Wild Law

= The concept of “a wild law,” which grants equal rights to nature, is based on the idea that humans do not have an explicit right to destroy our natural environment. Under wild law, natural ecosystems’ rights supersede the interests of any one species (including humans). [1]

Discussion

The Evolution of Wild Law

John Thackara:

"Although grassroots projects are driving change, and ‘prepping’ the fashion system for transformastion, institutional frameworks – especially legal ones – remain vital, too. Laws – and the institutions that impose them - are what people mean by the ‘hard-wiring’ that locks us into damaging relationships with living systems.

In most of the world’s legal systems today, only humans have rights. Our laws are based on the Enlightenment notion that the universe is a repository of dead resources which we can exploit as and when we like – for the exclusive benefit of our own species. In contradiction to ecological principles of wholeness and interconnection, legal definitions of property perpetuate the division up of land into discrete parcels. Nature’s inherent diversity is at odds, too, with free trade treaties that support large-scale monoculture projects; these, as we know, destroy biodiversity.

In The Great Work, published in 1999, Thomas Berry called for a new jurisprudence to re-define the relationship between the human community and the Earth community in which it lives. “We need a legal system that governs the relationship between humans and the natural world as a totality, not as a collection of parts and which respects equally the rights of the natural world to exist and thrive” argued Berry.

Is a transformation of our legal systems along these lines feasible? The South African lawyer Cormac Cullinan, a pioneer in Earth Jurisprudence, compares out situation now with the abolition of slavery. Even when American public opinion came to regard slavery as morally abhorrent, the concept of slaves as property remained hard-wired into the legal system. It took a tremendous political effort – not to mention a Civil War – before laws were changed and slavery was finally abolished.

Changes to the legal status of living systems and property rights are emerging in a wide variety of legal systems around the world – including unexpected ones. In 1996, for example, a celebrated legal text in the United States called Should Trees have Standing? gave serious consideration to the proposition that trees might be given legal rights in the same way that minors or corporations are given artificial legal personalities. To most people’s surprise the Supreme Court although it voted against the proposal, also found that there was some merit to these arguments.

More recently, a dozen US municipalities have introduced ordinances that grant equal rights to human and natural communities. In 2009 the city of Spokane become one of the first cities in the world to legislate for the rights of nature. “Ecosystems, including but not limited to, all groundwater systems, surface water systems, and aquifers, have the right to exist and flourish” the measures declared. “River systems have the right to flow, and to contain water of a quality necessary to provide habitat for native plants and animals, and to provide clean drinking water. Aquifers have the right to sustainable recharge, flow, and water quality”.

Then, in 2013, Santa Monica passed a Sustainability Rights Ordinance which recognizes that “natural communities and ecosystems possess fundamental and inalienable rights to exist and flourish in the City”. The Ordinance includes protections for this right from acts by “corporate entities” which, it states, “do not enjoy special privileges or powers under the law that subordinate the community’s rights to their private interests.” The Ordinance also articulates the rights of people to self-governance, a healthy environment, and sustainable living. It is of course true that state and Federal authorities usually veto measures – but the political lesson is that such measures are being passed at an increasing rate.

At the scale of the nation state, radical legal expressions of a new world view are emerging in Latin America. Ecuador’s national constitution was revised in 2008 to recognize and protect rights of nature. Indigenous elders played a critical part in the revision of the new constitution which grants to Mother Earth “the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and restoration”. A key concept in the new thinking is buen vivir, a term that translates loosely into English as “good living” or “well living”. The Uruguayan ecologist Eduardo Gudynas, a leading scholar on the subject, emphasizes that buen vivir is less human-centric than western notions of wellbeing, or welfare: “Buen Vivir is not just about the individual, but the individual in the context of their unique environmental situation. The dualism in Western knowledge that separates society from nature vanishes under this perspective”. With Buen Vivir the polis is expanded, and the concept of citizenship is widened to include these other actors within environmental settings.

Ecuador new constitution is not a one-off. In 2010, when Bolivia hosted a World People’s Conference on Climate Change and Rights of Mother Earth, it was attended by 30,000 people from 100 countries. One outcome, a Universal Declaration on Rights of Mother Earth, was presented to the UN. And a Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature has been created with an initial 60 member organisations from around the world. Bolivia herself went on to introduce its own new legislation, an ‘Act of the Rights of Mother Earth”, and created a new ministry to oversee the Act.

Buen Vivir has been welcomed by many as an alternative project for civilization, but its critics portray the concept as a mystical return to an indigenous past, and charge that it lacks any practical strategy. They also point out that Iit has been accompanied by new plans, enthusiastically promoted by the same government, for energy, road-building and extractive industry mega projects. Official rhetoric even talks about “Oil exploration to live well” or, “hydroelectric plants in the Amazon to live well”. Gudynas counters by citing examples of legal and tax reform,and the introduction of environmental accounting, right across South America. “The Buen Vivir perspective is not only post-capitalist, but also post-socialist” he argues; “ It departs from the uncritical faith in progress of the modernist world view. It reconnects nature and society, modern and indigenous peoples”.

A shift away from seeing Earth solely in terms of ‘resources’ to be exploited for our own use is beginning to appear in international law and governance at a global level, too. An Earth Charter along these lines has been formally recognised by many transnational organisations, and a large number of universities are involved in the the Earth System Governance Project, which was launched in 2009. This multidisciplinary network of scholars and practitioners, working across the global North and South, is forging new connections between the social and natural sciences in exploring new models of environmental governance." (http://www.doorsofperception.com/most-read/a-whole-new-cloth-politics-and-the-fashion-system/)

Examples

• Bolivia

"Bolivia amended its constitution after pressure from its large indigenous population who places the environment and the earth deity, Pachamama, at the center of all life. But what this means in practical terms, such as how to address the serious environmental problems caused by mining for raw materials in the Andean nation, is yet to be determined." [2]

• Ecuador

"Ecuador, which has a large indigenous population, has also amended its constitution to grant rights to nature. But like in Bolivia, the law has not stopped oil companies from destroying their natural landscape." [3]

More Information

• Video: Cormac Cullinan on Wild Law

"To hear more about the concept, watch the video below featuring Cormac Cullinan, an environmental lawyer and leading wild law intellectual, who recently addressed the World People’s Summit on Climate Change in Bolivia." [4]

• Ten Features of Ecological Law: Why we need Ecological Law and what it would contain...