The Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature establishes that to ensure an environmentally sustainable future, humans must reorient themselves from an exploitative and ultimately self-destructive relationship with nature to one that honors the deep interrelation of all life and contributes to the health and integrity of the natural environment.
I have concluded that they are right.
Have we become too big? Too big to work together to solve the climate crisis. Our policies as of now won’t save the planet or us. I believe that giving our planet, Earth, rights and granting all its beings rights, including wolves, whales, bats, bees, and all, can save us. Revolutionary yes! But if we stay here, we must change because there’s nowhere else to go. We are like the dog in the photo, pretending to be human.
Moving away from treating nature as property, a place to colonize and own.
The Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature establishes that to ensure an environmentally sustainable future, humans must reorient themselves from an exploitative and ultimately self-destructive relationship with nature to one that honors the deep interrelation of all life and contributes to the health and integrity of the natural environment.
Further
An essential step in achieving this is to create a system of jurisprudence that sees and treats nature as a fundamental, rights bearing entity and not as mere property to be exploited at will. Breaking out of the human-centered limitations of our current legal systems by recognizing, respecting and enforcing Rights of Nature is one of the most transformative and highly leveraged actions that humanity can take to create a sustainable future for all.
Photograph credit: Antonio Iannibelli
Can we find our way back to our ancient selves before it’s too late? We are more industrial beings than human beings.
Wolves like us have families and raise them as they have done for centuries. We, on the other hand, have lost our way and gone farther away from ourselves, our ancestors’ ancient way of living. Today, all we need to do is flip a switch to get light. The ancestors of our best friends live in the remaining pockets of wilderness, and we debate their fate.
The first time I experienced the calls of wild wolves, it was a profound experience. I will paint the experience in a language you will understand, in the hopes that you will know what those calls evoked in my psyche.
I stood silent in the forest, with not a single sound being heard around me. I could not even see my hand right in front of my face; that is how dark it was. When out of nowhere came the call of the wild wolf. It started as a low, soft sound, then began reverberating through me, penetrating through my body into my soul as if I knew it. It was like a memory that had come back to me. It filled my soul.
Today, we humans are in a barrage of overstimulation from technology. We get information at the touch of our fingertips. Most of the information we receive is heavily managed by the government, social media, and corporations. Even science is being managed and disappearing. Technology is not science, so to speak, but a product of human invention, and not science.
Nature is us.
I, as a human being, am fallible.
I am enjoying writing this piece in the comfort of my home, early in the morning, while drinking my cup of coffee, and all were produced by technological advances meant to make my life easier.
Where is the balance between our comforts and saving the planet from certain disasters caused by climate change, that we helped create because we are clever industrial beasts?
We keep trying to justify everything we do in saving nature by assigning monetary value to it.
“Only humans have broken the Natural Laws. Only humans do not align with the oneness, the interconnectedness, of the world. Only humans would have the audacity to assign ‘financial value’, in their colonial thought process ways, to the Sources of Life and the living beings that are our relatives. We do not own anything that is called Nature, we are Nature, and to participate in the commodification and financialization of our Relatives is an affront to the Natural Laws and quite simply wrong.” ~Casey Camp Horinek, Ponca Nation Environmental Ambassador Chairwoman of the GARN Indigenous Council
Assigning monetary value to nature gets us nowhere except deeper into the hole. The deep hole is what is happening right now to our planet. Storms seem to be more destructive, almost as if Mother Nature herself is rebelling against her human inhabitants’ actions. Like a rebellious teenager, we ignore the warnings. We keep taking and taking from the Earth as if there is no end. But there could be an end that leads to our extinction if we do not change our ways.
I say we, because we are all a part of the problem. We love our modern conveniences that make life easier. Nature is not our property. We must become that rebellious teenager again and rebel against the political norms that tell us we own the Earth.
All politics to me – Indian or white – is an illusion preventing us from being authentic because we’re communicating through something that isn’t real to us. ~John Trudell
Our authentic selves involve becoming altruistic. We must prioritize the needs and well-being of others, not just humans, but all beings on Earth, even trees. The first step is to connect with nature. Feel the moss, so to speak. Everything on Earth is integral, as one needs the other. Owning it only cuts us off from being part of the planet.
It is our home.
Earth sits in a galaxy, a self-contained spaceship you could say. We have everything we need to survive, air and water that sustain the spaceship, giving us an atmosphere. That is, until we became too industrious to the point that material possessions made it too easy for us, and we forgot how to survive. Not just survive, but how to do that with the help of Mother Nature.
I believe that giving our planet, Earth, rights and granting all its beings rights, including wolves, whales, bats, bees, and all, can save us. Revolutionary idea, yes! But if we stay here, we must change because there’s nowhere else to go.
“What I’m talking about, where it is written in universal law, that’s where it is written. It’s written in universal law that says, that gives us specific instructions on how to gather medicine, how to take care of the earth. That’s universal law. So what I’m saying is when you hunt that maiingan (wolf), you’re violating the universal law.”
~Marvin DeFoe, Elder, and member of the Ojibwa Red Cliff Tribe
Here are some resources for further reading on the rights of nature.
http://www.harmonywithnatureun.org/rightsOfNaturePolicies/
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