by Geoff Olson
Mountains, lakes, rivers and streams with legal representation? Animals and plants with their own ministry? It’s not a Gary Larson cartoon or a Yann Martel plotline – it’s a long overdue concept. In September of 2008, Ecuador passed a constitution granting rights to living things and their environment. “Nature has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution,” the document states. The Ecuadorian government must take “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.”
As for mainstream media’s response to this historic moment in constitutional law and environmentalism? Tumbleweeds and crickets, with a lone wolf howling in the distance. Project Censored voted this 18th of its Top 25 Censored Stories of 2009. One of the few mainstream outlets to clue in to the story, the Los Angeles Times, trivialized the development in Ecuador, noting it “sounded like a stunt by the San Francisco city council.”
There was more to come. On April 22 of this year, Bolivia passed “The Law of Mother Earth” (Ley de Derechos de la Madre Tierra). With Bolivia choosing Earth Day to riff off Ecuador’s legal template, the global media stopped hitting the snooze button and woke up to the whiff of something new. Clearly, something strange and possibly disturbing was going on with the Empire’s hired help in the Southern Hemisphere. Something even bigger than fair trade coffee or Shakira.
Translated from Spanish, the new Bolivian law states of Mother Earth: “She is sacred, fertile and the source of life that feeds and cares for all living beings in her womb. She is in permanent balance, harmony and communication with the cosmos. She is comprised of all ecosystems and living beings and their self-organization.”
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