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Lakefingers

Registered: 08/26/05
Posts: 6,440
Loc: mumuland
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Ecuador constitution would grant inalienable rights to nature
#8927060 - 09/14/08 03:12 AM (15 years, 5 months ago) |
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By Eoin O'Carroll | 09.03.08 http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2008/09/03/ecuador-constitution-would-grant-inalienable-rights-to-nature/
Ecuador’s proposed constitution includes an article that grants nature the right to “exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution” and will grant legal standing to any person to defend those rights in court.
Voters will get to decide on Sept. 28 whether to adopt the new constitution, which would allow the president to run for reelection, to dissolve Congress, and to exert great control over the country’s central bank. According to Reuters, 56 percent of Ecuadorans approve of the proposed document.
The blog Green Change quotes the five articles that acknowledge rights said to be possessed by nature, or “Pachamama,” a goddess revered by indigenous Andean peoples whose name roughly translates into “Mother Earth.”
Chapter: Rights for Nature
Art. 1. Nature or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution.
Every person, people, community or nationality, will be able to demand the recognitions of rights for nature before the public organisms. The application and interpretation of these rights will follow the related principles established in the Constitution.
Art. 2. Nature has the right to an integral restoration. This integral restoration is independent of the obligation on natural and juridical persons or the State to indemnify the people and the collectives that depend on the natural systems.
In the cases of severe or permanent environmental impact, including the ones caused by the exploitation on non renewable natural resources, the State will establish the most efficient mechanisms for the restoration, and will adopt the adequate measures to eliminate or mitigate the harmful environmental consequences.
Art. 3. The State will motivate natural and juridical persons as well as collectives to protect nature; it will promote respect towards all the elements that form an ecosystem.
Art. 4. The State will apply precaution and restriction measures in all the activities that can lead to the extinction of species, the destruction of the ecosystems or the permanent alteration of the natural cycles.
The introduction of organisms and organic and inorganic material that can alter in a definitive way the national genetic patrimony is prohibited.
Art. 5. The persons, people, communities and nationalities will have the right to benefit from the environment and form natural wealth that will allow wellbeing.
The environmental services are cannot be appropriated; its production, provision, use and exploitation, will be regulated by the State.
The concept that nature itself can possess rights runs counter to the classical liberal theories of government that hold sway throughout much of the West, which view rights as possessed only by individual human beings. But Ecuador is not the first country to propose granting rights to nonhuman entities: Many countries, including the United States, have long held that corporations possess many of the same rights – such as the rights to free expression and to due process – that human beings have. And in June, Spain’s parliament approved a measure to extend some human rights to nonhuman apes.
But, as an editorial in the Los Angeles Times observes, Ecuador’s extension of rights to nature may represent a larger shift in how humans view their place in the world:
No other country has gone as far as Ecuador in proposing to give trees their day in court, but it certainly is not alone in its recalibration of natural rights. Religious leaders, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Dalai Lama and the Archbishop of Constantinople, have declared that caring for the environment is a spiritual duty. And earlier this year, the Catholic Church updated its list of deadly sins to include polluting the environment.
Ecuador is codifying this shift in sensibility. In some ways, this makes sense for a country whose cultural identity is almost indistinguishable from its regional geography – the Galapagos, the Amazon, the Sierra. How this new area of constitutional law will work, however, is another question. We aren’t ready to endorse such a step at home, or even abroad. But it’s intriguing. We’ll be watching Ecuador’s example.
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Without grounds? Natural? Self-evident? Prudent and binding social contract?
[Edit:] Aren't these rights only invoked when they are broken? How did inalienable rights enter the head of Englishmen and Arabs?
Each person that has rights is tied in time. Nature (any habitat, species...) is temporal as well. Everything we've given inalienable rights is something that is historically determined, something that does not subsist out of time, how can anything attributed to it be inalienable? How can temporal beings have atemporal rights and duties?
We reserve rights for entities and only test them when they are defended, when an infraction has been made upon them. How about an affirmative, non-reactionary ground of rights, what you take yourself?
http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/6968356#6968356
Edited by Lakefingers (09/14/08 03:54 AM)
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Icelander
The Minstrel in the Gallery



Registered: 03/15/05
Posts: 95,368
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Re: Ecuador constitution would grant inalienable rights to nature [Re: Lakefingers]
#8927606 - 09/14/08 07:24 AM (15 years, 5 months ago) |
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Ecuador’s proposed constitution includes an article that grants nature the right to “exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution” and will grant legal standing to any person to defend those rights in court.
So any person building a home or clearing land would be in violation of the law. 
This would be impossible to administer.
-------------------- "Don't believe everything you think". -Anom. " All that lives was born to die"-Anom. With much wisdom comes much sorrow, The more knowledge, the more grief. Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC
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Boots
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Re: Ecuador constitution would grant inalienable rights to nature [Re: Icelander]
#8927946 - 09/14/08 10:02 AM (15 years, 5 months ago) |
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What happens if there's a killer animal on the loose that is damn near impossible to capture but killing it might be possible. How would they work around that?
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Icelander
The Minstrel in the Gallery



Registered: 03/15/05
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Re: Ecuador constitution would grant inalienable rights to nature [Re: Boots]
#8927960 - 09/14/08 10:08 AM (15 years, 5 months ago) |
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As described it so vague as to be unenforceable.
The best way to enforce it would be to kill all humans.
-------------------- "Don't believe everything you think". -Anom. " All that lives was born to die"-Anom. With much wisdom comes much sorrow, The more knowledge, the more grief. Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC
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fivepointer
newbie
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Re: Ecuador constitution would grant inalienable rights to nature [Re: Icelander]
#8927962 - 09/14/08 10:08 AM (15 years, 5 months ago) |
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So wrong on so many levels. I guess they like being a backwater dump. No one will develop anything in that county with such an anti-propertarian law.
This gives the State unlimited power under the guise of environmentalism. Rights can only apply to individuals, not groups, or inanimate objects.
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Icelander
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Re: Ecuador constitution would grant inalienable rights to nature [Re: fivepointer]
#8928197 - 09/14/08 11:42 AM (15 years, 5 months ago) |
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Hey fiver, doesn't your god give us dominion over all of nature? (how convenient) How dare they fuck with god.
-------------------- "Don't believe everything you think". -Anom. " All that lives was born to die"-Anom. With much wisdom comes much sorrow, The more knowledge, the more grief. Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC
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ExplosiveMango
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Re: Ecuador constitution would grant inalienable rights to nature [Re: Icelander]
#8928462 - 09/14/08 12:51 PM (15 years, 5 months ago) |
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It's a lose-lose situation. Can't protect nature against the will of the majority, can't survive without nature.
I suppose trying is better than not, we know what the result will be if we just let people exploit as they wish. At least this social experiment might give us some useful information.
-------------------- Know your self. Know your substance. Know your source. The most distorted perspective possible is the perspective that yours is not distorted.
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Icelander
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Re: Ecuador constitution would grant inalienable rights to nature [Re: ExplosiveMango]
#8928557 - 09/14/08 01:22 PM (15 years, 5 months ago) |
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can't survive without nature.
This is speculative. We haven't really tried yet.:D
-------------------- "Don't believe everything you think". -Anom. " All that lives was born to die"-Anom. With much wisdom comes much sorrow, The more knowledge, the more grief. Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC
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demiu5
humans, lol


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Re: Ecuador constitution would grant inalienable rights to nature [Re: fivepointer]
#8928583 - 09/14/08 01:30 PM (15 years, 5 months ago) |
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Quote:
fivepointer said: This gives the State unlimited power under the guise of environmentalism. Rights can only apply to individuals, not groups, or inanimate objects.
"nature" is inanimate?!
you are a small, insignificant part of nature, and are very animate. how can the rest of it all be inanimate?
-------------------- channel your inner Larry David
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ExplosiveMango
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Re: Ecuador constitution would grant inalienable rights to nature [Re: Icelander]
#8928859 - 09/14/08 02:37 PM (15 years, 5 months ago) |
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Quote:
Icelander said: can't survive without nature.
This is speculative. We haven't really tried yet.:D
I suppose I could try and avoid the argument by defining nature as survival; as reflected by my belief. (Where does artificiality start? The product? The human? The monkey? The amoeba? The primordial soup? etc...)
But this wouldn't really prove anything, except that I like to take up forum space.
However I actually do think in the future we will have a constructed version of nature as opposed to the self oriented one we see today. The preservationist idea seems extremely futile to me; I think it's time we start looking at integrating plantlife with our structures as to give "nature" a stable format in which it can continue into the future.
But I do still like the idea of having Ecuador perform social experiments for us.
-------------------- Know your self. Know your substance. Know your source. The most distorted perspective possible is the perspective that yours is not distorted.
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Lakefingers

Registered: 08/26/05
Posts: 6,440
Loc: mumuland
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Re: Ecuador constitution would grant inalienable rights to nature [Re: ExplosiveMango]
#8932672 - 09/15/08 11:07 AM (15 years, 5 months ago) |
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yes, there is something appealing to the experiment, but as many of you pointed out, it can turn out any way. i'd like to go there and see some studies done in the coming years something unusual or exciting might happen
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