Gimme some Pachamama! Turns out the indigenous Andean spiritual worldview is stealing home base in Bolivia. The government, which carries the torch for the environmental justice movement, plans to pass legislation granting Mother Earth the same constitutional rights as humans!
Redefining natural resources as 'blessings,' Bolivia's Law of Mother Earth (first introduced as part of the country's 2009 constitution) has the potential to 'radicalize' the climate justice movement. All bets are on that Morales' legislative flèche will generate a fervent prise de fer of 'hyper-activism' at Montreal's Cochabamba + 1 next weekend.
"It makes world history. Earth is the mother of all", said Vice-President Alvaro García Linera. "It establishes a new relationship between man and nature, the harmony of which must be preserved as a guarantee of its regeneration." The Guardian. April 9, 2011.
Bolivia's fierce championing of the rights of indigenous peoples and Mother Earth first took center stage post-Copennhagen, when the country last April hosted Cochabamba's World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth. The ensuing document, People’s Agreement of Cochabamba, was forward to the UNFCCC, but was not included as part of the official COP16 negotiating texts. (Read below the fold for the background on the Cochabama Conference and Bolivia's stand at COP16.)
Bolivia's Laws of Mother Earth grant 11 rights to nature.
A sampling ...
The right to life and to exist
The right to continue vital cycles and processes free from human alteration
The right to pure water and clean air
The right to balance
The right not to be polluted
The right to not have cellular structure modified or genetically altered
The right to not be affected by mega-infrastructure and development projects that affect the balance of ecosystems and the local inhabitant communities
Happy Earth Day, Mom! Sure love ya'!
Background on Bolivia & Rights of Mother Earth
... an excerpt from The People’s Agreement of Cochabamba:
It is imperative that we forge a new system that restores harmony with nature and among human beings. And in order for there to be balance with nature, there must first be equity among human beings. We propose to the peoples of the world the recovery, revalorization, and strengthening of the knowledge, wisdom, and ancestral practices of Indigenous Peoples, which are affirmed in the thought and practices of “Living Well,” recognizing Mother Earth as a living being with which we have an indivisible, interdependent, complementary and spiritual relationship. To face climate change, we must recognize Mother Earth as the source of life and forge a new system based on the principles of:
* harmony and balance among all and with all things;
* complementarity, solidarity, and equality;
* collective well-being and the satisfaction of the basic necessities of all;
* people in harmony with nature;
* recognition of human beings for what they are, not what they own;
* elimination of all forms of colonialism, imperialism and interventionism;
* peace among the peoples and with Mother Earth;
Both Bolivian President Evo Morales and Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez remained staunch in their demands that the Cochabamba Agreeement's demand that rich countries to halve their greenhouse gas emissions be incorporated into texts at last December's Cancún Summit.
Morales's plan also petitioned for a Climate Justice Tribunal as well as a global referendum on how to solve the environmental crisis.
“The rich countries have excluded, from the working papers, the ambitious proposals made by a world conference of social movements held in Bolivia last April, in favor of the approaches that led to the failure of the previous Copenhagen climate conference held in Denmark last December,” Morales emphasized at COP16. Link
Early into the morning last December 11, with exhausted COP16 delegates ready to agree to almost anything just to keep the UN “show on the road”, it was Bolivian chief negotiator Pablo Solon who remained the sole hold out, repeatedly standing to reject the texts on the order of Morales.
“We cannot go along with a text that guarantees an increase in temperature to 4C,” he said. “This is tantamount to making us responsible for a situation my President has described as genocide and ecocide.”
Minister after minister stood up to say the deal was not perfect but it will do – for now. The agreement sets up a fund to help poor people cope with climate change and halt deforestation. Most importantly it will keep the UN “show on the road” after Copenhagen had threatened to push the whole process off the rails.
In the end the President of the talks, Patricia Espinosa, who was described as a "goddess" for her diplomacy, lost her patience and gavelled through an official UN decision with the agreement of 193 of the parties. The Telegraph. Dec. 12, 2010
Bolivia on the front lines of climate change.