The Green Religion and Earth Worship

UN to Look at Giving Earth the Same Rights as Humans

April 19, 2011

thestar.com - Bolivia is about to pass the world’s first law that grants nature equal rights to humans and protects it from a long list of evils.

And the Latin American country isn’t stopping there. It is urging the United Nations to adopt a similar convention.

Bolivia’s soon-to-pass law offers up 11 new rights for nature including:

• 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 not to be polluted,
  
• the right to balance, and
  
• the right not to have cellular structure modified or genetically altered.

The law has its roots in the country’s aboriginal spiritual view which puts Pachamama, the environment and earth god, at the centre of all life, according to media reports.

“It makes world history,” Vice-President Álvaro García Linera said, according media reports. “Earth is the mother of all. It establishes a new relationship between man and nature, the harmony of which must be preserved as a guarantee of its regeneration.”

On Wednesday, Bolivia will be pushing the UN to look at adopting a similar convention that would extend the existing Declaration of Human Rights to the Earth, according to Jean Langlois, strategic relations adviser at Nature Canada.

The move is one of the most advanced Langlois has seen in terms of granting rights to nature itself. The legal concept is an interesting one, he conceded. But it is not without its problems, he added.

About 130 countries already recognize the right to a healthy environment in their constitutions, Langlois said. But unlike Bolivia’s legislation, these 130 countries have opted to enshrine the rights of people to clean air, water and land.

Currently, Canada does not have any legislation that either grants rights to nature or the right for people to have a clean environment. Langlois would like to see the Canadian government establish a bill that gives Canadians the rights to a healthy environment rather than granting the Earth and nature its own set of rights.

In the last Parliament a private members bill called for a Canadian Environmental Bill of Rights. But it died when the election writ was dropped.

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