We invite you to listen to Robin’s 3 ½ minute video about our plans for Rio.

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Why Rio+20? Why Now?
The United Nations and Member States have shown their hand for Rio+20 and beyond.  The course they are on will not get us to a sustainable future. In fact, scientists have assessed the results from the Durban UN COP 17 in December 2012 as putting us further on course for accelerated global warming.  It is up to us and Civil Society to set the course for a sustainable future.  We cannot wait for government to set the course.  We the People must do that now.

Our intention is to be a visible force both at the UN Rio+20 Earth Summit and the parallel Peoples’ Summit – speaking as a voice for our Earth Community.  The people and organizations we are connecting with are ready to re-chart the course.  The goal of our bold participation is to reset the trim tab to steer the course defining Rights of Nature, Rights of Mother Earth as the Foundation for Sustainability.

Global Alliance Events at Rio+20
The next Earth Summit Rio +20 — officially named the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development — will be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in June.  It takes place twenty years after the first historic summit in Rio in 1992. Over 50,000 accredited participants are expected to participate in what is anticipated to be the largest event in the history of the UN. The Peoples’ Summit organized by civil society will run in parallel to the formal UN Earth Summit in Rio.

The Global Alliance will co-host a set of events advocating Rights of Nature/Rights of Mother Earth including high profile Universal Declaration for Rights of Mother Earth signing events.  We are pleased to announce that the UN has confirmed our Rights of Nature: the Foundation for Sustainability  Dialogue and Signing Event for Sunday 17 June 2012 at 9:30am-11:00am in RioCentro, the main venue for the Rio+20 conference. We have also proposed a parallel event for the People’s Summit in Flammingo Park, the site of a similar civil society summit at the 1992 Earth Summit.  Panelists will include leading global advocates for Rights of Mother Earth/Rights of Nature. Among them are Dr. Vandana Shiva, Cormac Cullinan, Natailia Greene, Tom Goldtooth, Pablo Solon, Nnimmo Bassey, Linda Sheehan and Shannon Biggs.

We have a bold vision to deliver 1,000,000 signatures in support of Rights of Nature/Rights of Mother Earth at the Earth Summit.  Petitions are being signed around the world on every continent. In India, Vandana Shiva and Navdanya have gathered over 100,000 signatures.

Are you planning to be at Rio+20?  Watch for calendar updates at Rights of Nature Calendar for Rio+20 and join us! If you know of Rights of Nature/Rights of Mother Earth related events we should participate in and promote, please contact us at nature@theRightsofNature.org.

Over 1400 Aboriginal Youth attended Gathering Our Voices 2012 held in Nanaimo, BC. Spoken words by 11 year old Ta’Kaiya Blaney along with her memorable performance “Earth Revolution” was emotional and motivating.

For complete interview visit http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=107733

UNITED NATIONS, May 9, 2012 (IPS) – For centuries, indigenous peoples and their rights, resources and lands have been exploited. Yet long overdue acknowledgment of past exploitation and dedicated efforts by indigenous peoples have done little to end or prevent violations of the present, stated indigenous leaders in the Manaus Declaration of 2011.

The declaration, part of preparations for the upcoming U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development, frequently referred to as Rio+20, in June, recounted the “active participation” of indigenous groups in the first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and similar efforts in 2002 that led to the adoption of the term “indigenous peoples” for the United Nations (U.N.) Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Despite this work, “the continuing gross violations of our rights…by governments and corporations” remain major obstacles to sustainable development, the declaration continued. “Indigenous activists and leaders defending their territories still continue to be harassed, tortured, vilified as ‘terrorists’ and assassinated by powerful vested interests.”

As Rio+20 approaches, IPS interviewed Tom B.K. Goldtooth, who has been an activist for social change in Native American communities for more than three decades and is the executive director of Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), an alliance of indigenous peoples that combats the exploitation and contamination of the earth and will participate in the Rio+20 conference.

Goldtooth called for a “new paradigm of laws that redefine humanity and its governance relationship to the sacredness of Mother Earth and the natural world”.

The activist explained that the most effective measures for reducing deforestation, protecting the environment from unsustainable mineral extraction and preserving a better world for future generations are to strengthen international, national and sub-national frameworks for collectively demarcating and titling indigenous peoples’ territories.

U.N. Correspondent Aline Jenckel spoke with Tom Goldtooth about the main threats faced by indigenous peoples and how the Rio+ 20 conference could be a success.

Q: At the Rio+20 conference in June, you will speak on behalf of indigenous peoples and their human rights, in terms of protecting their natural environment and creating sustainable development. What is the key message you hope to convey?

A: The thematic discussion of green economy and sustainability creates differences in views between the money-centred Western views and our indigenous life-centred worldview of our relationship to the sacredness of Mother Earth.

Many of our indigenous peoples globally are deeply concerned with the current economic globalisation model that looks at Mother Earth and nature as a resource to be owned, privatised and exploited for maximised financial return through the marketplace.

With this development model, indigenous peoples continue to be displaced from their lands, cultures and spiritual relationship to Mother Earth, and destruction to the life-sustaining capacity of nature and the ecosystem that sustains us and all life continues as well.

For the sake of humanity and the world as we know her, to survive, there must be a new paradigm of laws that redefine humanity and its governance relationship to the sacredness of Mother Earth and the natural world.

This includes the integration of the human-rights based approach, ecosystem approach and culturally- sensitive and knowledge-based approaches. The world must forge a new economic system that restores harmony with nature and among human beings.

We can only achieve balance with nature if there is equity among human beings.

At Rio+20, global governments must look cautiously at any green economy agenda that supports the commodification and financialisation of nature and take concerted action to initiate the development of a new framework that begins with a recognition that nature is sacred and not for sale and that the ecosystems of our Mother Earth have jurisprudence for conservation and protection.

Full recognition of land tenure of our place-based indigenous communities are the most effective measures for protecting the rich biological and cultural diversity of the world.

For complete interview visit http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=107733

“At the next United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development, “Rio+20”, to be held in Rio de Janeiro in June, the governments of 193 countries will meet to sign a new global agreement to guide future development policies. We note the following:

Twenty years after the 1992 “Earth Summit”, where countries committed to implement Sustainable Development to eradicate poverty and care for the environment, the results are disheartening; wealth continues to be concentrated in the hands of a small sector of society and the deterioration of the environment becomes ever more alarming…”

Alternatives to the Green Economy

“The model of Living Well (Vivir Bien) and the Rights of Mother Earth are an alternative to the predatory capitalist development model that exploits human beings and Mother Earth. The vision of Living Well proposes to live in harmony with Mother Earth on the basis of complementarity and solidarity between peoples according to logic distinct from that of the market. It will not be possible to find a solution to the current crisis in an economic vision based on the ownership of nature. We do not own nature; we are part of Mother Earth.

1) A new global model must be created as an alternative to the Green Economy to re-establish the balance with Mother Earth.

2) The economic model needs to be changed. There needs to be an equal redistribution of wealth and production models must be directed to meet the needs of women and men, whilst respecting and caring for Mother Earth rather than promoting the accumulation of wealth.

3) Proposals for other forms of development must respect and recognise the cosmovisions (world views) of indigenous peoples such as the right to collective territory, ancestral knowledge and holistic management of their economies.

4) We demand respect for nature´s vital cycles. Living Well (Vivir Bien) in harmony and spirituality with Mother Earth involves the full repair and compensation for the harm caused by human activity and greed, and the false idea of development.

5) We demand that all projects that destroy Mother Earth be stopped. These include: the TIPNIS road, mega projects, opencast mining, oil and gas exploitation in ecologically sensitive zones, and harmful dams among others.

6) An alternative model for the holistic management and use of forests, water, land, and other beings and gifts of nature must be created that goes beyond the concept of “environmental services” and “natural capital” as a viable alternative to the Green Economy. This would be funded by real financial mechanisms such as a tax on financial transactions.

7) A new global agreement on development and the environment must respect the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities. The developed countries must recognise their historical, ecological and climate debt to developing countries and their consequent obligation to transfer funds without conditionality to developing countries.

To read the complete article as a downloadable PDF, visit Position of the Bolivian Climate Change Platform on Rio+20 and the Green Economy

Estimados colegas,

Queremos compartir el posicionamiento de la Plataforma Boliviana Frente al Cambio Climático sobre la cumbre de Rio+20 y la Economía Verde.  Se encuentra en este link: http://www.cambioclimatico.org.bo/derechosmt/052012/100512.pdf

Saludos cordiales,

Plataforma Boliviana Frente al Cambio Climático

Davide Sapienza and Diritti della Natura Italia (Rights of Nature Italy) are proud to announce the publication of I Diritti della Natura – Wild Law.  Because of the inspiration of Cormac Cullinan, Mari Margil, Thomas Linzey and others, Davide translated the book Wild Law, A Manifesto for Earth Justice into Italian over the course of a few short months.

A national preview of Cormac Cullinan’s Wild Law was held in Bergamo, Italy on May 1, 2012. Davide notes, “The first presentation of the book by Cormac Cullinan was an extraordinary moment of sharing. We had over 100 friends with us who were stimulated and enriched by the presentation. Max Pavan and Riccardo Carnovalini added precisely the ‘heart’ needed in this journey to the rights of Nature.”

The book will be available in bookstores in Italy on May 20, 2012.

CESOD contacted the Legal Defense Fund to discuss “rights of nature” and how to include it in the country’s new constitution.  Nepal’s constitution drafting process has moved slowly over the past several years, and now the country’s Supreme Court has established a final deadline of May 27 for its completion.

The Legal Defense Fund was invited to Kathmandu by CESOD this spring to meet with members of the Constitutional Assembly to discuss including rights of nature in the new constitution.  With the support of the Global Alliance, the Legal Defense Fund’s Executive Director, Thomas Linzey, and Associate Director, Mari Margil, traveled to Kathmandu in April.

CESOD arranged a series of meetings with key members of the Constitutional Assembly, including members of the Constitutional Committee responsible for the final drafting of the constitution, as well as members of the Environmental Thematic Committee, the constitutional drafting committee focused on environmental issues.  CESOD also arranged meetings with staff of the Environmental Ministry and the Forestry Department, as well as environmental organizations including World Wildlife Fund-Nepal and the National Trust for Nature Conservation of Nepal.

At each of these meetings, the Legal Defense Fund presented on the rights of nature and why U.S. communities, the country of Ecuador, and others are now seeking to advance a new “rights-based” legal paradigm for protecting nature.  The Legal Defense Fund also presented draft constitutional provisions, developed for the Nepali constitution.   CESOD and the Legal Defense Fund continue to work together to advance the rights of nature framework in Nepal.

While an indigenous Venda community in South Africa battles an Australian coal company to protect their sacred mountain, containing sacred forests and rivers from being sucked dry for coal mining in the area, a single train transports 2760000kg or 2760 tons of coal in a single trip. That is a 2760 ton mountain of coal on one train. It is literally a mountain being transported on a train.

This film inspires us to imagine a situation where we gave a mountain rights. We allowed the mountain to be a mountain, to let the rivers that run down it to be rivers, and to let the forests the rivers feed to be forests. It asks us to imagine if we could recognize the rights of nature, as countless indigenous communities do.

To learn more about the Venda community visit the Mupo Foundation website www.mupofoundation.org To join the global community respecting and protecting the rights of nature visit www.therightsofnature.org. And to be an active ecological citizen visit www.earthfora.org. Also to be part of the first global children’s charter visit www.earthjunkies.org

For a Case Study about Venda and other communities download Opening Pandor’s Box: The New Wave of Land Grabbing by the Extractive Industries and the Devasting Impact on Earth by commissioned by Gaia Foundation.

Join Robin and Ken on What Now as they explore the many facets of Rights of Nature as a viable alternative for restoring natural balance to create a sustainable future for all life on our planet.

http://www.pantedmonkey.org/podcastgen/download.php?filename=2012-04-26_1300_what_now_robin_milam.mp3

What Now is hosted by Ken Rose every Monday from 11 am to 2 pm Pacific Time.  The interview with Robin is 60 minutes.

For archives of What Now Extended interviews with accomplished thinkers, writers, artists, farmers and scientists addressing the global crisis:

Visit http://www.pantedmonkey.org/