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A groundbreaking International Gathering for Rights of Nature was organized by The Pachamama Alliance and Fundación Pachamama in September, where conscious individuals and organizations who have worked to promote the recognition of Rights of Nature, met to expand this concept around the world. Out of this four-day meeting in Patate, Ecuador, the Global Alliance for Rights of Nature was formed. This Alliance makes a call to all organizations and people of the Earth to join in a Minka Pachamama , a 4-year global project to bring forth the universal adoption and implementation of the Rights of Nature as an idea whose time has come. (Minka is Kichwa and means a collective community work for the betterment of all. Pachamama is Kichwas for Mother Earth, only broader, i.e. Mother Cosmos.)
People from countries around the world attended, including South Africa, the United States, Australia, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador. The newly born Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature approved statutes, a declaration, founding organizations, a founding council and an executive committee, and are also establishing other key components that will enable the Alliance to act and think locally and globally such as an Advisory Council, more members for the General Assembly and the development of four working groups: a Legislative Assistance Working Group; a International Advocacy Working Group; a Communications and Learning Working Group and an Ancestral Knowledge Working Group.
The Alliance was then launched in a public forum in Quito, preceded by a daylong workshop with all the Gathering participants and Ecuadorian non-governmental and governmental organizations devoted to work on the effective implementation on Rights of Nature in Ecuador after its Constitutional recognition.
The Global Alliance’s objective is to encourage the recognition and effective implementation of Rights of Nature through the creation of a world network of individuals and organizations that, through active cooperation, collective action and legal tools, based on Rights of Nature as an idea whose time has come, can change the direction humanity is taking our planet.
The Global Alliance also aims at becoming a platform to share the experience and expertise of its Founding Members, of organizations such as the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund [CELDF] in the United States, which helps community groups and municipalities write and adopt laws that assert community rights, including the rights of nature; Fundación Pachamama and Pachamama Alliance that promoted the incorporation of Rights for Nature into the Ecuadorian Constitution; and EnAct International whose Director, Cormac Cullinan wrote the groundbreaking book Wild Law which played a significant role in informing and inspiring a growing international movement to recognize Rights for Nature. Together with more inspiring organizations, and individuals, and highly respected members of the Advisory Council such as Vandana Shiva, the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature seeks to inform and educate about the transformational potential of truly considering Nature a subject of rights, a someone that is protected and cared for, and not an object, a something, that can be exploited and destroyed. Just imagine the impact on humanity when slaves where finally considered subjects of rights to understand the potential of really liberating nature and living in harmony with Mother Earth.
Driving Rights for Nature into law like Ecuador did in its 2008 National Constitution, and creating global, national and local jurisdiction and cases that guarantee these Rights, will serve as a starting point to reproduce this concept virally though the world, invading systems of thought and juridical systems. The Global Alliance will definitely become a key actor to promote actions and help the implementation of Rights for Nature in Ecuador and other countries around the world that follow this good example.
