Readers may remember that Bolivia was the lone hold out to consensus at the Cancún climate conference last year. Socialist Bolivia objected that the agreement to agree hailed as a "success" by other conference delegates did not go far enough to protect indigenous peoples from climate change and establish binding greenhouse emissions targets for industrialized nations. {"Cancun"} Bolivia is now making history with a world first by establishing the legal rights of nature. Just as Americans have enshrined the fiction of corporate "personhood", Bolivia has passed legislation giving nature legal stature as part of a complete restructuring of the Bollivian legal system presided over by socialist President Evo Morales [photo], who himself was a preliterate indigenous person before entering national politics. The reform is heavily influenced by the indigenous Andean spiritual world which puts the Earth deity known as "Pachamama" at the center of life. The draft law states, "She is sacred, fertile and the source of life that feeds and cares for all living beings in her womb. She is in permanent balance, harmony and communication with the cosmos. She is comprised of all ecosystems and living beings, and their self-organization." Bolivia has suffered serious environmental degradation from mining for tin, silver, gold and other minerals. It is also suffering from weather extremes caused by global warming. Temperatures have risen for sixty years and are expected to rise another 3.5-4℃ within the next 100 years, turning Bolivia into a desert. Bolivia has asked the United Nations to adopt a treaty recognizing the rights of "Mother Earth" to life, clean water and, clean air. Ecuador also has large and powerful indigenous groups and it too has changed its constitution to give nature "the right to exist, persist maintain, and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and processes." While these abstract legal changes give full expression to the proper place of nature and natural processes on the planet, legal implementation and enforcement environmental protection laws remain problematic.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Big 'Green Kudos' to Bolivia
Readers may remember that Bolivia was the lone hold out to consensus at the Cancún climate conference last year. Socialist Bolivia objected that the agreement to agree hailed as a "success" by other conference delegates did not go far enough to protect indigenous peoples from climate change and establish binding greenhouse emissions targets for industrialized nations. {"Cancun"} Bolivia is now making history with a world first by establishing the legal rights of nature. Just as Americans have enshrined the fiction of corporate "personhood", Bolivia has passed legislation giving nature legal stature as part of a complete restructuring of the Bollivian legal system presided over by socialist President Evo Morales [photo], who himself was a preliterate indigenous person before entering national politics. The reform is heavily influenced by the indigenous Andean spiritual world which puts the Earth deity known as "Pachamama" at the center of life. The draft law states, "She is sacred, fertile and the source of life that feeds and cares for all living beings in her womb. She is in permanent balance, harmony and communication with the cosmos. She is comprised of all ecosystems and living beings, and their self-organization." Bolivia has suffered serious environmental degradation from mining for tin, silver, gold and other minerals. It is also suffering from weather extremes caused by global warming. Temperatures have risen for sixty years and are expected to rise another 3.5-4℃ within the next 100 years, turning Bolivia into a desert. Bolivia has asked the United Nations to adopt a treaty recognizing the rights of "Mother Earth" to life, clean water and, clean air. Ecuador also has large and powerful indigenous groups and it too has changed its constitution to give nature "the right to exist, persist maintain, and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and processes." While these abstract legal changes give full expression to the proper place of nature and natural processes on the planet, legal implementation and enforcement environmental protection laws remain problematic.