generalspeaking

Just Who Rules Here?

Indigenous people everywhere believe they are far more in touch with nature than the cosmopolitan, urban, European-influenced types that conventionally hold them in minor contempt for their naivete. It makes sense that those who are indigenous to a country live attuned to nature, for by and large they haven't managed to transcend their dependence on nature, they are less technologically and socially advantaged, as it were.

And, seeking to find some message to convey the idea that they are more authentic in their very nature than those whose imperialist sophistication find the simplicity of thought and action of the indigenous people unworthy of notice, the idea of capitalizing on respect for nature arises. So, under an nature-enlightened president who is proudly indigenous, Bolivia has raised its naturalist credentials.

Censuring all those who seek to "dominate and exploit" nature. Not simply nature, but "Mother Earth". And to that end, Bolivia has written up a constitution for Mother Earth, introducing it into the United Nations to mirror Bolivia's own Law of the Rights of Mother Earth, courtesy of President Evo Morales.

The country has established a Ministry of Mother Earth. That ministry recognizes the rights of the planet through the interlocutory skills of an ombudsman to sympathetically hear out nature's complaints brought forward by eco-activists and those representing the state itself.
"If you want to have balance, and you think that the only (entities) who have rights are humans or companies, then how can you reach balance?"

A circuitous but well-meaning argument one supposes, posed by Bolivia's ambassador to the UN. "But if you recognize that nature too has rights and (if you provide) legal forms to protect and preserve those rights, then you can achieve balance." In other words, taking a unique but not all that different perspective from most countries' established and responsible environmental protection programs.

Bolivia under its Evo Morales has gone a little further in its commitment to preserving and encouraging natural progression, setting out the need to "save the planet", starting with recognizing the need "to end capitalism". The manifesto that is being introduced as a draft United Nations treaty asserts that "Mother Earth has the right to exist, to persist and to continue the vital cycles, structures, functions and processes that sustain all human beings."

It seems we, or rather Bolivia, doth protest too much. Mother Earth, after all, is engrossed in her business, sidelined by no one, no force unequal to her own capacity to dominate the planet and the beings upon it. She flicks aside with imperious disdain human endeavours to make an impression upon her mantle. When she feels she has been insulted, she revokes calm and invokes chaos.

The template that we all know and love suddenly shudders and shatters. From tectonic plates brushing against one another and the Earth's crust rumbling and all upon it trembling and shattering, to oceanic responses washing away all of humankind's puny constructions. Hurricane-force winds, monsoon rains, dreadful droughts, firestorms and misery she rains down upon her creature to remind them just who rules.

Labels: Environment, Natural Disasters, Nature, United Nations

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, April 12, 2011