“Nature has a lot to say, and it has long been time for us, her children, to stop playing deaf.” —Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist
Since 1989, UN World Population Day on July 11 has been an occasion to contemplate how humans can work together to forge a more just society. Earth’s 8.2 billion people must come together as never before to create an equitable planetary peace—a treaty, if you will—with all of Nature’s inhabitants. The world’s approximately 476 million Indigenous people are critical partners in that rising consciousness. They manage or hold tenure rights to approximately a quarter of the world’s surface area, accounting for a significant portion of the world’s biodiversity, nearly half of the protected areas, and over half of the remaining intact forests.
Despite their vital role in conservation, Indigenous people experience disproportionately high levels of poverty. It is also not uncommon for Indigenous groups to bear the brunt of toxins and elevated air pollution. As is the case for many marginalized people, toxic industries can be found close by. For decades the Aamjiwnaang First Nation community in Ontario’s Sarina “chemical valley” has been subjected to emissions of the carcinogen benzene from the INEOS Styrolution petrochemical plant, despite the Ontario government’s acknowledgement of the dangers present. Sulphur dioxide is also a problem in Sarnia, because it irritates the human respiratory system. Environmental racism is a curse that visits groups of people who are vulnerable to the vagaries of justice. tinyurl.com/sarnia-pollution
Rights of Nature first came into focus with Christopher Stone’s Should Trees Have Standing? Towards Legal Rights for Natural Objects, published in 1972. He wrote: “Each time there is a movement to confer rights onto some new ‘entity,’ the proposal is bound to sound odd or frightening or laughable. This is partly because until the rightless thing receives its rights, we cannot see it as anything but a thing for the use of ‘us’—those who are holding rights at the time.” You can read this groundbreaking essay at tinyurl.com/trees-have-rights
Robert Macfarlane’s recent book Is a River Alive? was born from the 50-year debate described in Stone’s essay, but it finds affinity with deeply rooted legal, scientific, poetic and both Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultural stances—the bedrock of inspiration that encouraged him to write. Macfarlane’s undeniable passion and conviction bring Nature’s obvious centrality and necessary inclusivity into all primordial human relationships.
Is a River Alive? is unquestionably a book we should all savour. One of the areas Macfarlane visits is Ecuador, which, along with Colombia, has the world’s greatest biodiversity. In one section of the book he describes the process whereby Ecuador’s constitution incorporated a Rights of Nature manifesto, through which Indigenous people have been successful in pushing back the oil and mining companies’ rapacious appetite for destroying the country’s most biodiverse areas. including cloud forests such as the area known as Los Cedros. Two of the judges who enabled the transformation of the Ecuadorian constitution into a pro-Nature legal document accompanied Macfarlane on his journey to the headwaters of the Los Cedros river system.
Elsewhere in the book, Macfarlane’s exploration of Québec’s endangered Magpie River envelops us in an astonishing conversation that includes a group of fellow conservationists and Indigenous people. In 2021, the Innu Council of Ekuanitshit and the regional municipal council of Minganie passed resolutions granting the Magpie River (Mutehekau Shipu) the landmark right of legal personhood—a title that bestowed nine rights on the river: the right to live, to exist and to flow, the right to the respect for its natural cycles, the right to evolve naturally, to be protected and preserved, the right to maintain its natural biodiversity, the right to perform its essential functions within its ecosystem, the right to maintain its integrity, the right to be free from pollution, the right to regenerate and be restored, and the right to sue.
The excellent no-fee, 44-minute documentary “I am the Magpie River” on CBC’s Gem service vividly makes the plea to defend the Rights of Nature declaration. The deeply set determination to keep the Magpie River unharnessed is evident throughout the dialogue. It also succeeds in portraying the river’s power and why Hydro Québec would love to tame it for electricity. gem.cbc.ca/the-nature-of-things
Bioregionalism inherently pulls down national and internal borders to create dialogue with all life. Permaculture, agroecology, Territories of Life, biocivilization, Zapatista, ecosocialism, ecofeminism and degrowth transition are a few of the ways to accomplish transformative alternatives that strengthen bioregionalism. A Rights of Nature credo is easy to establish when people believe in sharing peace with Nature.
A South Asian example of bioregionalism was recently presented by Ashish Kothari of the India-based Vikalp Sangam South Asia Bioregionalism Working Group, at a meeting of Elders for Peace (www.elders4peace.org). Its broad tenets are “porous boundaries, enabling free movement of wildlife, nomadic pastoralists/fishers, and traders; boundary areas governed as ‘peace sanctuaries’ by Indigenous peoples/local communities; civilizational identities replacing hyper-nationalist ones; village/town-assembly-based direct democracy coordinating over bioregional scale through federated institutions; small-scale traders and nomadic communities as messengers, story-tellers and news-givers across landscapes; and dismantling of dams/diversions on rivers, enabling free flow.” tinyurl.com/south-asia-bioregionalism
Sometimes bioregionalism enables peace and security between two warring groups that can be achieved because they find a sacred alliance with certain animals. Such is the case with the Pokot and Il-Chamus tribes in Kenya’s Rift Valley, whose members have brought conflicts regarding land, water and cattle to spiralling levels of violence. By 2005 everyone realized that an immediate solution was needed. The rare Baringo giraffe, which had been revered by both groups for centuries but had disappeared from the region in the 1960s as a result of conflict, expanding human settlements and hunting, was to be the catalyst. Working with conservation agencies, the tribes agreed to put aside their differences, and the long-gone giraffes were brought back to the region and given sanctuary. Rebby Sebei, who manages the Ruko Community Wildlife Conservancy in Baringo County, tells us why everyone wishes to work together. “Giraffe are associated with someone who plans, who sees far, because of their height.” Like seeing into the future. “Elders equated that to the vision of people coming together and living in peace.” therevelator.org/giraffes-for-peace/
An invigorating literary website, Otherwise Collective, celebrates deep connections that humans can have with plants, which reinforce a breaking down of barriers: “We hope to transport people across the seemingly unbridgeable divide from the sentience of plants to humans.” otherwisecollective.com
I conclude with some words from Robert Macfarlane: “We will never think like a river, but perhaps we can think with them… I take the Rights of Nature movement at its best to be a kind of legal ‘grammar of animacy:’ that is to say, an attempt to make structures of power align with perceptions of a world which is far more alive than power usually allows.”