This blog post by Susan Shaw, Solicitor & Founder Living Law, was posted on the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund’s website on September 6th, 2019.
Editor’s Note: CELDF is pleased to present a guest blog from our partner Susan Shaw, a solicitor and founder of Living Law, in Scotland. We have been engaging with groups in the U.K. for a number of years on advancing Rights of Nature frameworks, including holding a series of workshops, meetings, and public events in January 2019 in Northern Ireland with partner Friends of the Earth U.K
The time has come for the U.K. to join with others and recognize the strategic potential of a Rights of Nature approach in our national laws.
The tragic events we have witnessed from the Amazon must act as an epiphany for the entire international community: restoring harmony and balance between people and Nature is not an ‘optional nice to do.’ It’s a matter of international peace and security, and humanity’s own survival. The science tells us that time is not on our side. We risk crossing further tipping points in the Earth-system. Every member of the international community must step up, show leadership, and finish the job it started with the Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment in 1972, almost 50 years ago.
The Rights of Nature movement, which is rapidly gaining traction across the world, offers an important pathway forward in law to help guide the required paradigm shift, in a managed way. This premise may seem radical but is a natural (and necessary) departure from approaches that still view Nature as property to be exploited endlessly. Far from being a new concept, Rights of Nature are embedded in indigenous cultures and practices across the world, recognizing the reality that all life is deeply connected and interdependent.
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