Pablo Solón, the Bolivian ambassador to the United Nations, and Cormac Cullinan, an environmental lawyer, write in the Huffington Post that, “For Bolivia, December marked an important and historic step forward in climate change politics.”
They continue, “We are of course not referring to Brokenhagen, where we saw the worst of intransigent, undemocratic and cynical tactics from the world’s largest emitters of carbon dioxide. The interesting action happened in a completely unreported event in New York when on 22 December, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution which put the issue of Mother Earth rights as an item on the UN agenda.”
They write that an agreement in Copenhagen would have been flawed because, “the UN climate change framework does not deal with the root causes of climate change and the wider problem of environmental exploitation. …The underlying cause is the belief that humans are separate from, and superior to, nature and that more is better.”
“Bolivia’s proposal for Rights for Mother Earth is therefore about tackling these fundamental underlying issues.”
“On 22 April 2009 President Evo Morales Ayma of Bolivia called on the General Assembly of the United Nations to develop a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth. …The recent UN General Assembly resolution approved in December now calls on all countries and the Secretary General to share their experiences and perspectives on how to create ‘harmony with nature.’ In Bolivia, we hope to take this proposal forward in a People’s Assembly on climate change that we are organizing on Mother Earth Day, 22 April 2010.”
“If legal systems recognized the rights of other-than-human beings (e.g. mountains, rivers, forests and animals), courts and tribunals could deal with the fundamental issues of environmental contamination rather than being bogged down in the technical details of permitted pollutants and emissions.”
“For example, a rights-based approach could evaluate whether the rights of humans to clear tropical forests for beef ranching should trump the right of species in those forests to continue to exist.”
Their full commentary can be read at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pablo-erick-solon-romero-oroza/why-even-a-successful-agr_b_406547.html.
Additionally, to see an interview with Angelica Navarro, Bolivia’s chief climate negotiator at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen, who further discusses the rights of Mother Earth, go to .
