{"id":183584,"date":"2021-04-26T12:01:16","date_gmt":"2021-04-26T11:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=183584"},"modified":"2021-04-23T04:39:54","modified_gmt":"2021-04-23T03:39:54","slug":"earth-democracy-recognising-the-rights-of-nature-respecting-human-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/04\/earth-democracy-recognising-the-rights-of-nature-respecting-human-rights\/","title":{"rendered":"Earth Democracy: Recognising the Rights of Nature, Respecting Human Rights"},"content":{"rendered":"

21 Apr 2021 – <\/em>Earth Democracy is a world view, paradigm and practice that is based on the recognition that:<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The Earth is living. The Living Earth is our Mother. She is\u00a0Terra Madre<\/strong>, Mother Earth,\u00a0Gaia, Pachamama, Vasundhara\u2026Mother Earth has rights.<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0We are all members of the\u00a0One Earth Family.\u00a0<\/strong>We are part of the Earth, and not separate from her, not her masters. We are interconnected through the living currencies of breath, water and nourishment. We have a duty to protect the Earth\u2019s Living Systems that provide us clean air, clean water and clean food.<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0We are part of\u00a0One Humanity on One Planet.<\/strong>\u00a0All humans are equal. Our diversity enriches life and cannot be made the justification for inequality and injustice. Future generations have a right to enjoy the gifts of the Earth. Present generations have a duty of Earth Care to pass on the gifts of nature in their full diversity, integrity and purity.<\/p>\n

4.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Earth Democracy is based on\u00a0Living Economies<\/strong>,\u00a0Living Democracies<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Living Cultures\u00a0<\/strong>woven through the diversity in the web of life. Each life form supports and sustains all others in mutuality and cooperation and harmony. All living beings are sentient beings and have rights. All beings are creative and intelligent.<\/p>\n

Living Economies are based on cocreativity and co production by humans as part of the Earth community, respecting the rights and integrity of all. In Earth Democracy the economy is a subset of ecology based on the laws of Mother Earth. We share the earth\u2019s gifts with others . Seed,biodiversity, water , food are commons .Participation as cocreaters in the Earths ecological processes to protect the commons and defend the common good is living democracy. Cultivating the culture of oneness with the Earth is Living Culture.<\/p>\n

Earth Democracy is a world view, paradigm and practice that is based on the recognition that everything is interconnected, the Earth Is Living, the Earth has rights, that we have duties to care for the Earth , and regenerate her soil, seeds and biodiversity, her water and food systems. Our rights flow like a spring from our duties.<\/p>\n

Earth democracy recognises that humans are part of the Earth and related to other beings. Human Rights are therefore connected to the Rights of the Earth and the Rights of other species.<\/p>\n

Earth Democracy recognises that all human beings are equal and have the same rights, enshrined in the UN declaration of Human Rights and other conventions that have evolved to protect the Rights of Women, the Rights of Indigenous people, the Rights of Peasants and the Rights of the Child.<\/p>\n

(UN declaration of Human Rights:\u00a0https:\/\/www.un.org\/sites\/un2.un.org\/files\/udhr.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

Rights of Women :\u00a0https:\/\/www.un.org\/womenwatch\/daw\/beijing\/beijingat10\/I.%20Human%20rights%20of%20women%20(Sep%2009).pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

Rights of Indigenous People:\u00a0https:\/\/www.un.org\/development\/desa\/indigenouspeoples\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2018\/11\/UNDRIP_E_web.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

Rights of Peasants:\u00a0https:\/\/www.geneva-academy.ch\/joomlatools-files\/docman-files\/UN%20Declaration%20on%20the%20rights%20of%20peasants.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

Rights of the Child:\u00a0https:\/\/www.childrensrights.ie\/sites\/default\/files\/submissions_reports\/files\/UNCRCEnglish_0.pdf<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Earth Democracy recognises that all human beings are equal in rights, while they are diverse in their race and religion, their gender and cultures. Diversity is not inequality. Diversity goes hand in hand with democracy and the rights of all to their ecological space. Invading into the ecological space of other human beings on the false assumption of superiority and imposing uniformity is at the root of environmental injustice and economic inequality. Imposition of \u201csameness\u201d and \u201cuniformity\u201d on a biologically and culturally diverse world unleashes violence against nature, her species, and diverse cultures.<\/p>\n

All humans are ecologically equal but diverse in culture, race, religion and gender. We have the same rights to food and water, clean air and a safe and healthy environment.<\/p>\n

Human beings, as part of the Earth have natural rights to be alive, well and healthy. The right to life is the right to breathe and have clean air, the right to water and freedom from thirst, the right to food and freedom from hunger, the right to a home, to belonging, to land, to the sustenance and livelihoods that soil and land provide.<\/p>\n

Since we depend on nature for sustenance, destruction of nature translates into violation of human rights to food and water, life and livelihood.<\/p>\n

All ecological problems have common roots in the denial of the Earth as a Living System, and violation of the limits her ecological cycles and processes put on human action.<\/p>\n

Violation of the integrity of species and\u00a0ecosystems, the breaking of ecological limits and planetary boundaries,\u00a0cultural integrity and diversity are at the root of multiple ecological emergencies the Earth is facing and social and economic emergencies humanity is facing.<\/p>\n

Biodiversity, the diversity of species, their mutuality and interconnectedness, creates the web of life, maintains the living planet and the infrastructure of life. I call this nature\u2019s economy, the biodiversity economy, and the living carbon economy. Plants through photosynthesis use the sun\u2019s energy to convert carbon dioxide in the atmosphere into living carbon on which all life depends.<\/p>\n

Climate Change is a result of disrupting the ecological and nutrition cycles of life. It is a result of shifting from a living carbon economy of care for the biosphere to a dead carbon\u00a0 economy of industrialism, mining 600 million years of fossil fuels buried underground by nature, and pumping them into the atmosphere as pollutants and Green House Gases into the atmosphere.<\/p>\n

The emergencies humans face in terms of hunger and thirst, disease and pandemics are rooted in the ecological crises and the crises of injustice, inequality, and inhumanity.<\/p>\n

The movement to recognise the Rights of Mother Earth began after the failure of the Copenhagen Climate Summit in 2009. The worst polluters announced they would shift from legally binding emissions reduction targets to voluntary commitments. Eva Morales, the indigenous president of Bolivia said \u201cwe are not here to defend the rights of polluters but the Rights of Mother Earth\u201d. He later organised a \u201cPeople\u2019s Summit on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth\u201d from which evolved the Draft Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, to supplement and complement the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.<\/p>\n

(Universal Declaration of rights of Mother Earth:\u00a0https:\/\/www.navdanya.org\/site\/Earth-university\/universal-declaration-of-the-rights-of-Mother-Earth<\/a>)<\/p>\n

We do not \u201cgive\u201d Rights to Nature. Mother Earth \u201chas\u201d rights. We have to recognise, and live according to her laws . Mother Earth gives us life, she gives us natural rights to share her gifts, and ecological duties to protect and regenerate her.The Rights of Mother Earth become our duties .<\/p>\n

We are alive because nature is alive. The Earth gives us life. She is not raw material for exploitation and profits. The ecological crises are rooted in the denial of the Earth as living. Environmental injustice and violation of human rights is rooted in the denial that we are part of the living Earth, that all humans have equal rights as Earth Citizens.<\/p>\n

Earth democracy as a world view and practice allows us to recognise the connections between Rights of Mother Earth and Human Rights. It shows us to walk a path to protect both, and ensure the freedom and wellbeing of all.<\/p>\n

A movement is growing to define violence against nature and violation of principles of ecological justice as a crime of Ecocide in international law. Across the world people are taking actions to prevent the damage to and destruction of ecosystems which are leading to the harming the health and wellbeing of species, including humans.<\/p>\n

(https:\/\/www.stopecocide.Earth\/become<\/a>)<\/p>\n

All for Nature, All from Nature- For the Well Being of All<\/strong><\/p>\n

While the consciousness of the Earth as living , the awareness of the Rights of Mother Earth, and the movement of environment justice is growing, the dominant system is extending and deepening the false assumptions of Ecological and Human apartheid and Anthropocentrism. The 1 % is offering the disease as the cure.<\/p>\n

The new language of \u201cNature Based Solutions\u201d continues this Anthropocentrism and instrumentalisation of nature. Nature continues to exist in the minds of the powerful only to solve their problems of extractivism and profit making. New proposals to address the ecological emergencies are neither sustainable, nor just. They deny both the Rights of Mother Earth and human rights of indigenous people, farmers, fisher folk, women, working people and the poor.<\/p>\n

The language of \u201cHalf for Nature\u201d continues Ecoapartheid . It continues to deny Rights of Nature and Human Rights. It denies integrity and rights of the ecological cultures whose forests, biodiversity and land are being appropriated for a new \u201cgreen washed\u201d extractive economy.<\/p>\n

It is an anthropocentric denial of the reality that all life, all resources flow from nature. To protect Rights of Mother Earth and Human Rights, we need to protect the living economies of indigenous cultures. Instead of \u201cHalf for Nature\u201d we need to recognize<\/p>\n

\u201cAll for Nature, All from Nature-For the Well Being of All\u201d<\/p>\n

\u0938\u0930\u094d\u0935\u0947<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>\u092d\u0935\u0928\u094d\u0924\u0941<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>\u0938\u0941\u0916\u093f\u0928\u0903<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cSarve Bhavantu Sukhina\u1e25<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

We are not separate from nature. And Nature is not divisible. Everything is interconnected. We cannot have a future where the 1% grabs all the planet\u2019s resources, continuing on the path of separation and apartheid, resource extraction and pollution.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

To say \u201cHalf for Nature\u201d is ecologically and ethically flawed. It is ecologically flawed because it is based on the the Cartesian paradigm of separation and division, which is blind to the interconnectedness of the planet\u2019s ecological processes.<\/p>\n

Pesticides sprayed on farms reach the breast milk of women in Greenland.<\/p>\n

(https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/archive\/politics\/2004\/04\/11\/poisons-from-afar-threaten-arctic-Mothers-traditions\/89af6e09-c411-4b6f-bc97-4839963e9208\/<\/a>)<\/p>\n

We are one Earth Family on one planet, healthy in our diversity and interconnectedness.<\/p>\n

The planet\u2019s health and our health are non-separable.<\/p>\n

Invasions into the forests, the homes of diverse species and diverse cultures over the last 30 years of the rule of greed and globalisation\u00a0 has led to the emergence of new disease pandemics such as Sars , Ebola , Zika , HIV, Nipa\u2026<\/p>\n

We can be linked worldwide through the spread of disease like the corona virus when we invade the homes of other species, manipulate plants and animals for commercial profits and greed, and spread monoculture. Or we can be connected through health and wellbeing for all by protecting diversity of ecosystems and protecting the biodiversity, integrity, self-organization (autopoieisis ) of all living beings , including humans.<\/p>\n

As Dr King reminded us,<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fossil fuels burned by the rich in the North are causing the melting of Glaciers in the the Himalaya and threatening the lives of the small islanders.<\/p>\n

(https:\/\/www.navdanya.org\/bija-refelections\/2021\/02\/08\/4-decades-of-disasters-4-decades-of-warning\/<\/a>)<\/p>\n

(Ref: Shiva, Vandana, and Vinod Kumar Bhatt. 2009. Climate Change at the Third Pole. New Delhi.\u00a0https:\/\/annalsofneurosciences.org\/journal\/index.php\/annal\/article\/viewArticle\/ans.0972-7531.2010.170112\/859<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

To say \u201cHalf for Nature\u201d denies that the planet and her atmosphere is one. Fossil fuels and Green House Gas pollution by the rich is creating climate disasters for those who never contributed to Climate Change.<\/p>\n

The rich and powerful have been Colonising the atmosphere since the beginning of industrialism. They continue to be the biggest polluters. The US is responsible for 40% excess emissions, the G8 or 85% and the Global North for 92%. The Global South is bearing the brunt of the climate disasters- floods, draughts, cyclones and hurricanes.<\/p>\n

(https:\/\/inthesetimes.com\/article\/climate-change-wealthy-western-nations-global-north-south-fires-west<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.thelancet.com\/journals\/lanplh\/article\/PIIS2542-5196(20)30196-0\/fulltext)<\/a><\/p>\n

In \u201cConfronting Carbon Inequality\u201d Oxfam reports<\/p>\n

\u201cThe richest one percent of the world\u2019s population are responsible for more than twice as much carbon pollution as the 3.1 billion people who made up the poorest half of humanity during a critical 25-year period of unprecedented emissions growth<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n

(https:\/\/www.oxfam.org\/en\/press-releases\/carbon-emissions-richest-1-percent-more-double-emissions-poorest-half-humanity<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.oxfam.org\/en\/research\/confronting-carbon-inequality)<\/a><\/p>\n

While being the drivers of the problem of atmospheric pollution and climate change, the 1% are using the rhetoric of \u201cHalf for Nature\u201d to green wash their next plan to grab the resources of the Earth and displace people, both through an economic model that treats people as disposable and replaceable by robots, drones and Artificial Intelligence, as well new attempts to make the poor bear the burden of\u00a0 \u201coffsets\u201d in their \u201cNet Zero\u201d economy.<\/p>\n

(https:\/\/www.foei.org\/resources\/publications\/chasing-carbon-unicorns-carbon-markets-net-zero-report<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/grain.org\/en\/article\/6634-corporate-greenwashing-net-zero-and-nature-based-solutions-are-a-deadly-fraud)<\/a><\/p>\n

First they mined for coal, drilled for oil, fracked for gas, burning up 600 million years of nature\u2019s work in fossilising her carbon. Now they want to mine the ecological functions and services of nature. This is \u201cfinancialisation of nature\u201d.<\/p>\n

Carbon trade violates natures\u2019s rights by denying integrity of the Earth\u2019s ecological processes. The Earth does not exist for the billionaires so they can continue to exploit her to make limitless profits. The Earth is the basis of our lives and wellbeing. She creates the infrastructure for life through her complex, self organised ecological processes to create, sustain and regenerate life. Carbon trade is a violation of the rights of the Earth to her living carbon which is the basis of life.<\/p>\n

Climate Change and all the existential crises are rooted in violating the ecological laws of life. They are systems of breaking the cycles of life by using technologies of extraction and domination, not technologies of maintaining and regenerating life, of giving and sharing.<\/p>\n

Violent tools are rooted in a violent world view that presents the problems created by the rich and powerful as problems created by nature.<\/p>\n

Henry Miller reminds us<\/p>\n

\u201cThe world is not to be put in order. The world is in order. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n

Biodiverse, regenerative organic farming is based on the laws of nature and provides more food and nutrition for more people. It intensifies biodiversity and nutrition, health and wellbeing, not chemicals and poisons, disease and profits.<\/p>\n

It is the proven path of increasing nutrition per acre by getting rid of poisons. It protects the land by conserving and regenerating the soil, biodiversity and water and the ecological cycles that maintain the Earth\u2019s climate.<\/p>\n

Food is the currency of life. Growing food through Earth care is our ecological and ethical duty. Growing food according to the laws of the Earth creates the possibility to play our role as members of the Earth community, nourishing all life \u2013 of soil organisms, insects, bees and butterflies, birds and animals, including humans. The denial that we are part of the Earth, her living processes, her nutrition cycles is Eco apartheid.<\/p>\n

This assumption of separateness from the very conditions of our being alive and our wellbeing is at the root of the violation of Earth Rights and Human Rights to life, to land, to food and water.<\/p>\n

This Apartheid is accelerating and deepening as false solutions are offered to the planetary crises. By violating natures limits and Ecological Laws, Earth Rights and Human Rights are further violated.<\/p>\n

The idea of \u201cFarming without Farmers\u201d and \u201cFood without Farms\u201d are a continuation of the false assumption of Ecoapartheid \u2013 that we are separate from nature, we can live outside the Earth\u2019s Life Giving processes, and we have no duty to give back.<\/p>\n

(https:\/\/theecologist.org\/2020\/jan\/24\/rewilding-food-rewilding-farming<\/a>)<\/p>\n

It is a denial of the disease burden caused by industrial agriculture and industrial ultra-processed food. Lab food is hyper processed food. Health is a continuum from the biodiversity in the soil, of our plants and in our gut microbiome. The recipe of farming without farmers and food without farms is a recipe for destroying the health of the planet and human health. When agriculture is reduced to growing chemical intensive, energy intensive, finance intensive monocultures of \u201craw materials\u201d of Proteins and Carbohydrates for lab foods, both the soil and our gut are desertified. Destruction of biodiversity contributes to disease and sickness for the Earth and her beings, including humans.<\/p>\n

(Ref: Mayer, Emeran A. 2016. \u201cFeeding the Gut Microbiome.\u201d\u00a0https:\/\/www.patagoniaprovisions.com\/blogs\/stories\/feeding-the-gut-microbiome<\/a>\u00a0(April 16, 2021).)<\/p>\n

To force this disease creating food and agricultural model on indigenous people and small farmers across the world, new conditionalities are being created through \u201cnet zero\u201d \u201cnature based solutions\u201d. If \u201cfeeding the world\u201d through chemicals and dwarf varieties bred for chemicals was the false narrative created to impose the Green Revolution, the new false narrative is \u201csustainability\u201d and \u201csaving the planet\u201d.<\/p>\n

Agriculture as Earth Care combines respect for the Earth with justice for farmers, their right to their resources- seeds, land, water, knowledge, the right to an independent, sovereign livelihood and the right of all people to healthy, diverse, chemical free food , enshrined in the Right to Food and the Right to Health.<\/p>\n

In the new \u201cNet Zero\u201d world, farmers will not be respected and rewarded as custodians of the land and caregivers , as Annadatas , the providers of our food and health . They will be not be paid a fair and just price for growing healthy food through ecological processes which protect and regenerate the farming systems as a whole. They will be paid for linear extraction of fragments of the ecological functions of the system which can be tied to the new \u201cNet Zero\u201d false climate solution based on a fake calculus, fake science allowing continued emissions\u00a0 while taking control over the land of indigenous people and small\u00a0farmers. \u201c Net<\/a>\u00a0Zero\u201d is a new strategy to get rid of small farmers in first through \u201cDigital Farming\u201d and \u201cFarming without Farmers\u201d and then \u00a0through the burden of fake carbon accounting.<\/p>\n

Carbon Offsets and the new accounting trick of \u201cnet zero\u201d does not mean zero emissions. It means the rich polluters will continue to pollute, and also grab the land and resources of those who have not polluted \u2013 indigenous people and small farmers -for carbon offsets.<\/p>\n

Digital Giants like Gates are emerging as the new landlords shaping the future of agriculture .<\/p>\n

\u201cAmerican agriculture today is being transformed as farmers employ new technologies and Big Data to help them manage their crops<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n

(https:\/\/nypost.com\/2021\/02\/27\/why-bill-gates-is-now-the-us-biggest-farmland-owner\/<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Gates-linked Cottonwood Ag is one of the founding members of a\u00a0new coalition of farmland owners, operators and environmental groups called Leading Harvest to impose one global monoculture of non-sustainable industrial agriculture on the world through is working to come up with \u201cverifiable standards for sustainable farming\u201d and create \u201ca kind of sustainability seal of approval certifying that a given farm meets environmental standards\u201d.<\/p>\n

(https:\/\/nypost.com\/2021\/02\/27\/why-bill-gates-is-now-the-us-biggest-farmland-owner\/<\/a>)<\/p>\n

An industrial, globalised food system is allowing farmers to receive only 1 to 5 % of what the consumer pays.<\/p>\n

Instead of supporting systems that put small farmers , their seed, food and knowledge ensuring that farmers are paid fair prices for food they grow to nourish us, Gates wants to lock them into new systems and control and dependencies and push them to a zero budget economy where they receive nothing for the nourishment, food and health they provide society.<\/p>\n

As the Leading Harvest group says \u201cfarmers will be paid for sustainability\u2026There will be incentives for things like using less water, fewer chemicals, and storing more carbon\u201d<\/p>\n

(https:\/\/nypost.com\/2021\/02\/27\/why-bill-gates-is-now-the-us-biggest-farmland-owner\/<\/a>)<\/p>\n

A global \u201cseal\u201d of approval based on fake science, fake economics of maximizing profits through extraction will create new data slavery for farmers. Instead of using their own heads and cocreating with the Earth, they will be forced to buy \u201cBig Data\u201d Instead of obeying the Laws of Mother Earth, they will be forced to obey algorithms created by Big Tech and Big Ag .<\/p>\n

The Billionaires and the financial world are looking at carbon trade as the next big opportunity. Tom Goldtooth refers to it as Carbon Colonisation. Nnimmo Bassey calls it Carbon Slavery.<\/p>\n

(https:\/\/guardian.ng\/opinion\/environmental-justice-and-the-right-to-life-and-dignity\/<\/a><\/p>\n

The language of \u201cdecarbonisation\u201d fails to recognise that \u2018we are carbon based life forms\u2019 (Andre Leu). Life is living carbon. Equating living carbon with dead fossil carbon is a false equivalence.<\/p>\n

Further, this carbon reductionism ignores the fact that the \u201cforests, lands, ecosystems are so much more than carbon stored in them. They are living, breathing ecosystems, cultural and spiritual sites, and life giving for millions of people across the planet\u201d.<\/p>\n

(https:\/\/www.foei.org\/resources\/publications\/chasing-carbon-unicorns-carbon-markets-net-zero-report<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Conditionalities under any condition violate democratic principles and human rights. Farmers are guided by Earth care. The culture of Earth care needs to be respected and rewarded because it is centred on Rights of the Earth and Rights of all her children.<\/p>\n

Conditionalities based on fake science, fake economics will not stop climate change , \u00a0They will deepen environmental injustice and climate injustice . They will deepen the erosion of sovereignty and democracy which are the true basis of sustainability.<\/p>\n

Conditionalities put on the non-polluters by the polluters who want to continue to pollute is unjust and ecologically, morally and ethically bankrupt. It is the contemporary equivalent of the \u201cindulgences\u201d received by the catholic bishops and priests in the 11th<\/sup>\u00a0and 12th<\/sup>\u00a0century .The church led by Pope Francis today recognizes that \u00a0Pollution is a sin, and the \u201cCry of the Earth and the Cry of the Poor\u201d is one pain .<\/p>\n

(http:\/\/www.vatican.va\/content\/francesco\/en\/encyclicals\/documents\/papa-francesco_20201003_enciclica-fratelli-tutti.html<\/a>)<\/p>\n

\u201cPolluter Must Pay\u201d is an ecological principle in law. Polluters getting rewarded for the work for continuing to pollute while they appropriate the resources of small farmers and indigenous people is a crime against nature, small farmers and indigenous people.<\/p>\n

Conditionalities based on fake science and fake solutions will accelerate the violence against the land, the Earth and the farmers. It will of course create new markets, new rents and new profits for the Billionaires.<\/p>\n

(Ref:\u00a0Gates, Bill. 2021.\u00a0How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need<\/em>. London: Allen Lane.\u00a0https:\/\/www.penguin.co.uk\/books\/317\/317490\/how-to-avoid-a-climate-disaster\/9780241448304.html<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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