Thursday, April 22, 2010

Declaration on Mother Earth Rights

Several weeks before we arrived from around the world, representatives of indigenous communities in Bolivia met to draft a declaration on the rights of Pachamama, Mother Earth. This became the working draft for Table 3 to prepare a UN Declaration on Mother Earth Rights. After an indigenous opening ceremony to bless the effort, we were told to elect two Presidents, one from the international community and one from Bolivia. About 20 internationalists clustered and elected Cormac Cullinan from South Africa, who wrote the book Wild Law and helped draft language on the rights of nature for the Equadoran Constitution, as President. But the Bolivians were not all of one mind as to who should represent them and the Peruvian indigenous participants felt totally excluded, not international and not Bolivian. How would they be represented? They walked out. Next Pablo Solon, Ambassador to the UN from Bolivia arrived, and brought everyone back together. The Bolivian couple who had led the opening ceremony became the second joint President.

The day was filled with passionate speeches and with the presentation of many position papers, including our water statement from Cochabamba. The next day the text was read and many specific suggestions were made, interspersed with more passionate speeches by indigenous men and women in their traditional dress. It became clear that the economic systems, based on mass exploitation of the environment to fuel a consumption addiction, was seen as the root of the problem. After much discussion it was recognized that this was not just capitalism, but also other systems. What about China?

I tried to get Article VI on the right to water to also include that water must not be privatized, later expanding this to water, air and our bodies. Although there was clear support for this in the room, I am not optimistic that it will be in the final language. As Pablo Solon, the Bolivian ambassador, explained to me, including such language would mean the declaration would not be considered at all by the UN. Clearly we have a very long way to go to convince the world´s governments that water being a fundamental right means it should not be privatized.

Pablo Solon also made the point the the Universal Declaration on Human Rights had much general language, but became a start for recognition of human rights by many governments. This is the hope for the Declaration on Mother Earth rights. I think we need two declarations: one for the UN, and one for mobilizing people around the world where our language can be as clear as needed.

As of this writing, we do not yet have the final language. Hopefully by next week we can post it on our website www.defendingwaterinmaine.org

No comments:

Post a Comment