Democracy Now! reports that they, “interviewed leading environmentalist Maude Barlow about the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth, a resolution proposed to the United Nations by Bolivia last year. Barlow was at the United Nations this week to participate in the General Assembly’s ‘Dialogue on Harmony with Nature’.”
In her interview with Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman, Barlow said, “There’s been the debate this week—an interactive dialogue, it’s called—at the United Nations on a resolution on Harmony with Nature that was introduced by the Bolivian ambassador to the U.N. but was adopted by the General Assembly. So we’re beginning the discussion and dialogue at the United Nations on the concept of the right to water. A number of us were in Cochabamba a year ago, this Mother Earth Day, when we finalized this draft of this Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth. And so, basically, we’re here to introduce it to the U.N. The concept—we eventually want the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth to be a companion piece to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but we’re not there yet. We understand that. But that’s the goal, both within nation states at the United Nations and then just organizationally. We want people to adopt it and start talking about it. And we have a wonderful new book called The Rights of Nature: The Case for the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth. …And what we’re trying to say is that if we’re really going to survive as a species, and if the planet is to survive in any condition as we understand it, we have to shift our thinking and stop thinking of ourselves as being above nature and stop thinking of ourselves as having the rights that no other species has or no other form of the earth has. We just have to change.”
Watch the Democracy Now! interview with Barlow and Vandana Shiva above, or go to http://www.democracynow.org/2011/4/22/earth_day_special_vandana_shiva_and.
