Rationale/Context:
Protection of the Environment Struggle
The struggle of indigenous people, farmers and fisherfolk communities to protect the environment have been a long and arduous struggle in the Philippines. The community’s perspective that they are part and one with the land, seas, trees, and the whole biodiversity pales and being silenced by the prevailing utilitarian perspective on nature and environment.
Likewise, environmental advocacy has become more life threatening in recent years. Philippines is known to be among the most risky and murderous country in Asia in terms of environmental advocacy, where 47 out of the 197 documented cases all over the world happened in the Philippines.
Neo-Liberal Economic Policies
As economic policies of Philippine government continue to support the world consumption for raw materials – in agriculture, minerals and even labor, environmental destruction became worst and took an unprecedented leap particularly during Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s when it sold the Philippines to the international community as haven of mineral resources and made the mining industry as the driver of Philippine development, institutionalized through the Philippine Mining Act of 1995.
Climate Change Issue
The phenomenon of climate change and impending negative impact to the world likewise provides a bigger context on the struggle for environmental protection. In the international level, the movement for the rights of the environment is starting to take its roots. Among the most notable are Ecuador being the first country to give legal rights to the environment in their constitution, Bolivia with its Mother Earth Law, and the birth of Pachamama Alliance, which is a response to the indigenous people’s (IP) desire to embrace nature fully.
During the COP21, where civil society, non-governmental and community organizations representing hundreds of thousands of people from diverse social movements and international networks gathered during the Paris climate negotiations, two most significant ideas that made ripples were (1) the growing global movement for the Rights of Nature, and (2) the potent voice of the Indigenous Kichwa People of Sarayaku, Ecuador and their Living Forest Proposal. Such perspectives were strikingly absent from walls of the UN negotiations.
As environmental scientists rate the Philippines as the second most vulnerable country to the impact of climate change. With the current state of destruction brought about by extractive industry and agri-business, the need to take the level of struggle for the protection of the environment into another level and arena is imperative – the Rights of Nature campaign.
Poverty and Natural Resources:
Given the high rate of poverty in the Philippines, the need to manage the environment is paramount. Poverty and environmental degradation seem to show they mutually reinforce and exacerbate each other. Unsustainable farming or fishing for example by and large is a product of the farmer’s and fishers drive to sustain their livelihood, in a situation where their produce and fish catch are greatly reduced due to their lack of control of lands and fishing grounds. They battle with or become adjuncts of big agricultural and fishing industry which more likely to create greater negative impacts in terms of sustaining nature.
“Biodiversity is also concern that has direct linkage to poverty and development. The poor in the rural areas are directly dependent on biodiversity resources for food, fuel, shelter, medicines and livelihoods. This variety of living organisms together with its environment provide critical services that are necessary for survival such as air and water purification, soil conservation, disease control, and reduced vulnerability to disasters such as floods, droughts and landslides.
When these resources or its environment are subjected to pressures that exceed their capacity to be resilient or to bounce back to its original state, imbalance in the ecosystem is created. Examples of these pressures are over-exploitation, unsustainable practices and pollution which could result to less production, increased health risks and vulnerability to natural disasters, and loss of livelihood. When imbalance is created, degradation occurs. When situations like these arise, they make lives especially in the rural areas more difficult therefore making development efforts more challenging.”
Rights Of Nature: Some Definitions And Related Concepts
“Rights of Nature” is a concept, at the heart of which lies key is addressing our dysfunctional economic system and the legal, social and political and modern cultural frameworks that are destroying people and planet. In hindsight it is the recognition and honoring that the environment has rights just as human beings.
The Rights of Nature framework came from the experience that after decades of environmental protection laws (some of which have achieved some notable successes), our modern political and legal systems have failed to prevent the increasingly grave threats of climate change, ecosystem degradation, and the growing displacement of humans and other species.
Most the world’s economic and legal frameworks are based on the ethos of utilitarian perspective on the environment. It treats nature as an input for production in the service of humankind. It views nature as property, thus, our rivers, forests and mountains are seen as objects to be sold and consumed. It expounds ideas around the commodification and financialization of nature. This is true even in current legal paradigm of the Philippine Mining Act of 1995 where the focus is on utilization and development and not on protection and management.
The ethos that human utility is the measure in viewing nature’s value is inherently dangerous. This puts the humans ahead of others to justify expropriating nature’s resources at the expense of many. This flawed economic and legal framework thus makes nature hostage and subject to wanton use for the benefit of human generation.
In economics, the prevailing utilitarian perspective that nature is infinite becomes fatal. Nature is used at a rate past and beyond its caring capacity, which endangers not only the current inhabitants of the earth but the future generations as well. The sustainability and life of mother earth is at stake and the idea that there is another earth that can sustain us still far-fetched.
“Recognizing Rights of Nature means that human activities and development must not interfere with the ability of ecosystems to absorb their affects, to regenerate their natural capacities, to thrive and evolve, and requires that those responsible, including corporate actors, be held fully accountable for negative impacts on Earth systems.”
It also presupposes a change in paradigm if not a return to an intertwined relationship between human and nature. Ethnocentric perspectives and even the traditional stewardship views dilute the reality that humans are part of nature. Our Genesis and the Philippine traditional stories about origin of men and women manifest strongly that we originated from nature – land, dust, water, fire etc.
“Critically, a Rights of Nature framework also provides a path through which people can re-learn respect for Mother Earth, as Indigenous peoples of the world have been demonstrating for thousands of years. The framework should be “we are not just protecting nature, we are nature – a recognition of profound significance given that it is the belief that we are separate from the Earth that resides at the root of and furthers a destructive relationship to the natural world.”
To avert cruel destruction of environment and the impacts of climate crisis, we must deter the flawed foundations of our economic and legal frameworks and move toward a truly sustainable living wherein:
1) We must recognize that we are intertwined and part of nature; challenge the prevailing world-view that places humans above nature, and with dominion over nature
2) Challenge the idea that Earth’s living systems are property and it is infinite; end the large scale and industrial extraction and pollution of natural systems and functions;
3) Change the very core of our legal frameworks toward adhering to the natural laws of the Earth; to recognize that nature has intrinsic rights that are inevitably linked to not only to human but other species.
Possible Campaign Directions
Policy Advocacy – Push for the passage of a Bill on the Rights of Nature
We must all uphold and recognize that all life is sacred on earth. Nature’s rights must be elevated and protected by legal rights and maintained through sustainable systems of exchange and reciprocity. We must initiate a process of educating communities and challenge the dominant belief and errors committed against nature. 2. Campaign against Big Industry and Corporations with negative impact to nature (Mining, Fishing, Agriculture, and Livestock)
Social movements must build spaces necessary to protect against the tide of corporate-led globalization. The Rights of Nature demand regenerative, mature, and dynamic economic decisions and relationships in which nature is seen as the foundation of life itself. Nature is not just as an inventory of goods and services for human beings or a dumping ground waste instead it must be recognized by all communities to become true caretakers of the places in which they live, including writing new laws that recognize the rights of local ecosystems to maintain their vital cycles and eliminate harmful environmental hazards. 3. Indigenous Peoples’ empowerment as caretakers of land and territories
Indigenous Peoples must be empowered by legal and cultural norms as partners or caretakers of the lands and territories in which they live and thrive. Whether one is indigenous or not, we all must live in a responsible and natural way thus recognition of sacred relationships with place in all economic decisions and human activities must be of primary importance. 4. Change of Perspective and Lifestyle
A change of paradigm for everyone is needed given the disjointed values that the modern world has imparted on individuals through our cultural institutions specially schools and media. All our actions impacts the other and the environment that we live-in. A change of perspective necessitates a change of lifestyle or the way we live – by the way we eat, purchase, travel etc.
Some Current Related Actions In The International Level
- Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream Symposia – Pachamama Alliance
“Awakening the Dreamer was created in response to an invitation from the Achuar people of the Ecuadorian Amazon to work in partnership to shift the dominant culture of consumption and alienation to one that honors and sustains all life. In the seminar, participants are asked to look squarely at the state of the world—where we are and how we got here—and then explore what role each one play in reinforcing this situation and towards the end our role in bringing forth an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling, socially just human presence on this planet.
It starts with an examination of the ways in which the current “dream” of the modern world is impacting the environment, our relationship with one another, and our own sense of purpose. It explores how this all came to be, and confront the powerful unexamined assumptions that are at the heart of the current crisis we are in—as a species and as a planet. It then highlights the new story emerging at this time in history that recognizes how profoundly connected everyone and everything is and the growing movement and awareness of the situation. And then towards the end, poses challenges to each one by creating his/her own plan to achieve change.”
- Rights of Nature Tribunal
Rights of Nature Tribunals give people from all around the world the opportunity to testify publicly on the destruction of the Earth and their communities, while simultaneously creating a new legal
framework, providing critical alternatives for environmental protection, and offering a new vision for just social, economic and political structures.
Rights of Nature Tribunals cases were founded on the mandate of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, drafted in 2010 at the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia. Outcomes and final judgments were based on scientific, technical, research-based and other expert testimony, the first-hand experiences of witnesses, as well as the world views and wisdom of Indigenous peoples who hold an ancient understanding of humans as part and particle of the living cosmos.
In Paris, the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature held its third International Rights of Nature Tribunal, covering topics ranging from fracking and mega-dams to GMO’s, deforestation and violence against defenders of the land.
- Living Forest Concept: Kichwa tribe, Sarayaku, Ecuador
“Living Forest, or Kawsak Sacha” is a comprehensive vision for living in harmony with the natural world based upon the practices with which Kichwa ancestors have sustainably inhabited and cared for the health of the Amazon Rainforest for millennia.
The Kawsak Sacha “Living Forests” vision is vital and fundamental, because maintaining the ecologic balance of the Amazon is essential to Earth’s health and capacity to mitigate climate change. Approximately 20 percent of the carbon dioxide produced from burning fossil fuels is absorbed by tropical forests around the world, and this is just one of many critical ecologic functions. Consequently, protecting the Amazon rainforest, the largest of the world’s tropical forests, must be central to climate change discussions and policies.
The wisdom and worldview expressed in the Kawsak Sacha proposal has much to offer and is best shared through excerpts of the words of the Sarayaku people themselves:
Kawsak Sacha (The Living Forest) is a proposal for living together with the natural world that grows out of the millennial knowledge of the Indigenous Peoples who inhabit the Amazonian rainforest, and it is one that is also buttressed by recent scientific studies. Whereas the western world treats nature as an undemanding source of raw materials destined exclusively for human use, Kawsak Sacha recognizes that the forest is made up entirely of living selves and the communicative relations they have with each other. These selves, from the smallest plants to the supreme beings who protect the forest, are persons (runa) who inhabit the waterfalls, lagoons, swamps, mountains, and rivers, and who, in turn, compose the Living Forest as a whole.
Kawsak Sacha, understood as sacred territory, is the primordial font of Sumak Kawsay (Buen Vivir, “Good Living”). In essence, the forest is neither simply a landscape for aesthetic appreciation nor a resource for exploitation. It is, rather, the most exalted expression of life itself. It is for this reason that continued coexistence with the Living Forest can lead to Sumak Kawsay. This encourages us to propose that maintaining this lively space, based on a continuous relation with its beings, can provide a global ethical orientation as we search for better ways to face the worldwide ecological crisis in which we live today. In this manner Sumak Kawsay can become a planetary reality.
Proposal: Declaration of Kawsak Sacha (the Living Forest)
- Our Concrete Proposal consists in attaining national and international recognition for Kawsak Sacha (the Living Forest), as a new legal category of protected area that would be considered Sacred Territory and Biological and Cultural Patrimony of the Kichwa People in Ecuador.
- The Living Forest proposes a way of achieving Sumak Kawsay by means of the application and execution of Life Plans that are sustained by the three foundational pillars of the Sumak Kawsay Plan: Fertile Land (Sumak Allpa); Living in Community (Runaguna Kawsay); and Forest Wisdom (Sacha Runa Yachay).
- Understood as Territory, the Living Forest, thanks to forty years of communal effort, is now demarcated by a border of flowering and fruiting trees visible from the air. We call this vital cordon a Frontier of Life or Trail of Flowers (Jatun Kawsak Sisa Ñampi). By means of the flower’s ephemeral beauty, the Frontier of Life conveys the fragility of life and the fertility of the Living Forest that it both surrounds and protects. At the same time it creates the possibility of beginning to dialogue with the beings that make up the Living Forest. In this way the Frontier of Life creates a permanent forum for communication among beings. This can help the entire world recuperate the original understanding of Mother Earth as a shared home.
- Case labeled as “Resident Marine Mammals of the Protected Seascape Tañon Strait et al. v.” in the Philippines
A petitions was separately filed through counsel by the Resident Marine Mammals of the Protected Seascape Tañon Strait—the marine mammals themselves—and the Central Visayan Fisherfolk Development Center against the then Secretary of Energy and Japex, among other respondents, Secretary Angelo Reyes et al., also named respondents were former Environment Secretary Lito Atienza, former Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap, Leonardo Sibbaluca of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources Central Visayas and Japex, represented by its Philippine agent, Supply Oilfield Services.
Ecology lawyers Gloria Estenzo-Ramos and Liza Osorio joined Cabrido in filing the case on behalf of the dolphins, toothed whales, porpoises and other cetacean species in Tañon Strait.
When Cabrido filed the case on his birthday on Dec. 20, 2007, people ridiculed him and said the case would not prosper. “There were questions raised on the legal standing of dolphins,” he recalled. “But then, I felt confident because I knew the oil exploration in Tañon Strait was absolutely unconstitutional,” he added.
The high court initially said dolphins and other sea mammals have no legal personality to sue, the lawyer said, but as guardians of the marine species, they eventually gave due course to the merits of the case.
It’s a victory shared with dolphins and sea mammals, Cabrido said. “They too won in the lawsuit.”
“The high court’s ruling should serve as a lesson to those who intend to disrupt marine ecology through illegal means, Cabrido said of the decision that was more of a moral victory than a material one. Japex had voluntarily relinquished the oil drilling project in 2008, reportedly due to the lack of commercial oil and gas on the site, the lawyer said.”
Other Ideas to Explore: Integral Ecology of IPs, Earth ethics for sustainable creature, Building earth communities – Permaculture, Promoting Green Jobs5.
Sources:
https://www.ecowatch.com/recognizing-the-rights-of-nature-and-the-living-forest-1882164785.html
https://www.pachamama.org/engage/awakening-the-dreamer
https://therightsofnature.org/rights-of-nature-laws/the-rights-of-nature-a-legal-revolution-that-could-save-the-world/
https://therightsofnature.org/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/Rights-for-Nature-Articles-in-Ecuadors-Constitution.pdf
http://wecaninternational.org/content_documents/RONME-RightsBasedLaw-final-bleed.pdf
http://www.chm.ph/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=55&Itemid=55
