Back in 2013, I attended a Democracy School that was led by Thomas Linzey and Mari Margil of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) at Barry University Law School's Center for Earth Jurisprudence in Orlando. The school was a crash course in what I didn't learn in high school civics or any of my college classes—namely, how the USA's laws have been structured, since the Constitution was written, to benefit business and commerce at the expense of Mother Nature who sustains us. Even the landmark environmental protection laws that were passed in the 1970s have failed by enabling individual landowners and corporations who own property to receive permits for activities that can lead to the destruction of that property and nearby natural systems.
I had two major takeaways from Democracy School. The first was a quote by Jane Ann Morris, a corporate anthropologist who said, "The only things environmental laws regulate are environmentalists." As a water defender working primarily for the Ichetucknee River and its associated springs, I can vouch for the fact that Morris's statement is true. We activists are extremely limited in what we can speak about—usually only minor problems and never the "big picture"—and limited in whether or how we can challenge activities that cause harm to ecosystems.
When faced with questioning or openly challenging environmentally harmful activities, activists at state agency meetings find themselves trapped in scenarios that play out like this:
1. Agency staff members present a slide show and describe their “process.”
2. During public comment, people point out substantive flaws in the agencies’ positions and/or flaws in scientific methodology and findings. People decry lack of meaningful action, beg for substantive change, and ask pointed, simple questions that put agencies on the spot.
3. Agency representatives hem and haw with answers to simple questions. Often there are comments about the need to do more studies.
4. An email address for written comments is projected on a slide.
5. The meeting is adjourned.
6. Nothing ever changes, except for the harm to Mother Nature, which increases.
The results of those meetings seem to be inevitable. After public feedback, which is sometimes received patiently and sometimes not, the individuals or corporations eventually get the permits they've requested or the state agency moves forward with its planned actions. Water defenders are left feeling like we're behind a big truck that's dumping trash (or worse!) at us as we desperately try to shovel it away, only to be buried by the contents of the truck at the end of the road.
My second takeaway from Democracy School was a lot more positive: It was the idea that by granting legal rights to individual natural systems like the Ichetucknee or Santa Fe rivers, we could level the playing field between business/commerce and Mother Nature in our courts of law and possibly provide much-needed protections for vulnerable ecosystems.
I saw this rights of nature (RON) concept not as a magic bullet, but rather as a "helicopter idea" that enabled us to get out in front of that trash truck to spark a paradigm change and a change in our culture. Instead of treating Mother Nature as an object, people could be encouraged to treat Her as a subject with whom we're in a healthy instead of an abusive relationship—not as a "thing" that can be destroyed for private profits, but as a living system that we, and many other animals and plants, depend upon for our survival; as a benefactor, to whom we owe acts of kindness in reciprocity for all She has given us.
And I was thrilled to learn from CELDF's representatives that rights of nature laws were being adopted in various parts of the world!
I came home from Democracy School determined to spread the word as widely as I could about this new approach to defending Mother Earth. One of the first people I told was the head of an environmental organization I was working for. "Giving rights to the river?" he laughed. "That's some real fluffy bunny stuff right there."
He might have even rolled his eyes.
No comments:
Post a Comment