I caught a whiff of poetry whilst scanning the news of the world this week. There amongst the reports of dissent and disappearing dissenters, or crime and punishment and keeping up with the Kardashians, I glimpsed some words of beauty. Poetry in the news? It made me sit stock still close off all the other pages and sink into the words that read –
“She is sacred, fertile and the source of life that feeds and cares for all living beings in her womb. She is in permanent balance, harmony and communication with the cosmos. She is comprised of all ecosystems and living beings, and their self-organization.”
They were talking about my mother! About our Mother. I recognized her instantly from that description. This text is lifted straight from the pages of a new law being drafted in Bolivia. The Law of Mother Earth grants Nature rights equal to humans and will contain 11 principles. They include: 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; and the right to not have cellular structure modified or genetically altered.
Speaking in an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now, the co-president of The Rights of Mother Earth, Cormac Cullinan said, “What we’re saying is that everything has inherent rights. By virtue of the fact that the earth exists and all other creatures and mountains and rivers exist; they must also have inherent rights.”
“At least the right to exist, to play their part in the evolutionary processes of Mother Earth. So the problem is, because we’ve only recognized human rights, we’ve created an imbalance. We’re trying to redress that balance by recognizing the rights, which surround human rights. It is intended to complement the United Nations’ Declaration of Human Rights.”
Participants at the Climate Conference being held in Bolivia have workshopped the drafting of the bill where he admitted that one of the challenges was “expressing an entirely new worldview, particularly arising from an indigenous perspective, in legal language which is understandable by essentially another culture.”
Bolivia is the frontier land for climate change, and has long suffered the detrimental effects of climate change, mining and weak environmental protection laws. Rising temperatures, melting glaciers and extreme weather events have impoverished a large percentage of the population and contributed to rising food prices and increasing food insecurity.
The law is part of a major philosophical restructuring which began in 2009 and was driven in part by the emergence of the traditional Andean holistic world view which places the Mother or Panchamama in the centre of life.
Bolivia has been pilloried by the US and Britain for insisting on a steep climate emission cuts during the Copenhagen Climate Talks but it continues to redefine the minerals as “blessings” and promises more radical conservation and social measures to reduce pollution and to control industry.
Cormac Cullinan said that while the law had some way to go in terms of being accepted by the UN, that, “This is saying why is climate change arising? And it’s because of our relationship with Mother Earth. And this is attempting to heal that relationship.”
We have to start somewhere; we have to be the change we want in the world. But first we have to recognize that our mother has the right to survive and to thrive.Happy Earth Day, Mother!