Earth Equity News

Equador Voters to Decide if Nature Has Inalienable Rights. Editorial, LATimes, September 2, 2008. "This month, Ecuador will hold the world's first constitutional referendum in which voters will decide, among many other reforms, whether to endow nature with certain unalienable rights. Not only would the new constitution give nature the right to 'exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution,' but if it is approved, communities, elected officials and even individuals would have legal standing to defend the rights of nature. It sounds like a stunt by the San Francisco City Council. But Ecuador is engaged in nothing less than an effort to redefine the relationship between human beings and the natural world. And as crazy as it may seem, the movement to give nature legal rights didn't start in Ecuador's Amazon forest or its Galapagos Islands -- it started years ago in the U.S., in cities and towns seeking to fight off coal mines, incinerators and factory farms. Aided by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund in Pennsylvania, about a dozen municipalities have abandoned the old-fashioned way of halting development -- through the appeals process -- and are placing outright bans on environmentally disruptive activities."