Discuss: If Nature Had Rights

There is a direct correlation be the strength of a democracy and its care of the land. When a government works for it citizens it naturally cares for the land. And, when it takes care of the land’s health it works for the health of the people who depend on it. Poison the land you poison the people who live on and consumes its resources

A great Web site is http://www.celdf.org on defending the environment and democracy. The following is a sample ordinance for the defending the rights of Nature.

http://www.celdf.org/Ordinances/RightsofNatureOrdinance/tabid/133/Default.aspx

Perhaps there is a need for transforming change to occur with all deliberate speed.

At least to me, global warming is not a “them versus us” problem, a China, India and the East versus USA, Europe and the West problem, for example. The overdeveloped nations, the developing nations and the underdeveloped nations are stakeholders with regard to global warming and climate change. For every stakeholder to point a finger at another stakeholder, as a way of placing blame for the potentially catastrophic consequences of runaway climate change, gets us nowhere, I suppose.

Is it reasonable and sensible for the human community to consider that those corporations and industries found to be responsible for polluting the environment during the 20th would be held accountable for that pollution AND those businesses responsible for polluting the Earth and its atmosphere in the 21st century would pay the costs of their present and future actions?

In order to secure a good enough future for our children, we could begin by examining the necessity of redirecting the great wealth that is being fecklessly hoarded and conspicuously squandered by a remarkably small group of people within the family of humanity toward conservation programs that protect and preserve the Earth.

Afterall, does anyone seriously believe or possess good scientific evidence to suggest that the artificially designed, dissipative national economies can much longer thrive without adequate resources and irreplaceable ecosystem services provided by Earth?

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/

To claim that nature has rights is to claim what cannot be verified: “Nature,” a personified entity, has never stood in a cour of law or before a government to assert these rights.
Secondly, we cannot know what these rights are.  Does Nature have a right to be left alone?  not to have anyone speak for it/her?  to destroy anyone it pleases?  These questions, and similar ones that one might think of, are not answearable by “Nature.”
Third, even personified or anthopomorphized, Nature is not a person.  In the Greek tradition nature was Demeter, the Mother (Nature), and in the Indian tradition it was Parvati; but these were obviously ways of understanding Nature, very beautiful and useful, but still ineffectual.
Four, to say that Nature has rights makes Nature be responsible for hurricanes, floods, etc., and this is no intelligent way of talking.
All the talk about Nature having rights seems to me a diversion, a way to avoid responsibility for what WE do or do not do.  Whether we conceive rights as imbedded (as Jefferson did) or a socially determined, we still have to determine who/what has rights.  Not too long ago women were said to have no rights!  Socially we decided that was wrong, and change the spectrum.  We can do the same with Nature: we can say WE stand for Nature’s wellbeing, and WE can pass laws, etc.

There’s an article on China in the current issue of Mother Jones by Jacques Leslie called “The Last Empire”. It details the unbelievable environmental destruction going on in China today. Most of us know that China has real ecological problems, air pollution, etc., but it’s even worse that my worst imaginings. Not only did China surpass the US for CO2 emissions in 2006, but it is quickly deforesting the worlds last remaining forests, for its wood products industry much of which is exported. Read this article and weep for China’s government and environmental policies are even more corrupt and backward than ours.

Many years ago I helped organize a conference in Vermont to oppose Hydro Quebec’s dam expansion for hydro power which would result in additional destruction to James Bay and the indigenous way of life in the region. Winona LaDuke was the keynote speaker and she talked about how in Native culture, all nature has standing, which I understand to mean that every tree, animal, plant, rock, mountain, etc. has the right respect and reciprocity in relationships with humans. Winona went on to say that this also means everything has spirit, has living essense. “All my relations” speaks to this. It’s not a court of law thing, but rather a cultural teaching and understanding of how to interact with nature, how to take with gratitude, how to give back when appropriate, how to listen to the voices of nature however they speak, and there is an understanding that some people can and do communicate directly with nonhumans and respect and honor the messages they share with others. This is so far from our western experience and relationship with nature that we have allowed our desires and compulsions to become all-important, more important than the wellbeing of the Earth.

Yes, nature should have rights. Since nature can’t speak in a court of law, then we must bring the lawmakers to nature. Nature speaks to us in our hearts, directly. If we’re disconnected and unaware of the possibility of other voices, then no way will we believe this, let alone hear anything except our own inner dialog. But common sense also must prevail. We know it’s destructive to continue clearcutting the last forests, to condone mountain-top removal mining, to allow sewage and chemicals to pollute waterways, and so on. It should not take a lawsuit to stop these atrocities. That it does and that they don’t always prevail, speaks volumes about how far we have to go.

In my view of ethics I have always understood that at its root, ethics is about relationship. As Western people we have become so removed from the land that we no longer really believe that the land nourishes us. We have forgotten that the land gives us life. In so doing we have lost our respect and appreciation for it.

How truly wonderful that Cormac is reawakening us to this very vital truth. It will not be enough to get “through” the drastic changes the climate will soon manifest, we will need to reframe our relationship so that we can STAY in relationship with the Earth after the climate resettles. Perhaps this catastrophe will help us remember the importance of relationship.

After reading through all of these comments I’m deeply saddened.The point of relationship seems to have been missed. those who tried to take a “leagal” point of view do not see their blindness to unequal power. The use of words like “own” and “use” as justifications for actions only continue the damaged thinking that has created this mess in the first place. Everyone, it seems, wants someone else to “fix” it and few saw their own culpability. The stroy of the farmer was all about relationship and power. Humans - who can think, and who seem to have “dominion over” the planet also have a responsibility. That responsibility is not strengthened by punishment, but by the restoration of relationship - and that happens in the farmers head as much as it does in the action of apologizing to the hyenna species.

Come join the natural world. Know it as your community and act and think in ways that ensures its health, just as you would your other family members.

Nature has inherent and fundemental rights. It has value unto itself. Nature has rights that are inalienable that no one can take away or even give. They are sentient, in the broodest possible sense of the word, with We need to recognize this fact.

A corporation is a person under US law. Nature as a person makes much more sense then a person the artificial legal constructed for individuals ownership of property. Nature is “property” and We the People are its trustees and stakeholders within that “property”. We the People and Nature are not separate entities. Nature is the source of Our life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the source of Our commonwealth.

Recognizing Nature has inalienable and fundemental rights strengthens democracy by strenthening by enhancing the power, under law, of people to defend the land they live on.

Yes, we are humans, we are anthropocentric.
We see things as we perceive them from our point of view. In our christian-european-based history (I am a European contributing here) we have seen continents as resources, peoples to be enslaved and exploited, minerals and animals likewise. We have created laws to support us in these endeavours (Britain created the legal device of ‘terra nullius’ which enabled it to grab land from the Indians in what is now Virginia and in its further plantations). But laws are man-made and can be changed. Laws are tools, they follow a purpose.
Now, again, from our anthropocentric view we realise a threat to our environment, we realise that it aims at our very existence. So, I think it is just a clever way to modify the laws to assign certain “rights” to nature and allow human defenders to have proxy standing before court.
You see, I do not argue if there IS something like “Nature’s rights”, but I would just use it as a wonderful tool to get things moving in the right direction. And to get it moving, you need a shift in perception in the polulation (as with slavery) - and here you are, that is completely anthropocentric.
Let’s be anthropocentric (we are anyway), and let’s get things moving!