A brief reflection about the Rights of Nature idea and movement by Ben Price of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund.

CELDF’s National Organizing Director Ben Price remembers 2008, when CELDF assisted in the drafting of Rights of Nature provisions for Ecuador’s new constitution. The Ecuadorian people adopted their new constitution overwhelmingly, with nearly 64% of the vote. Today, Rights of Nature is a growing global movement.

“When the tide of history changes, you can feel strong currents and undertows all around you,” reflects Ben Price, CELDF’s National Organizer Director. “When Ecuador followed the lead of little Tamaqua, Pennsylvania, by recognizing in law the intrinsic, unalienable Rights of Nature, I could feel the sea change and I knew that although it would take time, in the end, nothing would ever be the same.”

Still engaged in the work a decade later, Price realizes that “our instincts were right, and all the pragmatic reasons why it is not practical to recognize unalienable rights for Nature are manifestly wrong. Materialism is literally substance abuse. We can either awaken from the pipe dream of dominion over the world or perish in our self-delusion. The era of the reign of property and wealth are coming to an end. The Earth won’t long suffer to be enslaved by greed and the philosophy of the parasite. The project of turning the living world into money and power has failed to serve people or Nature.” MORE…