Council of Canadians
One Year After the BP Oil Spill, Renowned Authors, Scholars and Activist Gather to Consider The Question: What if Mother Earth Had Rights?NEW YORK – This Thursday prominent scholars and experts on the environment and human rights from around the world will gather at the City University of New York Graduate Center to launch two new books, The Rights of Nature: The Case for a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth and Wild Law: A Manifesto for Earth and Justice, Second Edition.
The event comes a day after the UN General Assembly will discuss implementing new international standards that afford rights and legal standing not just to individuals and businesses adversely affected by the exploitation and damage to natural resources, but to nature and ecosystems themselves.
“The case for acknowledging the Rights of Nature cannot be understated,” says Maude Barlow, former Senior Advisor on Water to the President of the UN General Assembly, chairperson of the Council of Canadians and lead contributor to The Rights of Nature. “Every now and then in history, the human race takes a collective step forward in its evolution. Such a time is upon us now as we begin to understand the urgent need to protect the Earth and its ecosystems from which all life comes. The Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth is a crucial link in this process and will one day stand as the companion to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights as one of the guiding covenants of our time.”
The first assumption that must be challenged is that individuals can, and have acted in such a manner that they threaten the ability of our environment to sustain life on our planet. The history of warfare, slavery, colonialism, and capitalism demonstrate that individuals can act with ruthless, murderous, greed. The values use by the leadership of corporate tobacco who hide the science that their product was addictive, and cancerous has in turn been expressed by the CEO’s of the automobile corporations who fooled millions that driving less fuel efficient vehicles was economically, environmentally and ethically viable as we faced peak oil production and global climate destabilisation. Destabilizing our planets climate is a crime against life on our planet. The campaign to expand the mandate of the international Criminal Court to include ecocide, the large scale long term destruction of our environment has begun. see www.thisisecocide.com. Where we draw the line will determine how many species will perish, our included.
ReplyDeleteWhere will I find this book? I did a google search and an amazon.ca one.
ReplyDeleteThe book is just being launched and I assume it will be available shortly from the Council of Canadians.
ReplyDeleteHere is their link..
http://www.canadians.org/media/other/2011/19-Apr-11-a.html
The book is available for purchase at:
ReplyDeletewww.canadians.org/rightsofnature