What is Nature's
Rights
"I swear there is no greatness or power that does not emulate those
of the earth,
There can be no theory of any account unless it corroborate the
theory of the earth,
No politics, song, religion, behavior, or what not, is of account,
unless it compare with the amplitude of the earth,
Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude of
the earth."
Walt Whitman, "Song of the Rolling Earth" 1851,1881
The idea of Nature's Rights
occurred to me back in the late
1990's to describe profound experiences about nature I had between
1998 and 2002 as I studied a
wetland called "Heroes Wetland". The poem about Nature's Rights (below) was written
in 2002 long before this essay ( 2007-8). This essay is an attempt to
turn my experiences into a practical understanding of Nature's Rights and
how these rights might be secured legally or politically. The purpose of
of a more aggressive seeking of rights for nature is to stop the wholesale
destruction of species, forests, oceans and climate that currently is
underway due to population pressures, the indifference of nation states
and corporate greed.
Heroes Wetland was more
than one place, in fact: it was a metaphor for any place deeply loved and
closely observed. I was absorbing how animals and birds, trees and water,
air and humans all relate to each other in communities and ecosystems. As
I began to watch the complex interactions of sun and water, seasons and
birds, I began to see deeper meanings. I did not begin to understand
nature until I spent enough time watching,
listening, smelling, touching
and hearing to take it all into myself deep enough to begin to see
a little from a Bluebird's point of view, a Raccoon's point of view, a
Goldfinch, a Heron, a tree or a turtle. One begins to see the land form
the earth's point of view. Whitman began to understand something of this
when he realized people do not have separate "souls" apart from our
bodies. We are our bodies, we are the earth. There is nothing beyond
earth, evolution and the facts of here
where we are.
When I started seeing for the non-human point of view I
began to see that that human rights,
animal rights and environmentalism are falsely and arbitrarily
separated
domains. The idea of Nature's Rights was to re-unify animal, human
and environmental rights under one concept, since they are not separate in
fact. I came to understand that the same forces and powers that cause
animal extinctions cause poverty and war. I
began to see that a human centered environmentalism is a waste of time.
The common argument one comes across some environmentalist writings is that the
Amazon or some other wild area should be preserved to benefit humans, so
we can have medicines to cure cancer, for instance.
It would of course be great to cure cancer. But Nature's Rights is not about what humans need so much as it is
about what individuals of whatever species need. It is about the right of individuals
within species to exist.
Nature's rights is not merely about species rights. Global
warming harms individual Polar Bears when it destroys the ice that the
bears live on. It is true that global warming threatens the entire Polar
bear population. But the concept of species is a taxonomic category and in
fact, we can only save individual bears, if we would save the species. The species will
survive so long as we stop killing individual bears. Cars and coal burning power plants among other sources of
pollution are that main culprits in the destruction of Polar bear, Harp
Seal, and Arctic Fox habitat. Suing corporations or states on behalf of
individual animals as well as on behalf of the biomes in which they live
in complex webs with other individuals is what Nature's Rights is about.
We must eliminate the fictitious idea of corporate personhood and
substitute in its place the real notion of the personhood lf bears,
chimps, whale dolphins and seals among others
The
concept of Nature's Rights is opposed to the ideology of property rights,
which is a human centered construction arbitrarily imposed on nature and
responsible for much of the destruction of nature. Animals, birds and fish
have need of territory too, Indeed, the idea of property is an outgrowth
of our animal nature and our genetic inheritance of the need of territory
as we mate and build communities. We do not have the right to force other
species out of their equal right to their places. Capitalism marginalizes
nature, and nature is forced to pay the unseen, unaccounted costs of capitalist
ventures. Mankind has profited at the expense of nature. It is payback
time. We need to payback what we have stolen.
Aldo Leopold's "Land Ethic" is an important idea and he hints at Nature's Rights
when he says....
When we see land as a community to
which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. There is
no other way for land to survive the impact of mechanized man, nor for
us to reap from it the ethical harvest it is capable, under science, of
contributing to culture. That land is a community is the basic concept of
ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of
ethics.
This points to the concept of
Nature's Rights. Leopold refers to the land ethic as "biotic rights".
But Leopold does not go far enough. Leopold 's Land Ethic is still
to too tame and human centered. Leopold wrote that soils, plants,
oceans and the other facts of earth are still to be controlled by humans.
"A land ethic of course cannot prevent the alteration, management,
and use of these 'resources,' but it does affirm their right to continued
existence, and, at least in spots, their continued existence in a natural
state." Leopold does not wish to
overly restrict 'resourcism", but merely preserve nature along the edges
of resource exploitation. What Leopold suggest is that
we merely save nature on the edges of the vast hegemony of private
property and the capitalist conquest of the earth. I disagree with this. Nature needs to be affirmed as having rights equal to humans,
apart from capitalism, as part of a
community of beings on earth and not merely as a sequestered 'resource'
kept alive as a relic or a threatened species relegated to reservations.
"In wildness is the preservation of the world", Thoreau wisely said.
Humans must grant the right of other species to find their own
evolutionary path, unaltered by human manipulation and genetic tinkering. My
Master's Thesis looked at violations of human rights in relation to
history. But that was 10 years ago. I am now able to recognize that history has its roots
in natural history, in the facts of evolution. Defending the rights of all
species and individuals among species is a logical extension of the
concerns of care and rights. I increasingly have turned my
attention to nature and have understood that the basis or origin of human rights,
women’s rights, and civil rights has to be found in the natural world. Even at the level of our genes we are part of
nature just as nature is part of the fabric of our existence. Preserving
nature begins with recognizing that all life is equally valuable.
There is a tendency
among left leaning intellectuals to define consciousness in exclusively
human centered terms. To seek to transform societies defining institutions
by promoting environmentally sustainable, non-racist, non sexist,
participatory and liberating outcomes is a praiseworthy goal. But what
part do animals and nature play in defining what our consciousness is?
What 'sustains' animal development and profit? How do oceans benefit from
'sustainable development'? How is consciousness supposed to be changed and
are how these transformations come about, if nature is not affirmed as the
basis of our humanity and then preserved from peril? The transformation of humanity is useless if it means
destroying nature and the earth in the process.
So how do we accord trees or deserts or
oceans rights? What about
trees, for instance? Do trees have
legal standing?— as Christopher D. Stone asked in his book
Should Trees Have
Standing? Towards Legal Rights for Natural Objects. (1971) Trees
have the right to exist in biomes where they have lived for eons. No trees
over a certain age should be cut down for instance. Clear cutting is a
violation not only of the integrity fo the forests, but it harms the earth
itself, causing erosion and spoiling of streams and rivers. It impacts all
species that live int hat forests. Humans do not
have the right to cut trees. Cutting trees needs to be
carefully controlled in view of preserving natural ecosystems, animals and
plants. The costs to individual species must be weighed in any
silvaculture calculation The fact of merely owing a piece of property should not
automatically grant anyone the right to cut trees, harm ecosystems, rare
species or upset the local balance of beings. The biology of the earth itself
depends upon the rainforests to survive and no corporation or group of
corporations can claim ownership of such forests simply by virtue of deeds
to property. 80% of the forests in Madagascar have been cut down, yet no
one has paid the cost of the damage that has been done there. Many species
of Lemur, tortoise and other species have gone extinct because of the
plunder of Madagascar's ecologies. Property rights cannot be allowed to trump nature's rights
where harm to other beings is considerable. The same is true of the oceans
rights. Current predictions are that the oceans are now at least 50-% fished to
death and will be totally over fished of commercial species by 2048--- how
do we respect the oceans rights and stop this decimation? There needs to
be intentional cooperation to stop the rape of the seas. There must be
some union of concerned people like a UN, only in this case devoted to
beings, biomes and habitats rather than to nations. Global warming is
just the most recent environmental problem to come into view—there are
many, many others…
Natures Rights do not arise from human rights but rather are the basis of
human rights. The right of diatoms of the sea far antedates the right of
people to fish in the oceans. This means that the relations of humans to nature is not one
of exploitation but of family and cooperation. This means that humans do not
have the right to cause extinctions or fundamentally violate the genetic
integrity of species, for instance. Goldfinch societies,
elephant societies, duck families, and algae and plankton in the sea are all
being with rights. We depend of them and they on us. We are not
nature's "stewards"-- that bit of Christian arrogance needs to go.
Mankind is the worst threat others species of all kinds have ever faced. it
is mankind that needs to change. Helping other species means learning about
what they say their rights are. This means to watch them as closely as
possible to learn their needs and ways. Bird’s concerns must weigh in when
we are considering how to transform society? When we build Malls with huge
parking lots, we cut down bird habitat. Someone must pay the birds for this loss of nesting sites and food. When we
build skyscrapers we kill
migrating birds? There should be means to sue developers who harm the
rights of birds or other species. BIrds deserve reparations for harms down to their
livelihood and habitats. Maybe skyscrapers should not be built and
Malls not constructed, or these designed in way that does not harm birds. The Masai tribe feel they have the right to kill rare elephants who graze on
land where Masai cattle live. But the rights of elephants certainly are
equal to that of the Masai. Just as Elephants have as much right to live as the Masai, Bison have a prior right
to land now used to grow feed corn for cattle in Nebraska, Iowa South Dakota
and Kansas. Bison
deserve reparations for the atrocity of 50 million of them murdered by
Americans in the 19th century.
More room must be made for
elephants and bison. The Masai must be prevented form killing elephants,
and a great deal of the land of the Prairie states must be returned to wild
herds of Bison. All ove rthe earth humans accord themselves the right to
steal form other species. This must be reversed by making it possible to sue
individuals or governments who harm the rights of Macaws, Sifaka Lemurs or
Redwood trees.
Nature's Rights means that humans must be restricted.
We need to redesign American "game" and "resource" agencies.
Each US state has a Division of Wildlife or Dept. of Natural Resources which
acts as agents
of hunters, who are only 5% of the population. he game agencies are
creating what amounts to killing fields of our forests and rivers. We must
end killing for pleasure as method of "scientific management". We need to replace these
agencies with Dept. of Nature's Rights, who would act as
preservers of nature's rights, representing Squirrels, songbirds, bison, as
well as trees and Armadillos. There must be someone to protect animals
and forests, oceans and deserts against those who see them merely as
resources. We need to become advocates of the non-human.
My concern with nature's rights reflected in various ways in the writings
of others. One can see the idea of Nature's Rights is implicit in Henry Thoreau's Journal,
for instance. His interest in biology combines implicitly with his concern
with social justice and civil disobedience. Chomsky observes somewhere
that his own interest in science and his interest in social justice are
closely
related, without the exact point of origin between science and justice
being obvious to him. That is because Chomsky's work in language is too
separated from his work with politics and justice. Val Plumwood's writings
explore aspects of theme as does David Niebert's Human Rights Animals
Rights. How the idea of justice has its origin in nature is only
just beginning to be visible on the far horizon of future science. Humans are not unique beings detached from
the
rest of nature, despite our tendency to abstract ourselves and thereby
declare ourselves exceptional or unique. Our use of peculiar sort of
socially constructed,
abstract use of language is one alleged source of this exceptionalism. DNA,
in fact, is a far more complex
language than what humans speak.
Nature's Rights arises from the language of
nature, and not merely from the human use of words. Chomsky writes
about the search for the origin of language that
"The answers may well lie not so much
in the theory of natural selection as in molecular biology, in the study
of what kinds of physical systems can develop under the conditions of life
on earth ..." (1988: 167). Yes. that is where language has its origin and
it is also where Nature's Rights comes from. Chimps show a remarkable
sense of justice in their behavior. They are upset by harms being done to
those they love, just as humans are.
Every species does all it can to try to survive and that purpose is the
basis of rights. Nature's Rights is about the relations of species to
large communities, the relations of all beings on earth to one another. The idea of rights is an effort to make rational
and coherent an idea that arises from the natural facts of
individuals of all species wishing to survive and care for their own kind. Species diversity
came about so that the maximum number of individuals of a species could
survive unmolested. Nature's Rights is the acceptance of this fact and the
effort to stop that which harms individuals and species of whatever kind.
Humans are now a major threat
to Nature's Rights in the same way that corporations and nation states are
a threat to human rights. The right of species to continue and survive is
obvious when one realizes that the primary threat to all species is
the selfish greed and environmental neglect of human beings. The rights of
sea turtles, say, need to be protected against long line fisherman, who
are killing them off at alarming rates. The solution to this lies partly
in abolishing long line fishing. Fishing needs to be severely regulated
anyway as nearly 50% of the oceans "commercial" fish are already gone.
Or take the case case involving
protection of dolphins under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which held
that that federal agencies were in violation of the Marine Mammal
Protection Act by allowing certain countries to import Yellowfin Tuna into
the United States. Judge Thelton Henderson, an amazing African American
civil rights advocate and now judge, fought against American and Mexican
Tuna millionaires as well as the Clinton/Gore White House to help safe
dolphins form Tuna fisherman. More than 7 million dolphins have been
drowned in tuna nets over the past 4 decades. But since 1990 and the
advent of the "dolphin safe" tuna program, brought about by
Henderson and others, dolphin deaths have decreased by 97% in the Eastern
Tropical Pacific region. One man can make a huge difference.
Humans
are the primary threat to Nature's Rights in every biome and domain. As
Judge Henderson realized, the concept of civil, women's and
human rights needs to be expanded and developed both as a scientific area
of research as well as a rallying point for political action. Animals and
ecologies need to be protected now, just as we once had to fight against
abuse of women in factories or slave brought over on slave ships.
There are those, particularly among the Marxist of anarchist tendencies, who believe that human consciousness is the supreme fact
on earth.
Unfortunately many leftist thinkers are still human centered in this way.
The fate of the earth does
not rest in some imaginary “self conscious” human centeredness—as if human
consciousness were a god that could save or destroy nature. It is true
that it is humans who are the primary threat to nature, not just
capitalists but also Marxists. China and the former U.S.S.R. both have
horrible environmental and animal rights records. But it is
precisely human pride or the human belief in their own exceptional
superiority that is the problem. Human
consciousness is itself grown from nature and evolution, but its counter-evolutionary tendencies must be
restricted or curtailed. As Jane Goodall and others have pointed out we need to return
to less destructive tendencies in our own nature in order to save the earth. The forces that currently
threaten the earth are all institutional, economic and religious. We need
to relearn that we share the earth with many others. Natures' Rights
is about learning to appreciate the consciousness of other species, even
at the level of plankton or plants, and how they view their own existence.
It is true we cannot escape consciousness--- though what ‘consciousness’
is exactly is a complex question. Clearly, Chimps are conscious, as are
Cetaceans, and in a different way Aphids, and Sponges, Diatoms and
other simple species possess
some rudimentary consciousness. But each
consciousness is different and there is no hierarchy in nature. Humans
like to create hierarchies and put themselves at the top of it. It is true
that humans must intervene to save certain species such as Tigers,
Whooping Cranes and Condors. But by far the majority of threatened species
are threatened by humans. The primary question of Nature's Rights is not
what can humans do to save nature, but rather what can humans be
encouraged
restrained from doing.
How
do we restrain and regulate humans in the interests of natural communities
and ecosystems so nature can heal itself. Nature's Rights is primarily
about re-educating humans and changing their behavior. In some cases, such
as in protecting Mountain Gorillas or Black Rhinos, parks have used guns
to shoot poachers who threaten these highly
endangered animals. Of course the actual poachers are the bottom of the
ladder of the international black market in rare animals, which needs to
be stopped at all costs.
How do we recognize the rights of other beings?
How do we admit they have their own
special ethology, or ways of knowing? To what degree does their
consciousness imply moral considerability? Just as slaves and women were
once considered to be neither citizens of persons, so animals and even
plants and whole biomes must now be thought of as having rights equal to
those of 'persons'. Orangutans are conscious of
trees in ways we are not: Bats of the dark in ways we are not; Ants in
their tiny worlds know things we do not. Bees can pinpoint
exact patches of flowers from a great distance and tell others about it.
This list of the superior capacities of many species over the capacities
of humans can be extended as far
as knowledge of animals and birds, worms and Aardvarks will allow. Each
species is special and deserves preservation. What degree we admit that Orangutans have rights
is defined by how
they relate to their world, rather than by how we relate to their world.
Forest destruction in Indonesia and New Guinea must be stopped.
The rights of Orangutans include the forest they live in. If we try to see the world though their eyes, we can begin to see their
rights, their purposes and concerns.
To understand what Nature's Rights is
means to overcome Speciesism. To over come speciesism means to cease
looking at the world though human eyes alone. What rights do Polar Bears have in the face of global warming caused by
humans? The continued existence of these bears requires humans change
their ways not just in the Arctic but all around the earth.
We must protecting, preserve, and
vindicate the rights of natural systems everywhere. To understand what Speciesism and how it functions
in the same way as racism and sexism see
Paul Waldau's book The Specter of Speciesism. Jane Goodall and
Marc Bekoff have also written on these subjects. Christianity and Buddhism
as well as all the other major religions share a common misogynistic view of nature and
animals as a lesser world of illusion, whereas human birth is superior to
animal or vegetable birth. This human centered view of nature as a "vale of
tears" and sin or as Maya is partly what is behind the destruction
of nature and the endangerment of species.
It is important to inquire into and preserve what matters on earth,
against the onslaught of those who exploit, abuse and terrorize others. A person is
something that matters on the earth. Birds and animals are people too....even
forests are people. Gods and corporations or other institutions that control
most aspects of the world are not people and really should not have equal
standing with birds and forests and individuals. Birds feel pain. Gods and
corporations feel nothing.
Nature's Rights is a effort to get
humans to
recognize that natural
communities and ecosystems are legal persons with legal rights. We need to
make the concept of corporate rights or the notion that corporations are
people, illegitimate. this needs to be surprised into every way possible. It should be clear
that the notion of “nature’s rights” is a very different idea than the concept of
"natural rights" or "natural law". Natural law and
natural rights were concepts used to justify antiquated, human
centered ideas of property rights,. This is clear for instance in the
ideas and philosophy of John
Locke, who conceived of "natural rights" as meaning property rights, and who supported
and profited from slavery. Property rights are not nature's rights but
rather a rights that treat nature as
a slave system of exploitable free raw material or labor. Factory farming, the Pet trade as well as some
forms of genetic engineering or the patenting of life forms are based on
property rights, intellectual property as a slave
system.
The idea of 'natural law' was created partly to
overcome the idea of the divine rights of kings and in that sense it was a
good thing. But corprorations ahve becaome as unjust as the kings of old
and must be stopped. Rights must be accorded to those who, heretofore have
been denied them. But with a few exceptions the thinkers of the
Enlightenment did
not go far enough in outlining the rights of nature's beings. By the end
of the 19th century, the rise of corporations led to the use the notion of
natural rights as a justification for the fiction of corporate personhood.
The history of the 14th amendment is an illustration of this. This
amendment was originally designed to protect the lives of ex-slaves, and
thus was a defense of human rights. But it
was soon corrupted to give corporations fictional personhood. Human rights
and what I am calling Nature's Rights are not fictional but are defined as
positive and inalienable rights accorded to actual beings.
Nature's Rights
are meant to eliminate the slavery of nature to human markets. So for
instance, in North America, the trade in Beaver skins soon wiped out the
population in many parts of North America. But, many species thrive when
beavers are present. The beaver is a keystone animal, essential to to the natural history of North America. When
beavers are wiped out other species suffer too. Humans must
recognize the rights of beavers to live and thrive and accommodate them to
the human world as much as is possible. Humans must accommodate beaver
ponds, lodges and dams. The should be ways to return creeks to Beaver
habitat that he been buried or by developments, for instance. Beaver
trapping, trapping of all kinds, should be outlawed.
Many beings need protection
against violations wrought upon individuals, species and ecological
systems. These damages inflict pain to beings and losses ecosystems. For
instance, Salmon in the Pacific region are disappearing because corporate
fishing fleets, as well as dams built upstream, which prevent or hinder the
migration of salmon. Moreover, farmers who use the water retrained by
these dams, believe their right to water permits them to violate the
rights of salmon. As a result of these factors Salmon are
prevented them from reaching their ancient spawning habitats.
Millions of years of successful salmon hatcheries have been destroyed. The
notion that humans have superior rights to Salmon and Salmon are a
"resource" is part of the fault here. Salmon are independently
existing beings who have the right to live as much as humans do.
Regulations and restrictive penalties must be dealt out to stop further damage to salmon
populations. Farmers must not be allowed to farm lands if such farming
harms Salmon. One does not preserve Salmon so other men can fish for
them. One preserves Salmon because Salmon in themselves have the
right to continued existence on earth. A vegetarian and fish free diet is
helpful here as in so many other areas of human/nature interaction.
Human rights can only extend so far as they do not unduly harm the rights
of other species. Human Rights are at bottom Natures' Rights and in no way
are human rights to be construed as superior to nature's rights.
Nature's right's are not corporate or property rights. Establishing
nature's rights means to remove the notions of nature as an exclusive
human property, just as the abolition of slavery required the removal of
the idea of slaves as property. No one owns forests or rivers, migration
routes or oceans, air spaces or prairies, deserts of mountains.
In of majority of cases where nature and
humans conflict, animals concerns, nature’s rights, are excluded from
human concerns, purposes and institutions, in exactly the same way that
once women, blacks, Indians or other groups have been excluded or
discriminated against--- they are left out of the definition of what is reasonable,
conscious and deserving of rights.
A person is something that matters on earth. We get upset if a human
rights are violated. But birds and animals are people too....even forests
are people, if by people is meant a community of beings who are conscious
and seek their own intentions and purposes. Nature's rights is the basis
of human rights. The process of evolution created species
differences so as to allow the most diversity of beings to coexist on our
planet. We owe nature the duty to respect these millions of other kinds of
beings, each as unique as ourselves. Neither fictional gods or
corporations or other institutions that control most aspects of the world
can be considered people. Neither gods or corporations should be accorded equal
standing with birds and forests and individuals. Birds and animals feel pain. Gods and
corporations feel nothing.
My question in this poem
is how do we stop automatically asserting human rights and human
consciousness above the claims of other species and their peculiar ways of
knowing? How can we come to grant rights to all nature, trees, birds,
animals, rivers, mountains, and the earth itself? We are all related and
every kind wants to survive as much as we do.
