UK environmental lawyer Polly Higgins urges expanding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to all life forms. She proposes a Planetary Rights declaration, similar to Law of Nature developed in Bolivia and Ecuador. In this video from Klimaforum09 in Copenhagen, she is introduced by George Montbiot.
All life has a right to exist, to habitat, to diversity and integrity, and to restorative justice, defensible at law, and supported by a Planet Trust. For more details see her site This is Ecocide, her Copenhagen slide presentation and her blog. Earth Trustee duties and legal implications are explained on Trees Have Rights Too, which she founded in 2008, as well as WISE (Women in Sustainability and the Environment). The Ecologist magazine named her "One of the Top Ten Visionaries to Save the Planet".
See also her article on Ecocide(Jan 2012), her biography in Wikipedia, the NEF animation video The Impossible Hamster, and Quaker discussion of Zero Growth and fall 2009 conference on Zero Growth Economy.
In James Cameron's Avatar, ex-Marine Jake Sully leads a war by indigenous Na'vi against destruction by an Earth-based mining corporation. A white guy saves the peace-loving natives, unifies the tribes, gives them machine guns. What's wrong with this picture?
Ecuadorean native peoples who have been living through a long environmental battle against oil pipelines say the answer is not war, but dialogue.
Video by PRI's Melaina Spitzer. Listen to her full length PRI podcast.
The Suquamish (a Salish people in the US Pacific Northwest) have an alternative to Avatar, says Fran Korten of Yes magazine: "There are many paths to power that don’t involve guns. Yeah, they take longer and can’t be portrayed in a burst of climactic drama. But they seem to work better. That’s why native people for centuries have survived by withdrawing to a safer spot to regroup. Some have gone on to find those other routes to power. Like using the sender culture’s laws to gain recognition of rights; exploiting the sender culture’s enthusiasm for gambling to gain financial power; reviving traditions to strengthen cultural power; and perhaps most importantly, working with allies to change the sender culture itself. It’s that last one, I believe, that’s the true solution. ... my neighbors the Suquamish have been using all the nonviolent levers. Yep, they’ve got a thriving casino. They, together with other Northwest tribes, have mounted lawsuits to defend their rights to fish and to protect land and fishing grounds. They’ve helped revive the region’s magnificent canoe journey traditions. And they’ve worked with allies to, among other things, regain their land.
"One place is particularly poignant. In 1904 the U.S. military took over part of their land where Chief Seattle once lived. In 2004, exactly 100 years later, the State of Washington returned that land, after a campaign that involved many non-native allies, including YES! Magazine editor Sarah van Gelder. Then, just last March, they opened a new building, called the "House of Awakened Culture," right next to the newly regained land. It’s a place of community for the Suquamish. But it is also a place for native and non-native alike to share a different vision for how to live—one that respects all the creatures and the Earth and allows us to come together as a community, honor our ancestors and our roots, and build a world that works for everyone."
We could learn, from natives, to use "weapons of mass democracy".
1. Monopoly rights on seeds
BASF, Monsanto, Bayer, Syngenta, Dupont and biotech partners have filed 532 patent documents (a total of 55 patent families) on so-called “climate ready” genes. Farming communities in the global South – those who have contributed least to global greenhouse emissions – are among the most threatened. The top 10 multinationals have cornered the seed market, use climate change to argue that any other choice will "starve" millions, lobby governments and WTO to make their monopoly legal, and enforce it over farmers' rights. See the ETC study Patenting the Climate Genes, Quaker International Affairs Programme (QIAP) book The Future Control of Food, the Schmeiser lawsuit, and the Doomsday Vault.
2. Land grabs for agrofuels
Joan Baxter's book Dust from Our Eyes gives examples from Mali. She worked for two decades in Africa. See our previous post about land grabs in the Third World, the secret World Bank report on how financial speculation drove up food prices, UN and Jubilee analysis of the food crisis and its threat to MDGs.
3. Rogue fleets fishing to extinction, to benefit banks
See Boris Worm's warning in a previous post, and Callum Roberts book Unnatural History of the Sea.
4. Slice-and-dice derivatives trading in pollution permits Derivatives caused the 2008 financial meltdown that was bailed out with our grandchildren's earnings; now OTC speculators want to repeat the bubble. In 2008 the Financial Times reported carbon trading doubling, but warned that 140 of 170 carbon offsets were "poor quality". Recently traders have sliced-and-diced these. See our previous post: climate justice vs the carbon casino, updated in the recent FOE study Dangerous Obsession, and Mark Schapiro, "Conning the Climate", Harpers Feb 2010. In 2009 China threw the risk back on derivatives traders, but in 2010 in the US, they are still refusing Federal Reserve regulation.
5. Industrial agriculture, feedlots and fish farms (breeding grounds for superbugs)
See this 2010 scientist's blog on superbugs updating the New Yorker 2008 investigative report. Feedlots have been accused of fostering flu viruses. Fish farms have spread viruses worldwide, despite years of warning, which -- typically -- BC lobbyists and governments have denied.
6. Tarsands and the "security" of the US empire: blood for oil
Canadian ecojustice groups raised questions of the tarsands' true cost years ago, to denials from Alberta and federal governments. Pipelines and projects are now being quadrupled despite warnings by ethical analysts that environmental damage is being hidden from investors. Federal studies long kept secret show woodland caribou being driven to extinction. Alberta's Parkland Institute shows US strategy calls for further involvement in wars to protect oil supply. Examples are the Afghanistan war, its connection with US pipelines, and Pentagon geopolitical studies (2006, 2007, 2008). Already the world's biggest oil consumer, in 2007 the US military reported that its new tactics (supposed to protect "security of supply") require four times as much oil per soldier as in the Gulf War of 1991.
This video was produced in Sep 2009 by Drew Dellinger of Poets for Justice in San Francisco; "planetize the movement" is a quotation from Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
For more, see his blog and collected poems Love Letter to the Milky Way.Drew Dellinger has inspired many people through his poetry performances and keynote talks on justice, ecology, cosmology, activism, democracy and compassion. He has spoken at conferences--including Bioneers, the Green Festival and The Dream Reborn--as well as colleges, poetry readings, protests and places of worship. His poems have been heard on radio, in film, and read in magazines from The New York Times to YES! After years studying the new cosmology and ecological thought with Thomas Berry, he is now writing his PhD on King, cosmology, and ecojustice. He teaches at John F. Kennedy University in Pleasant Hill, CA.
This article, translated from El Mercurio of Santiago, Chile, appeared in Rolene Walker's blog Walk With Earth | Caminata Por La Tierra on 4 Dec 2009.
It was 10 years ago that Rolene Walker, a sociologist from California, began to devise a plan for when she began her retirement: traveling across Latin America from Mexico to Chile. “At first I did not like the idea at all, it was too much work,” she says, over coffee here in Santiago, with the goal accomplished and 20 months of walking behind her.
The idea was not just sightseeing, but to raise awareness about excessive consumption. “I realized we will not survive unless we have a spiritual change.” So before leaving with the help of the Quaker church, in which she participates, she created the foundation Walk With Earth, made the blog (where you can review her journey), got a support truck and 8 March [2008] in San Diego, started out.
That first day, Rolene walked several miles in the company of children. The enthusiasm was enormous. It was not always so. There were many sections that she did alone, along highways, in temperatures of 105 degrees and feeling too close to the passing trucks.
She quickly lost 12 kilos and befriended unconditional sunblock. She also faced accidents (her own truck ran over her) and the medical sdoctor who suggested she not walk more than four hours a day, then developed asthma. And to put the icing on the cake: the motor burned out in Arica and she decided to leave it there.
But she’s happy. “After this trip, I’m more optimistic. This is a pilgrimage and the idea is to see the Earth as sacred space. I have a better sense of humanity after this walk,” she reflects. “People are nicer than I thought: I have been fed, I have been hosted. With only a phone call, people welcomed me into their homes,” she adds.
The accounts are lively: “We have spoken with 340 classes of students, from primary to university, engineers and doctors. Also to churches and environmental groups.
During her tour, Rolene turned 60 and, while acknowledging that “it is very hard to walk every day”, she feels much better than when she started the journey. “The human body is made for walking. And we’re much healthier if we walk regularly,” she says.
But not everything was on foot. She only walks 16 kilometers a day. And if the distance separating one town from another exceeded 30 miles, if the road was too dangerous or if there was any other problem, then she climbed into her truck. There was a sink and bed and solar panels for all electrical requirements.
Throughout her ordeal, about 300 people walked with her in various stages of the journey. They walked with her one day, a week or more. “I ask all to plant trees and I suggest they reduce gasoline consumption." In fact, at the end of this conversation, she hands me seeds to plant a redwood tree, the oldest and tallest tree in the world.
The authors are Quakers. This is their July 2009 submission to the National Human Rights Consultation in Australia. Preamble: placing humanity in a holistic and well-being context The purpose of human rights is, at its most basic level, to ensure a minimum standard of human wellbeing. It is proposed that the concepts of ongoing human happiness and human wellbeing be taken as the overarching values from which any instrument of human rights in Australia is derived.
Increasingly, Australians, like other human beings across the planet, have been confronted with the imminent dangers of mistakenly separating human from ecological rights. The effects of climate change, the dwindling access to potable water, and the nutritionally depleted and devastated soils and landscapes, are numerous and widespread.
Inattention to ecological wellbeing inevitably leads to violations of the right to food, right to health (physical, mental, and spiritual), and right to shelter, severely compromising people’s ability to procure the basic means of fulfilling the right to life. Included in such effects on personal wellbeing are the widespread social difficulties associated with food production and farming, that seem to correlate closely to the growing number of mental illnesses and suicides amongst farmers.
As more and larger areas become polluted and unable to sustain food production and access to water, it appears inevitable that people will give up their homes and move to areas where they may be less vulnerable to the effects of ecological degradation and catastrophe.
Existing policies based on "polluter pays” principles are insufficient to address the long-term devastating effects of many industrial practices, including conventional farming methods. The payments are not always directed towards the restoration of the affected environment or for finding and funding alternatives to the practices that create the pollution in the first place. Too often these policies are considered to be satisfactory solutions to the ecological problem, when they should only be seen as temporary solutions until more holistic and ecologically sustainable forms of energy, water supply, or farming are developed.
Unfortunately, where they exist, the human rights regimes of other countries are anthropocentric - only protecting the planet for the purposes of continued resource exploitation. This extends to affording functional (as opposed to theoretical) protection to ecological species, populations and communities once they are extremely endangered.- Australia at least has an advantage in being late to develop a human rights instrument in that it can learn from the weaknesses of existing instruments, overcoming limitations such as anthropocentrism and instrumentalism. Australia is exploring the scope for an instrument to protect human rights at the very point in human history when human society is at an ecological crossroads.
The measures we put in place now to protect Earth and its inhabitants will determine the sustainability of the human race, as well as other species and the environment. We do not have the luxury of engaging in half-measures. A factor which is interwoven with this is the maintenance and improvement of ecological integrity. We do not have the luxury of engaging in half-measures.
Australia is the driest inhabited continent with severely compromised water systems. Australia cannot afford to proclaim any human right that would in any way compromise ecological integrity. Short-term economic benefit; considerations of corporate profit and loss; contractual obligations; or continuation in jobs causing extensive and significant ecological damage cannot take priority over repairing and living sustainably on, from and with the ecosphere.
Australians have the opportunity to demonstrate leadership by framing a modern human rights instrument from a holistic perspective that neither maintains nor continues the errors and misconceptions of past views of humanity’s place in the universe. This opportunity can be fulfilled by acknowledging and enumerating ecologically-centred human rights or well-being.
Priorities for consideration include:
Provision for individuals or groups to bring claims of violations of ecological integrity irrespective of the locality in question. (Humans should be able speak for entities that cannot speak for themselves).
Investigations of ecological (inclusive of social) impact should not be limited to the immediate vicinity of a project. Scientists and people with traditional or local knowledge should be solicited to ascertain the possible long-term, off-site and not immediately identifiable effects of particular projects.
Ecological protection cannot be limited to what might be described as ecological excisions or exclusions, e.g. not cutting down particular trees or leaving some portions of a river in their natural state to enable the survival of a particular species. Ecosystems, inclusive of the human component, are inter-connected. Actions in a distant area can have significant impacts on other beings and systems.
Profit and loss calculations should not be limited to conventional measures of GDP but incorporate the values inherent in natural entities such as river, mountains, and trees, including the value of their role in the various ecological cycles. Practices must be developed which avoid the “playing off” of one resource against another, i.e. mining against water; potable and irrigation water supply schemes against ‘environmental flows’ in streams.
Australia is already ecologically damaged. There should be a strong political, industry, and social commitment in support of major efforts to restore the health of land and water and the ecological integrity required to maintain a full range of Australian ecosystems and their components.
It is not enough to enact laws that address human wellbeing more holistically. Consideration must be given to the development of holistic thinking at all levels and across all sections of Australian society. For instance, legal officials, including judges, need to be better educated about ecological issues so that their judgments are not short-sighted or reliant on experts appointed by the proponents and opponents that appear before them. .
Far greater use should be made of independent expertise (this occurs to a limited extent in the NSW Land & Environment Court, which employs non-legally trained Commissioners in addition to exclusively legally trained Judges, and which can appoint expert advisers to assist the Court / Commission in weighing technical evidence).
Without particular ecological rights, human happiness and human wellbeing are neither well supported nor advanced. We note that the Australian Treasury, which guides this nation’s economic and financial policies, already operates within a Wellbeing Framework.
Treasury’s mission is ‘to improve the wellbeing of the Australian people by providing sound and timely advice to the Government, based on objective and thorough analysis of options, and by assisting Treasury Ministers in the administration of their responsibilities and the implementation of Government decisions’.
Increasingly, Western cultures are moving to an understanding that has been integral to indigenous and many Eastern cultures: that we co-exist in a web of life that is, with due care and responsibility, sustainable.
It is proposed that, in the development of a formal instrument to protect human rights in Australia, the Australian Government does so within a Wellbeing Framework. In short, human rights should not be an end in themselves. Human rights should be one of the means by which human happiness and human wellbeing is established in Australia.
The rights proposed should not be seen as the totality of human rights that might be introduced in any future instrument. This proposal has intentionally limited itself to ecological rights and those rights which would enable the free discussion of and activism in support of those rights.
* The human right to drinking water is fundamental for life and health. Sufficient and safe drinking water is a precondition for ecological functionality; human happiness and wellbeing; and the realization of all human rights. * The sufficiency, safety, affordability, of and accessibility to water, are fundamental to human dignity, happiness and well-being. These are fundamental to the human right to water. The human right to water entitles everyone to sufficient, affordable, physically accessible, safe, and acceptable water for personal and domestic use subject to sustainability and ecological restraints. * Water is a fundamental human right, a public good, a public trust and part of the global commons. * Water must also be managed to protect ecological integrity inclusive of the rights of future generations. * Water must not be treated as a commodity and must neither be subjected to privatization, corporate profit nor international trade agreements. * Water must not be traded in a stock exchange fashion * Water must be re-bundled with land. Land and water cannot be separated. * Responsibilities extend beyond the Australian government to corporations, international financial institutions operating within Australia and other non-governmental water actors. * Water systems must be locally, publicly and democratically owned and controlled, in a transparent manner. Reports on such ownership, control and management must be made annually in Australian, State and Territory Parliaments. * Australian governments – whether federal, state, territory, or local government – and their agencies, agents and instrumentalities together with the private water industry and international financial institutions and others must not interfere with nor circumscribe the human right to water. * Sustainable access to water resources for agriculture must be protected to realise the right to adequate food subject to ecological constraints (inclusive of the need to produce food closest to where it will be consumed) * Individual, family, and small companies must be considered for positive attention and action with regard to equitable access to water and water management systems, including sustainable rain harvesting and irrigation technology, to prevent imbalance by large corporate agricultural holdings. * Governments must ensure access to water for subsistence farming and for securing the livelihoods and self-determination of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people subject to ecological restraints. * Water is to be treated as a social and cultural good, not primarily as an economic good. The manner of the realization of the right to water must also be sustainable, ensuring that the right can be realized for present and future generations. * While the adequacy of water required for the right to water may vary according to different conditions, the following factors apply in all circumstances:
(a) Availability. The water supply for each person must be sufficient and continuous for personal and domestic uses. These uses ordinarily include drinking, personal sanitation, washing of clothes, food preparation, personal and household hygiene. The quantity of water available for each person should correspond to World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines. Some individuals and groups may also require additional water due to health, climate, and work conditions; (b) Quality. The water required for each personal or domestic use must be safe, therefore free from micro-organisms, chemical substances and radiological hazards that constitute a threat to a person’s health. Furthermore, water should be of an acceptable colour, odour and taste for each personal or domestic use. (c) Accessibility. Water and water facilities and services have to be accessible to everyone without discrimination. Accessibility has four overlapping dimensions: (i) Physical accessibility: Water, and adequate water facilities and services, must be within safe physical reach for all sections of the population. Sufficient, safe and acceptable water must be accessible within, or in the immediate vicinity, of each household, educational institution and workplace. All water facilities and services must be of sufficient quality, culturally appropriate and sensitive to gender, life-cycle and privacy requirements. This has particular applicability in indigenous communities. Physical security should not be threatened during access to water facilities and services; (ii) Economic accessibility: Water, and water facilities and services, must be affordable for all. The direct and indirect costs and charges associated with securing water must be affordable, and must not compromise or threaten the realization of other rights, particularly the right to adequate food; (iii) Non-discrimination: Water and water facilities and services must be accessible to all, including the most vulnerable or marginalized sections of the population, in law and in fact, without discrimination; and (iv) Information accessibility: accessibility includes the right to seek, receive and impart information concerning water issues.
* All Governments – Federal, State, Territory, and Local – to take steps to remove de facto discrimination, interference, barriers by which individuals and groups are deprived of the means or entitlements necessary for achieving the right to water. Such discrimination, interference, barrier may include lack of investment in facilities in remote communities; failure to update facilities in small or remote communities. * All Governments – Federal State, Territory or Local - should ensure that the allocation of water resources, and investments in water, facilitate access to water for all members of society. Inappropriate resource allocation can lead to discrimination that may not be overt. * Water investments should not favour expensive water supply services and facilities that may, for practical purpose, be only accessible to a small, privileged fraction of the population, rather than investing in services and facilities that benefit a far larger part of the population. * Children must not be prevented from enjoying their human rights due to lack of adequate water in educational institutions and households. Provision of adequate water to educational institutions, including provision of refrigerated water in tropical climates, without adequate drinking water should be addressed urgently; * Rural and deprived urban areas must have access to properly maintained water facilities. Access to traditional water sources in rural areas should be protected from unlawful encroachment and pollution. Deprived urban areas, including informal human settlements, and homeless persons, should have access to properly maintained water facilities. No household should be denied the right to water on the grounds of their housing or land status; * Indigenous peoples’ access to water resources on their ancestral and traditional lands must be protected from encroachment and unlawful pollution. Governments should provide resources for indigenous peoples to design, deliver and control their access to water; * Groups facing difficulties with physical access to water, such as older persons, persons with disabilities, victims of natural disasters, persons living in disaster-prone areas, and those living in arid and semi-arid areas, or on small islands must be provided with safe and sufficient water. * The right to water, like any human right, imposes four types of obligations on Government: obligations to respect, obligations to protect, obligations to fulfil and obligations to promote. * The obligation to respect requires that governments refrain from interfering directly or indirectly with the enjoyment of the right to water. The obligation includes, inter alia, refraining from engaging in any practice or activity that denies or limits equal access to adequate water; arbitrarily interfering with customary or traditional arrangements for water allocation; unlawfully diminishing or polluting water, for example through waste or through use and testing of weapons; and limiting access to, or destroying, water services and infrastructure as a punitive measure, for example, during armed conflicts in violation of international humanitarian law. * The obligation to protect means Government need to prevent third parties from interfering in any way with the enjoyment of the right to water. Third parties include individuals, groups, corporations and other entities as well as agents acting under their authority. The obligation includes, inter alia, adopting the necessary and effective legislative and other measures to restrain, for example, third parties from denying equal access to adequate water; and polluting and inequitably extracting from water resources, including natural sources, wells and other water distribution systems. Where water services (such as piped water networks, water tankers, access to rivers and wells) are operated or controlled by third parties, governments must prevent them from compromising equal, affordable, and physical access to sufficient, safe and acceptable water. To prevent such abuses an effective regulatory system must be established, in conformity with the Covenant and this General Comment, which includes independent monitoring, genuine public participation and imposition of penalties for non-compliance. * The obligation to fulfil places on Governments the obligations to facilitate, promote and provide. The obligation to facilitate requires the Governments to take positive measures to assist individuals and communities to enjoy the right to water. * The obligation to promote obliges Governments to take steps to ensure that there is appropriate education concerning the hygienic use of water, protection of water sources and methods to minimize water wastage. Governments are also obliged to fulfil (provide) the right when individuals or a group are unable, for reasons beyond their control, to realize that right themselves by the means at their disposal.
· Governments should adopt comprehensive and integrated strategies and programmes to ensure that there is sufficient and safe water for present and future generations. Such strategies and programmes may include: (a) reducing depletion of water resources through unsustainable extraction, diversion and damming; (b) reducing and eliminating contamination of watersheds and water-related eco-systems by substances such as radiation, harmful chemicals, industrial discharge, human excreta and farm runoff; (c) monitoring water reserves; (d) ensuring that proposed developments do not interfere with access to adequate water; (e) assessing the impacts of actions that may impinge upon water availability and natural-ecosystems watersheds, such as climate changes, desertification and increased soil salinity, deforestation and loss of biodiversity; (f) increasing the efficient use of water by end-users; (g) reducing water wastage in its distribution; (h) response mechanisms for emergency situations; and (i) establishing competent institutions and appropriate institutional arrangements to carry out the strategies and programmes.
* All victims of violations of the right to water should be entitled to adequate reparation, including restitution, compensation, satisfaction or guarantees of non-repetition. National ombudsmen, human rights commissions, and similar institutions should be permitted to address violations of the right. * Citizens and residents have the right to hold governments, government agencies and instrumentalities and similar organisations as well as corporations accountable for environmental degradation impacting on food and the rights outlined herein.
* Enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical, mental and spiritual health without discrimination of any kind * Vulnerable groups are to receive such positive discrimination that will ensure a high standard of health by both Australian and international standards. * Access to a sufficient amount of safe and clean water for personal, domestic and communal use is fundamental to the realization of the right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health. Good governance, sound economic policies, and responsive democratic institutions are key to the full realization of the right * People living in remote Australia should enjoy equity of access to all that is necessary to raise their health and their living conditions to an equitable Australian standard within a sound sustainable and ecological context. * Enjoyment of air, water, land, workplaces, buildings in a healthful and life-sustaining manner free of toxicity or other threats to life and health * Enjoyment of adequate and appropriate housing to meet changing climatic conditions * Citizens and residents have the right to hold governments, government agencies and instrumentalities and similar organisations as well as corporations accountable for ecological degradation impacting on health and disease. * Adverse ecological impact deemed to be within the parameters of human control can be taken to limit access to this right and may, therefore, be subject to judicial redress for those adversely affected and impacted.
Availability – distribution which provides fair and equal access to everyone; freedom to reproduce food plants and save seeds; freedom to lawfully grow food plants on private and public property.
Food information – freedom of access to food information relating to diet, nutrition, health, food processing and production; freedom of information in respect to accessible, intelligible, easily understandable, and clearly laid out labelling of all food.Where food can be purchased without labelling, information must be provided by fact sheets and must be publicised on shelving and fittings where food is accessed in intelligible and easily understandable form.
Food from animals – Must be cruelty free; must contain information relating to additives such as anti-biotics, growth stimulators. Food which appears to be free from animal products must be clearly labelled to be such or have the animal products boldly identified.
Connectedness – the right to connectedness with the production of food so that there is widespread community understanding of animals, animal cruelty, use of pesticides and genetic modification; and any possible ecological harm or degradationbrought about by food production.
In no case, may citizens and residents be denied of their own means of subsistence except with regard to ecological degradation or to safeguard animal and plant species and their reproduction.
Citizens and residents have the right to hold governments, government agencies and instrumentalities and similar organisations as well as corporations accountable for ecological degradation impacting on food and the rights outlined herein.
Citizens and residents of Australia may not be disadvantaged by an deleterious effect on the quality of their environment which may prevent their enjoyment of other rights such as the right to life; the right to water; the right to adequate food and the right to health
People outside Australia have a special case for seeking asylum and refuge in Australia on the basis of adverse ecological impact within their own nation.
The precautionary approach shall be widely applied by Australian governments and corporations. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent ecological degradation.
• Enjoyment of the right to use and enjoy property with due regard to safety, security, impact on others, impact on the environment, impact on life, health and wellbeing.
• Adverse environmental impact deemed to be within the parameters of human control can be taken to limit access to this right and may, therefore, be subject to judicial redress for those adversely affected and impacted.
In addition to other human rights, Australia owes a particular responsibility and obligation to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of Australia in respect of the rights to
*Cultural and spiritual practice and their transmission
*Traditional country and its resources of food and water subject to sustainable ecological restraints.
The same access to health, education, and other services as all other Australians.
Provided that the rights of others are not infringed upon, all persons with a particular cultural, religious, racial or linguistic background must be allowed the right, in community with other persons of that background, to enjoy his or her culture, to declare and practice his or her religion and to use his or her language.
Freedom to transmit cultural and ecological practices within sustainable ecological restraints.
* Citizens and residents have the right to hold corporations, private actors, agencies, agents and instrumentalities and similar persons and entities accountable for ecological (inclusive of human social) degradation and despoliation impacting on the rights described here.
* Citizens and residents have the right to hold corporations, private actors, agencies, agents and instrumentalities and similar persons and entities accountable for cruelty and poor animal welfare practices in the supply of food.
* Citizens and residents have the right to interactive consultation and dialogue – as individuals, groups or organisations - with governments, their agencies, agents and instrumentalities and corporations, whether public or private, which affect their interests.
* A code of conduct will be drawn up by governments and corporations with widespread and representative community input to ensure a high standard of interactive consultation and dialogue.Such interactive consultation and dialogue will be based upon freedom of information with the same rights of discovery as exist judicially.This will be known as the Consultation and Dialogue (CaD) process.
* All major environmental applications will be subject to the Consultation and Dialogue (CaD) process.
* Every person has the right, and is to have the opportunity, without discrimination, to participate in the conduct of public affairs, directly or through freely chosen representatives
Every eligible person has the right, and is to have the opportunity, without discrimination to vote and be elected at periodic elections, whether Federal, State/Territory or Municipal, that guarantee the free expression of the will of the electors
Johan Maurer is an evangelical Friend who has travelled to many parts of the Quaker world: USA, UK, Canada, parts of Eastern Europe and Africa. He is currently living in Elektrostal, Russia, visiting Lithuania and Latvia. This 24 Aug 2006 Can you believe? post is reprinted with his permission.
When George Bush responded to the court decision declaring his war-on-terrorism wiretapping unconstitutional by saying, "Those who herald this decision simply do not understand the nature of the world in which we live," I thought about the spiritual implications of Bush's words, and that reminded me of McCarthy's booklet. [Canadians may wish to reflect on our government's similar refusal to obey our Charter of Rights and Supreme Court. - Ed.]
On a political level, it's easy to see the weakness in Bush's logic. If our courts begin making decisions based on trying to interpret "the nature of the world in which we live," rather than trying to interpret the Constitution, we're heading for anarchy, or more likely, a dictatorship of the politically cleverest. But Bush's warning may be much more effective at a deeper level. Over and over again in history, we've seen people being persuaded that safety requires compromising our ostensible values.
Many years ago, James Prothro and Charles Grigg (I'm reaching back into my distant memories of studying political science at Carleton University!) found a distinct difference between people's support of political tolerance in the abstract and their considerably lower tolerance in concrete situations. Every once in a while, political scientists tweak the rest of us by showing that Americans claim to cherish the Declaration of Independence, but when shown actual unlabeled text from that declaration, they declare it dangerous, communist, and the like. So it's not surprising that today's politicians try out yet again that old argument that during a "war" we cannot afford the luxury of our values. Or, rather, they propose another value, safety, that supposedly trumps civil liberties and due process.
However, to remain politically useful, "safety" as a value must remain abstract as well! When we begin studying safety in concrete terms, problems arise:
Somehow, the politicians must convince us, their audiences, that we will remain safe, while hoping that we don't think too much about the safety of others. For example, many innocent people have been severely inconvenienced or worse by being put on terrorist watch lists, arrested as material witnesses, or in a few (how many?) cases, kidnapped by U.S. or allied forces for interrogation and even torture. But we must believe that this won't happen to us, even though our protections are being compromised in the service of the war on terrorism, and the government argues that judicial due process would reveal too many secrets. Above all, we must not question the proposition that humans who are not U.S. citizens are to be completely disregarded in any offer of safety.
We must believe that the threat of terrorism is of a completely different order than the threat of natural disaster, crime, or any other danger whose probability increases as government resources are sucked away into this mislabeled "war." The government's unbelievably screwed-up response to Hurricane Katrina shows what the all-encompassing we-know-best claims of this war's leaders did for the actual safety of Gulf states' citizens.
We must believe in several lies at once: terrorism is a monolithic phenomenon, a new phenomenon, a manifestation of very clever subhumans who cannot be communicated with, an intractable and implacable reality that only our leaders can understand and manage, despite their disastrous record to date. We must want safety so badly that we overlook our leaders' actual performance in favor of their stern claims of authority and expertise.
The power of government to claim a monopoly on defining safety is ultimately a spiritual issue, and requires a spiritual confrontation, because in one sense, the politicians are right: we are not safe. Safety is not guaranteed, neither in terms of protection from physical harm, nor in terms of quality and scope of life.
Each of us, at this moment, faces multiple dangers, ranging at varying degrees of probability or absurdity from disease and accident, to violent crime, to a direct impact from a meteor. In an interesting paradox given George Bush's rhetoric of freedom, perhaps the more we actually claim and use freedom publicly and effectively in this world, the more we expose ourselves to danger. (Effective dissidents must count on the possibility that their activities will draw the attention of our "security" agencies.) This brings me to Charles McCarthy's main points on safety in The Stations of the Cross of Nonviolent Love. Addressing the pro-family claims of the Powers that Be in Station IV, he asks, "Can Christian family love and relationship find any lasting security in any source other than unconditional obedience to God’s will as revealed by Jesus Christ?" Addressing the hypnotic pseudo-security of our culture, he says, in Station VI,
It is easy to find hope, security and a future in the G.N.P., a national anthem, a football team, military technology, Disneyland, drugs, fashion and alcohol. It is nearly impossible in a capitalist society to find hope in the patient, secret commitment to the omnipotence of Christic love. Such a use of life is incontestable folly by all standards except one—Jesus’ teaching that the cross of nonviolent love is the power and the wisdom and the will of The Source of all Reality.
At a Friends World Committee regional conference shortly after the first Gulf War, T. Canby Jones warned us bluntly: We cannot understand Christian pacifism until we have confronted our own mortality.My corollary, in light of Bush's warning about the "world in which we live": The way we live in this world must not be dictated by fear. Otherwise, whatever safety we think we have, our death will come much too soon. If Jesus is our partner in shaping the way we live, and we have good friends listening and shaping and sharing our doubts and discoveries alongside us, fear and death will recede to their proper places—they're certainly not out of the picture, but whatever life we have, we don't live in their shadow.
One more excerpt from Charles McCarthy:
To those who do not believe in Christ’s cross of nonviolent love, its truth is folly, a scandal, an unrealistic waste of life’s time. To those who believe, it is nails, thorns, spears and suffering for others until the blind can see, until the lame can walk, until the imprisoned are freed, until the hungry are fed, until the oppressed are liberated, until the naked are clothed, until the sick are healed, until the rich are saved, until the homeless are at home, until the unlovable are loved, until all sins are forgiven. The believer in Christ’s nonviolent cross breathes in deeply the sufferings of humanity and breathes out freely his or her happiness in order to spread the healing power of nonviolent love as Divine Yeast in the dough of humanity.
If we advocate focusing on quality of life as a crucial dimension of safety, "nails, thorns, spears, and suffering for others" may seem to be unpromising lifestyle components. How can we breathe in "the sufferings of humanity" and breathe out "happiness"? For me, the crucial factor is the desire to have my eyes open, to be exposed to reality. I don't want happiness at the expense of ignorance, and it's too late to pretend not to know what I know. My mother survived Hiroshima, one of my sisters was murdered ... the Beast has come too close to my home.
My own experience is that, before my conversion, I never thought I'd be happy again, or able to trust. Jesus restored both joy and trust to me, but did not promise to keep me "safe" from reality. From my vantage point, reality includes both love and evil. My moment-by-moment task is to breathe love, and devote whatever power I have to its service, and let my God-given mind (and my faithful friends) help me stay alert to evil's attempts to divert my energy. That's why I want to deny politicians the right to put evil at the center of their definition of "the nature of the world in which we live." I can't live that way anymore.
Bill Samuel brought to my attention this article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, on the difficulties of leadership in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting's Quaker culture. He and I have both commented on the article in the related post on Martin Kelley's weblog.
Here's another writer, Pete Greig of Chichester, England and the 24-7 Prayer community, who recognizes the spiritual dimension of war and war language. It is so heartening to see a new generation of evangelical leaders grappling openly with the place of politics in their piety.
It is blatant to many of us (though few politicians will ever dare voice this particular truth) that the theatre of war is first and foremost a spiritual reality which requires a spiritual solution. You cannot bomb for peace. We all know that negotiation is better (and lets pray for Kofi Annan ... and the UN at this time) [how many American evangelicals say that?!], but even negotiation misses the root cause of contention. Here we have a series of conflicts that are deeply and ultimately spiritual, secondly ideological and thirdly territorial. You can bomb for territory. You can negotiate between ideologies. But the primary spiritual reality can only be engaged on earth as it is in heaven. This is why we intercede in prayer.
The following article is the last in a twelve-part series on climate change by Hugh Robertson, an Ottawa Friend, and the culmination of the arguments presented in his earlier articles. The series was published in a local weekly, the New Edinburgh News. Copenhagen: Brokenhagen or Hopenhagen? For the hopes and dreams of millions, it was clearly Brokenhagen. In the end there was not even a treaty, just a vague “Accord” without any commitments to curb global temperature increases. There were no binding targets on emission reductions, just empty pledges by the developed countries. Soft targets, like the early morning mist, will simply evaporate in the heat of an election campaign. Copenhagen failed the future.
We cannot look to the government for decisive leadership on environmental issues. Unlike Europe, there is no political will in Canada to combat the climate crisis. We do not even have a coherent policy to meet our weak emission targets. Canada's “policy” is simply to wait and see what Americans do.
The indecision of our government is perfectly understandable. They are sniffing the wind continuously and the polling numbers indicate that although support for the environment appears to be miles wide, the ice is only an inch thick. No political party is going to risk crashing through thin ice. Voter reaction to Stephane Dion’s Green Shift and a carbon tax in the last election is still too fresh, and unnerving, in the minds of politicians.
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However, Copenhagen was a success in finally countering the arguments and the speculations of the climate deniers. The Accord acknowledged that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are heating the planet and that global temperature increases must be capped at 2 degrees Celsius to prevent runaway climate change.
The corporate-funded denial machine has helped delay serious action on climate issues for two decades. But denial also runs deep in society at large. The diversion of climategate was an example of how easily we try to dodge our ecological responsibilities. Denial is an easier option than having to undertake lifestyle changes.
Too often, blame and the projection of guilt have been part of our self-deception and denial. For example, we criticize China for high levels of pollution, while forgetting that our per capita emissions are 10 times higher than their levels. Furthermore, we conveniently overlook the carbon footprint of the Chinese products that we import to satisfy our consumer appetites.
The science is settled. It is time for us to take responsibility for our excessive consumption. We can no longer hide behind denial, nor can we plead ignorance.
Increasing global warming and longer term climate change have dominated the headlines. But there are a myriad other environmental problems, all closely linked. As James Lovelock pointed out in explaining his Gaia theory three decades ago, nature is far too complex to be divided, lego-like, into separate boxes.
Global warming, bee and bat colony collapse, decimation of fish stocks, dead ocean zones, air pollution, wildfires, and floods are all symptoms of the exploitation and abuse of nature. We are the planet plunderers. We have stretched the biocapacity of Mother Earth to breaking point by our insatiable lifestyle demands. No other species can match our ability to scorch the earth. click on image to see details
Despite the doom and gloom of Copenhagen, Hopenhagen lives on because hope is really our only hope. But hope devoid of action is simply hallucination. Unfortunately, “hope” has been a negative factor in the fight for ecological sustainability. Hope, faith and optimism have all lulled us into a sense of complacency and security which pollsters, politicians and corporations have exploited.
Al Gore accurately nailed the cause of our paralysis when he suggested that we have moved in one giant step from denial to despair. A hope and an optimism underpinned by action is the best antidote for despair and depression.
James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency, puts it more bluntly: Quit wishing and start doing. The best way to feel hopeful about the future is to get off your backside and demonstrate to yourself that you are a capable and competent individual, resolutely able to face new circumstances.
Transformative change in societies always starts with individuals and the journey begins in our hearts. Like the abolition of slavery, it is an inner journey that becomes an outer movement. It is a bottom up process initiated by individuals that moves into the community and then outward and upward in an irresistible groundswell of momentum.
Many psychologists argue that we have to change our values before we will modify our behaviour and our lifestyles. But we do not have the luxury of time before we exceed critical climate tipping points. Once reached, they will provoke natural crises which will then drive changes that are outside our control. Before such doomsday scenarios are reached, we must act decisively and courageously to reshape our lifestyles. If we await a fundamental shift in societal values, time may well have run out.
The environmental crisis is, at root, a crisis of consumption and lifestyle. The first step in mobilizing a widespread movement is to take control of our own individual consumption; initially that means measuring our consumption footprints. The size of our personal footprints is the only true measure of our ethical commitment to planetary sustainability.
- If you have not yet established your emissions and lifestyle footprints, consider launching your initiative with the Zerofootprint calculator.
- You can also arrange for an energy audit of your home. This can be done independently or as part of the ecoENERGY Retrofit program. - There are numerous books and websites available with information on conserving energy and reducing waste. - You will find Guy Dauncey’s The Climate Challenge: 101 Solutions to Global Warming one of the most accessible and comprehensive guides on the market.
- Design your own consumption log to measure the progress of your reductions of energy, water, fuel, etc.
Hope anchored in action is energizing and empowering and personal example is both inspirational and contagious. Armed with the confidence of a minimalist footprint, take the spirit of change to your neighbourhood. In addition, be an active advocate for change in your other communities, such as schools and places of work and worship. Revolutions are won by tenaciously taking one street at a time. Let us take our communities one street at a time, winning our neighbours over with both a message of hope and a plan of action.
It is collective action and passion, not narrow individual self-interest that initiates and propels long-lasting change. Shifting a social mindset is not easy but as Vandana Shiva, the renowned Indian scientist and activist, not only points out but has actually demonstrated in her work, change starts at the grassroots.
Begin in small steps that can multiply to become huge solutions. Begin a seed at a time, a drink at a time, a school at a time and a meal at a time. Make a difference in your community with an idea that what you are doing connects to a larger world that can then multiply. That is the only way real change happens.
A crusade for climate stability, initiated at the community level, has another important dimension. Ecological collapse will inevitably be followed by economic meltdown which in turn will trigger widespread civic and political chaos. At that point, the same collective community action needed to stem ecological breakdown, will become critical in averting social collapse.
In a climate of social disintegration, it is societies with a tradition of egalitarianism and harmony that will best weather the effects of civic implosion. Societies built around competitive self-interest and adversarial institutions and characterized by vast discrepancies in wealth will likely have to contend with escalating internal tensions.
It is only the resilience of community life that will ensure social survival on a ravaged planet. Our collective spirit, reinforced by our gentler qualities of compassion and caring, will shape that resilience and help strengthen community cohesion. “Social capital” with its focus on connectedness will soon supersede financial capital as a pillar of community, economic and ecological sustainability.
As part of the strategy of bracing societies for climate change, the social and environmental ramifications of wealth distribution have to be considered. Two recent studies by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives have highlighted the correlation between personal income and over-sized footprints (the "affordability gap") and also the huge discrepancy between the earnings of corporate executives and wage workers.
The paradox of wealth and happiness is a prominent issue today. There is no perceptible increase in personal happiness after one’s annual income exceeds $15,000. Money does not buy happiness and neither does hedonism enhance happiness. If wealth is environmentally destructive and socially divisive, what is the purpose of affluence? We may be more content if we follow the advice of Pierre-Yves Cousteau, son of the renowned Jacques Cousteau: "Find happiness by protecting the world around us. "
We must build social solidarity in advance of climate disruptions. We will need to change our notions of happiness, success, human dignity, quality of life, economic growth and the distribution of wealth in order to strengthen our communities. Future survival will be shaped far more by a spirit of cooperation than by the forces of competition.
Take courage, be a beacon of hope –- what Paul Hawken's Blessed Unrest calls a dot of light –- in the drive for environmental change. Our collective task will be to connect the millions of dots of light across the continent and around the globe and build a movement that will transform our relationship with the planet. That is our mission. We owe it to future generations.
The title of this article is based on Alan Paton’sCry, the Beloved Country, a wrenching novel about race relations in South Africa. There are many powerful parallel themes, such as wealth disparity, socio-economic divisions, ecological exploitation, environmental racism and spiritual impoverishment between the microcosm of apartheid South Africa and the planetary scale of our biosphere problems. ***** See also Mathis Wackernagel's Global Footprint Network with national/regional/business/personal calculators, Anup Shah's blog on Consumption and Consumerism, and our previous blog post Reflections on Copenhagen which compares reactions from different countries and environmental groups.
defensible at law, and supported by a Planet Trust. For more details see her site This is Ecocide, her Copenhagen slide presentation and her blog. Earth Trustee duties and legal implications are explained on Trees Have Rights Too, which she founded in 2008, as well as WISE (Women in Sustainability and the Environment). The Ecologist magazine named her "One of the Top Ten Visionaries to Save the Planet".
For many years my Lenten season reading has included 
