Linda Sheehan, Executive Director Earth Law Center spoke at the 3rd Interactive Dialogue of the United Nations General Assembly on Harmony with Nature on Earth Day April 22, 2013. Listen as Linda Sheehan speaks on creating Sustainable Human Communities, the necessary economic systems and the role of Rights of Nature.
Along with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and invited panelists, Ms Sheehan discussed alternative economic approaches that further a more ethical relationship with the Earth.
“Recognition of the rights of nature is essential to help us build closer relationships with the environment and correct our upside-down ordering of Earth, humans and economic system. But we cannot complete this change in perspective
solely through rights of nature. We also must specifically reject the current neoliberal economic system and its false assumptions, and replace them with alternatives, such as those described by ecological economists. Roughly three dozen communities, large to tiny, across the United States have taken up this particular cause, with more joining in. Threatened by unwanted, destructive activities such as mining and hydrofracking, these communities have passed local laws that recognize the rights of local natural systems to exist, thrive and evolve. Significantly, these laws also reject the rights of corporations who would conduct these harmful activities, over the rights of local community members to live in harmony with each other and their environment. That is, these laws support a community’s right to nurture its home, rather than witness its destruction.”
Read Linda’s remarks at “Caring for Home through Nature’s Rights”.
The full session is at UN General Assembly Interactive Dialogue on Harmony with Nature.
On Wednesday, May 22nd at 3PM UTC/GMT, Earth Charter International and the EC Center for Education for Sustainable Development will be hosting a one and half hour webinar on international and environmental law and global governance with experts Peter Brown and Cormac Cullinan. These two leaders in their respective fields will put their work into context as well as relate the importance of the Earth Charter to their fields. Attendance is free for all and participation will be available through the chat function on our platform.
Cormac Cullinan is a senior environmental lawyer and adviser on institutional, policy and regulatory reform in the fields of environment and natural resource management. His work in pioneering a legal philosophy that restores an ecological perspective to governance systems (Earth jurisprudence) is internationally recognised and in 2008 led to his inclusion in “Planet Savers: 301 Extraordinary Environmentalists”. He was admitted as an attorney in March 1989 and has specialised in environmental law since 1992 when he completed a Masters degree in environmental law at the University of London. With talents that include strong creative communication, writing, drafting and leadership skills, Cormac is known for developing practical and innovative approaches. He is an expert on international and South African environmental law and policy and acts for a wide range of public sector, private sector and NGO clients. Cormac is also a director of EnAct International, an honorary research associate of the Universtity of Cape Town, and a member of the IUCN Environmental Law Commission. Wide-ranging experience in policy formulation has given Cormac particular expertise in drafting legislation and international treaties as well as in designing and strengthening governance systems (including laws, policies and institutions). He has worked on these issues in more than 20 countries, including 10 in sub-Saharan Africa. In the academic field he has lectured and written widely on governance issues related to human interactions with the environment and is the author of Wild Law as well as of several works commissioned and published by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. He led the drafting of the 2010 Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth.
Professor Brown’s teaching, research, and service are concerned with ethics, governance, and the protection of the environment. His appointments at McGill are in the School of Environment, the Department of Geography, and the Department of Natural Resource Sciences. Before coming to McGill he was Professor of Public Policy at the University of Maryland’s graduate School of Public Affairs. While at the University of Maryland he founded the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, as well as the School of Public Policy itself. Professor Brown established the School’s Environmental Policy Programs to operate not only at the University’s College Park campus, but also at Maryland’s Department of the Environment, and at the United States Environmental Protection Agency. He has held numerous administrative positions within the University of Maryland System. He has taught at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, at the University of Washington, and at St. John’s College in Annapolis. In the early 1970s, he was Visiting Fellow at Battelle Seattle Research Center and Assistant Vice President for Research Operations at The Urban Institute. He is currently a Research Scholar at the Center for Humans and Nature. Professor Brown is the author of Restoring the Public Trust: A Fresh Vision for Progressive Government in America (Beacon Press, 1994), and Ethics, Economics, and International Relations: Transparent Sovereignty in the Commonwealth of Life (Edinburgh University Press, 2000); re-published in Canada by Black Rose Press (2001) as The Commonwealth of Life: A Treatise on Stewardship Economics. He is currently working on three new books. One is tentatively entitled Reverence for Life: A Philosophy for Civilization which is intended as a sequel to Albert Schweitzer’s Philosophy of Civilization published in the 1920s. He is also a co-author of a book on macro-economics entitled Right Relationship: Building a Whole Earth Economy. With Jeremy Schmidt he is co-editing and authoring sections of a volume tentatively entitled Water Ethics: The Moral Foundations of Natural Resource Policy.
The Rights of Mother Earth Signature Campaign 
Rights of Nature was a major theme in at least a dozen side events. The Global Alliance hosted events inside Rio+20 and at the People’s Summit entitled Rights of Nature as a Foundation for Sustainability & Rights of Mother Earth Signing Ceremony. Hosts of other related events represent diverse entities including the Blue Pavilion (water and oceans ), Peoples Sustainability Treaties: Rights of Mother Earth, the government of Ecuador, the 
“We call for the recognition of the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth in order to guarantee that the biosphere and its inhabitants are protected for sustainability and ecological balance.” – Blue Pavilion Final Declaration
The Blue Pavilion hosted water related sessions based on the following 5 plenary themes: Right to Water; Water as a Common; Water, Agriculture and Food Sovereignty; Water, Energy, Extractivism; and Water management, work, new paradigms .
