our growing interconnectedness with the natural world, and the idea that corporations may currently rule, but that the youth of tomorrow have different ideas in mind. Watch Ta’kaiya speak here.

Ta’Kaiya Blaney tearing up the UN outcomes document. Photo credit: Ben Powless

As the youth gathered to pronounce the failure of the Rio + 20 outcomes document, it was Ta’Kaiya, hoisted on the shoulders of her First Nations brother Clayton Thomas Muller and sister  Kandi Mosset from IEN that spoke most clearly, for me, and for thousands of others gathered in the moment of anger and seeking solace in solidarity. “Join me in Earth Revolution,” she beckoned. Indeed those five little words, if we hold true to them in our hearts and our actions, are our way forward.

The new “Rights of Nature: Planting Seeds of Real Change” report

The following post was collaboratively written by Shannon Biggs, Kylie Nealis and Megan Devlin.

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Rights of Nature Advocates in Rio

Global Exchange’s Shannon Biggs is on the ground in Brazil this week for the Rio +20 Earth Summit to present our new report, “Rights of Nature: Planting the Seeds of Real Change” and to promote the rights of nature movement alongside allies.

The new “Rights of Nature: Planting Seeds of Real Change”  report directly challenges Rio +20’s Green Economy capitalism and examines the power and possibility and logic of a rights-based framework.

‘Rights of Nature’ is a movement capable of actually changing culture and law to institute new economies based on community values and Earth rights. The report explores how recognizing Rights for Nature provides an alternative cultural and legal framework to the official corporate-led ‘Green (or Greed) Economy’ agenda being put forward by the United Nations.

Shannon Biggs (far right) joins fellow members of the Global Alliance in Rio.

If adopted, the agenda of  Rio +20 will drive nature further into the global marketplace by “defining” (in economic terms) what  the Earth “does” for humans,  called “ecosystem services.” Proponents of this scheme to put a price on soil, forests, and fresh water believe that putting a price on the natural world can “save” it.

It is time for new thinking, new direction, and new actions. That’s why climate justice activists, community organizers, indigenous peoples movements and social justice organizations have come together at the Rio+20 to dispel the belief that the earth “belongs” to humans.

Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth

Ceremonial signing of the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth

On Sunday June 17 allies participated in a ceremonial signing of a so-called Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth.

The Universal Declaration defines legal rights for ecosystems “to exist, flourish and regenerate their natural capacities.” This is just one demand of the Rights of Nature movement, which challenges the idea embedded within most laws that nature is seen solely as property.

While not asking to stop development entirely, recognizing legal rights for nature requires that new growth practices do not interfere with the existence and vitality of ecosystems. The idea of ‘living well’ as opposed to ‘living more’ is a key piece of the movement for nature’s rights.

Inside Peek at the New Report on Rights of Nature

The report – Rights of Nature: Planting Seeds of Real Change  features visionary thinkers such as Maude Barlow, Vandana Shiva, Thomas B.K. Goldtooth, Pablo Solon, Cormac Cullinan, Mari Margil and others who address questions like:

What would it look like to truly take on the root causes of climate change and put forward a system that places humankind in living balance with the carrying capacity of the Earth’s systems?

If we are to truly reconnect within the system of creation, we must also reawaken our own humanity and love for Mother Earth and act as if what we do next matters. Because it does.

TAKE ACTION!

• Read and download the report here.
• Help Global Exchange engage youth in the movement for nature’s rights. Vote for us to win $5,000 for a Rights of Nature youth summit!
• Stay tuned for more updates from Rio +20 right here on our People to People blog.
  
• Check out pictures from Rio+20 Earth Summit on our Facebook page.
  

SF Earth Day Celebration

I celebrated Earth Day along with hundreds of other earth-conscious individuals at San Francisco’s Civic Center/UN Plaza. Everyone came out that day under a common idea: we live in a wondrous community of life that is planet Earth and that community deserves our awe, respect, and attention. There was an array of speakers and musical performances as well as booths and vendors featuring local non-profit organizations, green businesses, and organic food.

I participated in a panel discussion at the celebration on Sunday around the question of “co-creating our sustainable future – what are the successful tools for coalition building and collaboration both within and beyond your organization’s work?” I was joined by leaders of the non-profit environmental movement including Rolf Skar from Greenpeace, Sarah Hodgdon of the Sierra Club, and Kevin Connelly from the Earth Island Institute.

It was insightful to hear about the different work that each of us is doing to make the future of the planet and us humans that inhabit it more sustainable and less destructive. There was one common thread throughout the discussion and that was: in order to ensure a positive future for people and the planet we must figure out how to live in balance – or in ‘harmony’ – with nature. And, in doing so, we must also learn how to work in harmony with one another towards the common goal of protecting and conserving Mother Earth and the resources that our human societies depend on for survival.

I spoke about how the emerging global movement for community and nature’s rights works to build coalitions and develop collaborations with a wide variety of groups. Our present-day global economic system and indeed our structures of law have been built upon a mindset that places humans not just apart from, but actually above nature. We codify our values in our laws and so in order to change the system, we must transform the laws that govern it.

Polar bears making a point about climate change at Earth Day

We are building a movement and there is a role to play for everyone.

The idea of organizing to actually challenge our current structures of law to recognize that nature itself has inherent rights to exist, thrive, and flourish is a big one.  We must ask ourselves the following question: If Rights of Nature is to succeed as an alternative framework to our current property-based system of law, how are we going to implement it?

The movement for nature’s rights is unique in its ability to be all-inclusive because the dire need to better protect the environment and the concept of ‘rights’ is something that everyone can understand and agree upon, despite different political beliefs or affiliations. . Most people know that allowing decision-making based on money, greed or narrow self-interest to sacrifice the well being of the planet is foolish, they just can’t see how to move to a better way of doing things.

This is because our current structures of law actually facilitate the on-going exploitation of nature. Climate change, water withdrawal, and deforestation are all symptoms of the same problem; that communities do not have the right to make decisions about how to protect the environment under the current system. Instead, this right is reserved for corporations and the state.

In addition to our coalition building with communities, policy makers, indigenous allies, and climate justice allies, I also spoke about the role of small farmers in creating viable alternative systems to corporate-dominated agriculture. If large, corporate factory farms are not what we want our food system to look like then what is the alternative? The answer lies in small, community-based farmers selling, growing, and sharing their own food.  Food sovereignty is a growing issue for communities across CA (and the rest of the world) and we have been getting an increasing number of calls from places like Nevada City, and Mendocino, CA, where citizens are looking to pass a law that asserts their right to local food sovereignty without interference from government regulations and raids on small farms.

Occupy the Farm banner

Occupy the Farm

Meanwhile on Earth Day, across the Bay in Albany, California, the Occupy Movement was taking a stand for local food sovereignty by taking over a portion of property known as the ‘Gill Tract’. It is the last remaining 10 acres of Class I agricultural soil in the urbanized East Bay. The owner of the land, UC Berkeley, plans to sell the property to Whole Foods to open a new retail store. For decades the UC has thwarted attempts by community members to transform the site for urban sustainable agriculture and hands-on education. In solidarity with Via Campesina, “Occupy the Farm” is a coalition of local residents, farmers, students, researchers, and activists that have begun planting over 15,000 seedlings at the Gill Tract. Over 300 people turned out on Sunday to help plant seeds and till the land.

The goals of “Occupy the Farm” echo the calls of communities across California and the US that there is a dire need for people to have access to uncontaminated land for farming if we are to reclaim control over how food is grown and where it comes from. That sustainable, community-based farming is the best alternative to corporate control (and poisoning) of our food systems.

Citizens tilling the land at Occupy the Farm

The time for a new system is now and the well being of the planet, our health, and that of future generations absolutely depends on it. We are up against an enormous task to remove the power of decision-making from profit-driven corporations (and the state) and put it back in the hands of people and communities, thereby enabling us to co-create our sustainable future.

TAKE ACTION!

•    Watch this video documenting the first day of Occupy the Farm.
•    Learn more about the movement for Community and Nature’s Rights.

The stakes are high in Rio. As Via Campesina points out, “Twenty years later, governments should have reconvened to review their commitments and progress, but in reality the issue to debate will be the “green economy” led development, propagating the same capitalist model that caused climate chaos and other deep social and environmental crises.”

Critiquing the focus on corporate ‘Green Economy’ evident in the march to Rio documents and planning, Via states:

“Today the “greening of the economy” pushed forward in the run-up to Rio+20 is based on the same logic and mechanisms that are destroying the planet and keeping people hungry. For instance, it seeks to incorporate aspects of the failed “green revolution” in a broader manner in order to ensure the needs of the industrial sectors of production, such as promoting the uniformity of seeds, patented seeds by corporation, genetically modified seeds, etc.

The capitalist economy, based on the over-exploitation of natural resources and human beings, will never become “green.” It is based on limitless growth in a planet that has reached its limits and on the commoditization of the remaining natural resources that have until now remained un-priced or in control of the public sector.

In this period of financial crisis, global capitalism seeks new forms of accumulation. It is during these periods of crisis in which capitalism can most accumulate. Today, it is the territories and the commons which are the main target of capital. As such, the green economy is nothing more than a green mask for capitalism. It is also a new mechanism to appropriate our forests, rivers, land… of our territories!

Since last year’s preparatory meetings towards Rio+20, agriculture has been cited as one of the causes of climate change. Yet no distinction is made in the official negotiations between industrial and peasant agriculture, and no explicit difference between their effects on poverty, climate and other social issues we face.

The “green economy” is marketed as a way to implement sustainable development for those countries which continue to experience high and disproportionate levels of poverty, hunger and misery. In reality, what is proposed is another phase of what we identify as “green structural adjustment programs” which seek to align and re-order the national markets and regulations to submit to the fast incoming “green capitalism”.

Investment capital now seeks new markets through the “green economy”; securing the natural resources of the world as primary inputs and commodities for industrial production, as carbon sinks or even for speculation. This is being demonstrated by increasing land grabs globally, for crop production for both export and agrofuels. New proposals such as “climate smart” agriculture, which calls for the “sustainable intensification” of agriculture, also embody the goal of corporations and agri-business to over exploit the earth while labeling it “green”, and making peasants dependent on high-cost seeds and inputs. New generations of polluting permits are issued for the industrial sector, especially those found in developed countries, such as what is expected from programs such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD++) and other environmental services schemes.

The green economy seeks to ensure that the ecological and biological systems of our planet remain at the service of capitalism, by the intense use of various forms of biotechnologies, synthetic technologies and geo-engineering. GMO’s and biotechnology are key parts of the industrial agriculture promoted within the framework of “green economy”.

The promotion of the green economy includes calls for the full implementation of the WTO Doha Round, the elimination of all trade barriers to incoming “green solutions,” the financing and support of financial institutions such as the World Bank and projects such as US-AID programs, and the continued legitimization of the international institutions that serve to perpetuate and promote global capitalism.

In April 2011 Global Exchange, in collaboration with the Council of Canadians and Fundacion Pachamama, released a book called The Rights of Nature: The Case for a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, which featured a chapter by then-Ambassador to the UN for Bolivia, Pablo Solon, titled ‘The Green Economy Versus the Rights of Mother Earth’. In it, he states,

“…From the point of view of these proponents of the green economy, in order to re-establish equilibrium with Nature, we must assign an economic value to the environmental “services” nature provides. An underlying assumption is only that which can be owned and profited from deserves stewardship.”

“…We are facing a debate in the United Nations among those that believe we need to strengthen the capitalist logic as it related to Nature, and others that suggest we should recognize the Rights of Nature. These are two very different conceptions. One advocates the path of the market, and the other the past of recognizing and respecting the larger system of the planet Earth on which we all live. The future of humans and Nature depends on the path humanity chooses.”

Global Exchange will be on the ground in Rio – promoting the Rights of Nature. Read more about the Community Rights Campaign here and join Via Campesina in the Call to Action. They:

… declare the week of June 5th, as a major world week in defense of the environment and against transnational corporations and invite everyone across the world to mobilize:

•    Defend sustainable peasant agriculture;
•    Occupy land for the production of agroecological and non-market dominated food;
•    Reclaim and exchange native seeds;
•    Protest against Exchange and Marketing Board offices and call for an end to speculative markets on commodities and land;
•    Hold local assemblies of People Affected by Capitalism;
•    Dream of a different world and create it!!

Global Exchange stands with Via Campesina to ‘GLOBALIZE THE STRUGGLE!! GLOBALIZE HOPE!!!’

• Live in the Bay Area and want to learn more about the call for the Rights of Mother Earth at Rio+20? Attend the upcoming Rights of Nature seminar hosted by the Women’s Earth and Climate Caucus in Marin County April 13th-14th.

Photo by Brett Weston, Corbis

Last week our friends at the Earth Island Journal published a cover article on the Rights of Nature in their spring issue. The spread, titled Natural Law: From Rural Pennsylvania to South America, a Global Alliance is Promoting the Idea that Ecosystems Have Intrinsic Rights; takes a deep look at the evolution of the movement to grant legal rights to nature from its origins in the small community of Tamaqua Borough, Pennsylvania; to the ground-breaking developments in Ecuador in 2008 when that nation became the first to recognize nature’s rights in its national Constitution; up to the present moment as environmental and climate justice activists gear up to advocate for nature’s rights at the Rio+20 United Nations Earth Summit in Brazil this June.

This critical disclosure comes at an important time both for the movement and for Mother Earth. Rising temperatures and sea levels resulting from climate change, deforestation, mountaintop removal, and harmful methods of oil and natural gas drilling which are forever altering natural landscapes are just a few of the ill affects on the environment from human activities that come to mind.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. It is possible for us to continue to evolve in a way that is sustainable for people and the planet – but in order for this to happen we must first change the way we view our human relationship with nature, away from one that is property-based and towards a rights-based model of balance. This is the driving idea behind the Rights of Nature.

As author Jason Mark says in the article,
“This is happening. It is occurring through the work itself, as the changes in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Pennsylvania force some people to re-imagine how they think about, and feel about, the world we live in. Over time, the once- marginal starts to sound mainstream, even ordinary.”

Global Exchange’s Community Rights program is working with allies here in the US and around the world to put forward the call for nature’s rights and to say loudly and clearly that the time for a new approach to environmental protection is now – not later.

•    Stay updated on the upcoming events at Rio+20 as well as our work organizing locally in California communities by joining our e-mail list-serve.

•    Live in the Bay Area? Attend the upcoming Rights of Nature seminar hosted by the Women’s Earth & Climate Caucus April 13th-14th in Marin County.

•    Want to learn more about Rights of Nature and the emerging global movement? Get a copy of the book, The Rights of Nature: The Case for a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth. Contact Kylie Nealis (kylie@globalexchange.org) or by phone at 415.575.5551

•    Find out more about Rights of Nature work internationally by visiting the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature website.

•    Read an article by Shannon Biggs in Tikkun Magazine ‘A Community Perspective on the Rights of Nature’

The following originally appeared on Alternet.

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Our environmental laws and regulations, rather than put in place protections for the environment, instead seem to be written to exploit it. Here’s what can we do about it.

The following is excerpted from the recently released book, The Rights of Nature: The Case for a Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth, produced by the Council of Canadians, Global Exchange and Fundacion Pachamama. This book reveals the path of a movement driving transformation of our human relationship with nature away from domination and towards balance. This book gathers the wisdom of indigenous cultures, scientists, activists small farmers, spiritual leaders and US communities who seek a different path for protecting nature by establishing Nature’s Rights in law and culture. In addition to this excerpt, the book includes essays from Vandana Shiva, Desmond Tutu, Thomas Goldtooth, Eduardo Galeano, Maude Barlow and many others.

Two ways to order your copy of the book:

1) Contact Kylie Nealis – kylie@globalexchange.org. The book price is $15 including shipping within the US. (For international orders email Kylie Nealis for shipping price) or…

2) Donate $50 or more to the Community Rights campaign, and receive your own signed copy of the book.

Excerpts from Rights of Nature: The Case for a Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth:

It takes thousands of years for individual drops of rain to maneuver through silent passages and gently accumulate into underground aquifers. Purified and enriched over the millennia by mineral deposits deep in the earth, groundwater is the sacred lifeblood of local watersheds upon which all life — including human communities — depend. Yet it takes no time at all to destroy this delicate balance. In fact, all it takes is a simple piece of paper.

Steeped in colonial history, Nottingham, New Hampshire, could be a picture postcard of quaint village life in New England. Yet in 2001, this tiny rural village of 4,000 residents became the poster child for too familiar “site-fights” between small towns seeking to protect local water and large multinational corporations seeking to extract it. It was then that the USA Springs Corporation applied to the state for a permit to extract more than 400,000 gallons of water a day from Nottingham’s local aquifer to bottle and sell overseas.

Corporate water withdrawals — siphoning off hundreds of thousands of gallons a day from local aquifers — impact both surface and groundwater resources. They deplete drinking water and can contaminate aquifers and wells. In addition, withdrawals dry up streams, wetlands, and rivers, as well as reduce lake levels, damaging habitat and harming wildlife.

For seven years the community of Nottingham came together to stop their water from being mined. Upon discovering that our own laws forbid communities from saying “no” to the wide array of dirty, destructive and unwanted practices allowed by law, they attempted to protect their local groundwater using all the tools available under the law. They did everything “right” by traditional, conventional environmental activism. They lobbied their state legislature, petitioned their government, testified at hearings, protested, rallied, educated and organized their neighbors and filed lawsuits. But as is so often the case, it just wasn’t enough.

When the people of Nottingham beseeched their state environmental agency, the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services, to take effective action and protect the aquifer, their requests went unmet. Instead of helping them protect their water, the agency was in fact responsible for issuing permits to the corporation to take it.

Is the system broken or working perfectly?

The experience of Nottingham is shared by thousands of communities across the United States and around the world that discover that their government officials and agencies — ostensibly in place to protect them — are, in practice, serving other interests.

The question that the people of Nottingham were forced to ask is, “why?” Why are corporations allowed to override community concerns and put destructive projects in our midst? Why do our environmental laws and regulations, rather than put in place protections for the environment, instead seem to be written to exploit it? And why is our government helping a corporation to extract water from a community and sell it for profit, when the impacts from such projects are so significant?

These are the questions that people and communities find themselves asking when they face the threat of water extraction, mining, drilling, or a range of other activities. Based on the assumption that environmental legislation was in earnest set up to protect Nature, much of our environmental activism has logically been spent trying to “fix” what appears broken; seeking to improve the types of laws and regulations that Nottingham ran into.

But what if the system was never designed to put Nature first?

Under New Hampshire’s Groundwater Protection Act — initially lauded as an important legislative tool, corporations are awarded permits by the state to siphon off water from local aquifers. Thus, despite the Act’s title, the law in fact authorizes the exploitation of water within the State of New Hampshire. It is much like the federal Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, which govern how much pollution of our air and water can occur.

This is not a mistake or somehow unique, and it is not about corruption within a generally functioning system. Rather, the major environmental laws in the United States, which have now been exported and adopted around the world, are laws not borne of protection, but of exploitation.

Although it’s rarely said out loud, it is often the industry to be regulated that creates the laws we ask our legislators to enforce. And when it becomes too expensive to comply with the regulations, corporations are often exempted from them, or the regulations are simply rewritten. By design our environmental laws place commerce above nature, and in so doing they legalize certain amounts of harm to ecosystems. And by design regulatory agencies administering these laws are in place to operationalize that exploitation.

This isn’t to say we haven’t protected anything while toiling within this system of law. Whatever limits to damage have been achieved have come from dedicated vigilance by the hands of caring and concerned people. But taking a step back to look at the big picture, we must also recognize what has been lost.

By almost every measure, the environment today is in worse shape than when the major U.S. environmental laws were adopted nearly 40 years ago and replicated worldwide. Global species decline is increasing exponentially, global warming is far more accelerated than previously believed, deforestation continues unabated around the world, and overfishing in the world’s oceans are pushing many fisheries to collapse. With so much at stake, the question is — why haven’t we been successful at ending this destruction?

It certainly is not from lack of effort by communities or activists. Rather, the system of law within which their efforts are taking place is based on entirely the wrong premise — that Nature is property.

The Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and similar state laws legalize environmental harms by regulating how much pollution or destruction of Nature can occur. Rather than preventing pollution and environmental destruction, these laws instead codify it. How else could we justify the damming of rivers, the blowing off of mountaintops for coal or fishing to extinction?

We codify our values in law, and thus for time immemorial we have treated nature in law, as well as in culture, as a “thing” — as amoral, without emotion or intelligence, without any connection to or having anything in common with us. In this way we justify and rationalize our exploitation, our destruction, our decimation. It is the long history of humankind’s relationship with Nature as a possession, rather than as a system governing our own well-being.

So when the people of Nottingham asked state agencies for help that was not forthcoming, the lack of assistance was not sheer unwillingness; rather the state agency was simply carrying out the law of the land in assisting the corporation to take their water.

The nature of property: Is Nature a slave?

In the United States, title to property carries with it the legal authority to destroy the natural communities (which include human communities and ecosystems) that depend on that property for survival. In fact, our environmental laws were passed under the authority of the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which grants exclusive authority over “interstate commerce” to Congress. The migration of birds, rivers flowing to the sea, or almost any natural process you can name is, or can be classified as interstate commerce. Treating Nature as commerce has meant that all existing U.S. environmental law frameworks are anchored in the concept of Nature as property.

But history shows that with enough will, unjust laws that deny rights can change. Slaves and women were once considered property, but through massive shifts in law and culture they moved from being “right-less” to being rights-bearing.

During slavery in the United States, the economies of both the North and South were based on slavery. Slaves provided the labor force upon which the new country depended. Slaves were the property of the slave master and a series of “slave codes” were put in place to regulate the treatment of slaves. Slave codes in South Carolina required the whipping of a slave who left his master’s plantation without permission. In Louisiana, any slave who hit his master was to be punished by death. In Alabama, teaching a slave to read was illegal and violators were required to pay a fine.

Many advocates of slavery argued that the slave codes would somehow lead to a gradual end of the slave system; that slaves themselves did not “need” legal rights in order to be sufficiently protected. It is easy from today’s vantage point to see that this regulatory framework did not and could never protect the slaves or end slavery. To the contrary, it codified, enforced and upheld the system of property and the continued enslavement of human beings. Today in the United States and in much of the world, Nature is treated in the same way, and laws and regulations have been put in place to regulate ecosystems as property.

What does it mean to recognize the Rights of Nature?

If we believe that rights are inherent, then Nature’s rights already exist, and any law that denies those fundamental rights is illegitimate.

Under existing environmental laws, a person needs to prove “standing” in order to go to court to protect Nature. This means demonstrating personal harm from logging, the pollution of a river, or the extraction of water. Damages are then awarded to that person, not to the ecosystem that’s been destroyed. Women were once considered the property of their husbands or fathers, and as such had no legal standing. Prior to the 19th Amendment, if a married woman was raped, it was considered a property crime and damages were awarded to her husband. In the wake of the BP oil spill, the only damage deemed compensable by the legal system is the financial damage caused to those who can’t use the Gulf ecosystem anymore.

Communities in the United States are turning their backs on a system that cannot provide true environmental protection. They are beginning to craft and adopt new laws that recognize that natural communities and ecosystems possess an inalienable and fundamental right to exist and flourish. Residents of those natural communities, as stewards of the place where they live, possess the legal authority to enforce those rights on behalf of those ecosystems. In addition, these laws require local governments to remedy violations of those ecosystem rights.

Under a rights-based system of law, a river has the right to flow, fish and other species in a river have the right to regenerate and evolve, and the flora and fauna that depend on a river have the right to thrive. It is the natural ecological balance of that habitat that is protected. Just as the lion hunts the antelope as part of the natural cycle of life, recognizing Rights of Nature does not put an end to fishing or other human activities. Rather, it places them in the context of a healthy relationship where our actions do not threaten the balance of the system upon which we depend.

In essence, these laws represent fundamental changes to the status of property in the United States. While not eliminating property ownership, they do eliminate the authority of a property owner to destroy entire ecosystems that exist and depend on that property. These laws do not stop development; rather they stop the kind of development that interferes with the existence and vitality of those ecosystems.

This represents a true paradigm shift, one that recognizes that we can no longer tinker at the margins of a legal system that places property at the apex of civilization. It makes no apologies for recognizing that a linear system of development cannot be sustained on a finite planet and that we enslave Nature to our own demise.

Building a movement for the Rights of Nature

Environmental and community rights attorney Thomas Linzey has been known to say that, “There has never existed a true environmental movement in this country” because movements drive rights into fundamental structures of law, which environmentalists have never sought to do. It’s a provocative statement sure to raise the ire of many an advocate for Nature.

On September 19, 2006, the Tamaqua Borough Council in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, became the first municipal government in the United States to recognize legally enforceable Rights of Nature. Working with the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, they drafted and adopted a local ordinance recognizing that natural communities and ecosystems have a legal right to exist and flourish, that individuals within the community have the authority to defend and enforce the rights of those natural communities and ecosystems, and that the Borough government has a legal duty to enforce the ordinance.

Over a dozen more communities in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Maine, and Virginia have now adopted ordinances recognizing legally enforceable Rights of Nature. Communities in California, New Mexico and elsewhere are in the process of adopting similar laws. The people of Nottingham adopted an ordinance in 2008 that recognizes the inalienable Rights of Nature and bans corporate water extraction.

That same year Ecuador became the first country in the world to recognize the Rights of Nature in its constitution; after generations of watching its fragile ecosystems destroyed by corporate mining, drilling and other practices. The new constitution was approved by an overwhelming margin through a national referendum on September 28, 2008. With that vote, Ecuador became the first country in the world to codify a new system of environmental protection based on rights, leading the way for countries around the world to make this necessary and fundamental change in how we protect Nature. The constitution reads, “Nature or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain itself and regenerate its own vital cycles, structure, functions and its evolutionary processes.”

In 2009, international leaders that gathered in Copenhagen for the UN Climate Change Conference predictably failed to reach an agreement to save humanity from its own destruction. In response, the World People’s Summit on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth convened in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Some 32,000 people from around the world attended and, led by indigenous communities of Latin America, proposed the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth.

This work is now expanding as people and communities and governments conclude that we have pushed the Earth’s ecosystems to the brink and that our existing frameworks of environmental laws are not only inadequate to reverse this destruction, but were never intended to do so.

In September 2010, an international gathering was held in Tamate, Ecuador, to develop a strategy for building an international movement on Rights of Nature. The gathering brought together individuals and organizations from South Africa, Australia, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and the United States. The outcome of the meetings was the formation of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature. Key areas of work will be education and outreach, as well as assisting local, state, and national governments around the world to put Rights of Nature laws in place and to build and support a global movement for the Rights of Nature.

A new cultural context for Nature supported by law

How different would our world look if the Amazon could sue oil companies for damages, or if those responsible for the oil spill could be forced to make the Gulf of Mexico “whole”? What if communities could be empowered to act as stewards for their local environments and say “no” to massive groundwater extraction?

As a species we have come to value “endless amounts of more” to our own detriment, and we have codified that value into law. Of course it is up to us to begin the process of deprogramming our society and dispelling our arrogant belief that the Earth “belongs” to humans. Like all successful movements for rights, the cultural change necessary needs only be enough to change the law ¬- the law itself forces the larger cultural change that must take place. However, both are needed in order to truly recognize rights for the right-less.

In 1973, Professor Christopher Stone penned his famous law review article, “Should Trees Have Standing?”. He wrote, “The fact is, that each time there is a movement to confer rights onto some new ‘entity’ the proposal is bound to sound odd or frightening or laughable. This is partly because until the right-less thing receives its rights, we cannot see it as anything but a thing for the use of ‘us’ — us being, of course, those of us who hold rights.”

This is the challenge that every rights-based movement comes up against — not only an illegitimate structure of law that defines a living being as property, but also the culture which is built upon this concept.

The Abolitionists faced this — with slavery not only providing the labor force in the South, but being the driving engine of the economy of the North. Abolishing slavery meant abolishing a way of life. Most said it could not and must never be done. That is the argument we hear and face now. But it can, and we must.

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Shannon Biggs directs Global Exchange’s Community Rights Program, working to place citizen and Nature’s legal rights above corporate interests. She is the author of Building the Green Economy: Success Stories from the Grassroots (PoliPoint Press, 2007), a former senior staffer at the International Forum on Globalization and a lecturer of International Relations at San Francisco State University.

Mari Margil is the Associate Director of the U.S.-based Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund where she conducts campaign and organizational strategy, media and public outreach and leads the organization’s fundraising efforts. She is a co-author of the recently published The Public Health or the Bottom Line (Oxford University Press, 2010).