[TLDR (too long didn’t read): This Reader is about the undeniable relationship between the rights of nature and social justice. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text].
1. In the name of their interests and their domination, the dominant political groups persevere in their work of destruction of the life on Earth and in excluding the right to life of all of Earth’s inhabitants.* (Riccardo Petrella)
*: Be warned: It is cynical to call for ‘sustainable intensification’ in agriculture as the World Economic Forum cum the UN Food Systems Summit (Sept 2021) called for. The agro-industry in the hands of the same groups above is killing pollinating insects and biodiversity, poisoning the soils and burning unwelcome fossil fuels; on top of it, Big Food/Big Soda is making man-made waste become a true geological sediment. (Daniel Pizarro)
2. Does this mean everything nature has made is beautiful and everything man has made is ugly? Is this self-evidently true? (D. Pizarro) Mind you, nature is not deaf-mute. (Eduardo Galeano) She is never wrong. No need for sign language to understand her. She does not need us, we need her. The plundering of the commons is attacking the green lungs of the planet. (Gloria Clavero) Plants are (and will) rebel(ling). Let us hope the misdirected shrewdness and logic of Capitalism will not end up further commoditizing nature and thus mankind itself. (Luis Weinstein) [But we need more than hope…].
No local or global crisis will disappear if everyone assumes that someone else will fix it
3. There has been much coverage in recent media of citizens who fail to acknowledge the existence of global crises such as anthropogenic climate change.** Too many are still skeptical or in denial. They refuse to participate in any solution for the simple reason that they believe them to be non-issues.
**: The Anthropocene is the period during which a single species (us) gained the power to alter the fate of all other species and the planet at large. We have not –with maximum pressure– updated human rights to the Anthropocene’s realities and challenges. This would entail more decisively focusing on the limits to human economic activity. States, corporations and other duty-bearers must be held accountable, not only for failing to meet basic material human needs, but also for undermining the biosphere and the conditions that are indispensable for the continuation of life on the planet. Rights of nature activists must thus raise the key questions about the compatibility of neoliberal economic policy with a livable climate system, biodiversity, air quality, and other conditions necessary for human flourishing. This remains largely a pending task, i.e., to decelerate human activity to a level that is compatible with the flourishing of human life. (Cesar Rodriguez-G)
4. Just as dangerous to the common good affected by global crises is a person who fully accepts the existence of a problem, yet believes as-a-matter-of-course that everything will work out just fine. They are indulging in magical thinking –a mentality marked by excessive optimism and a dash of egocentrism. Magical thinkers are content to simply sit on the sidelines and radiate good thoughts at those doing the heavy lifting to solve the world’s ills.
5. Both adamant deniers and cheerful magical thinkers refuse to contribute time and energy or make personal sacrifices to solve planetary and social problems. They hold society back from tackling its most pressing threats to equity, security, and even survival. They leave others to worry and do the work. Not only is this monumentally unfair to those who shoulder the responsibility, it wastes valuable time. (Undark)
What is serious, and correct, is to hold Capitalism and not Humanity responsible for climate change
-Tinkering with individual climate disasters is utterly insufficient; we must aim to change not only ‘nature’s weather’, but also ‘the-political-man-made-weather’. (Alex Cobham)
6. There is now no doubt that climate change is caused by human activity. The phrase ‘climate change of human origin’ keeps being repeated insinuating that the responsibility of the situation falls on humanity as a whole. But this is simply not a scientific truth; it is an ideological truth. It blurs the responsibility of the dominant class. The truth is that not all humans have had the same role in bringing about the crisis –it is the extractivist exploitative character of Capitalism that bears the brunt of the responsibility. (Chris Saltmarsh)
We badly need a social ecologism that does not look at nature as a park, but at nature in its intimate relation to society (Alvaro Garcia Linera)
–Social justice is a matter of social development and of universal human rights, including the rights of nature.
7. Is there not an argument for saying that the most urgent change the world needs is, indeed, at the level of social policies? Other changes are certainly also desirable, no denying. But instead of starting with environmental policies and applying social corrections later, targeting those rendered vulnerable that need help, one ought to start with social policies and focus on their environmental advantages.*** Take for example: Making clean drinking water available for all is a social and, at the same time, an environmental measure. Pleading for social justice, let us not forget, also means caring for democracy, because no justice can be achieved if people are not directly involved in planning, implementing and monitoring their economic, environmental and social systems. (Francine Mestrum)
***: For this, politicians will need a science lesson or two. All members of parliament ought to receive scientific and environmental literacy training. (Phil De Luna ) [Yes, but, ask yourself, is this the real bottleneck…??].
8. And it is not only politicians: Academics too often keep aloof of the more politicized discourse of their contemporary movements for the rights of nature and for social justice. They set for themselves decade-long action horizons to confront the environmental crisis we all face. By doing so, they tacitly or expressly embrace/back the dominant economic system and its principles (private profitability, economic growth and free markets) and not the science that makes the urgent, truly comprehensive, objective analysis and that concludes unambiguously that it is the consequence of the capitalist extractivist system that negatively impacts on the climate. It is therefore inexcusable that these academics do not prioritize these central tenets of climate change that speak of now and not of decades. The negative changes we are experiencing, directly tell us of the interests and objectives of powerful (private or public, legitimate or illegitimate) interests.
9. Moreover, beware of the science being promoted under the wings of the UN; it is no exception; it is progressively being coopted by the interests of big transnational corporations. It is of utmost importance that the science these academicians practice once-and-for-all becomes engaged with true sustainability and with socio-environmental justice –now. (Eduardo Giesen)
10. For all the above and many other reasons, we have to shift from an economic paradigm where the parallel universes of economic progress, of social equity and of environmental dimensions essentially exist on separate operating systems. (Achim Steiner)
[How empty this all rings after COP26…].
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
All Readers are available at www.claudioschuftan.com
Postscript/Marginalia
-Why did it not occur to me during the long pandemic privation to hug trees the way many ecologists do to absorb the energy from these marvelous living beings? Why is this something so difficult to imagine for human beings educated in the Western culture? (Boaventura de Sousa Santos)
-If someone who pretends to be an ecologist is rightwing, is he really an ecologist? And, although I do not have the numbers at hand: Am I right that all rightwing nationalism is, in principle, alien to an integral ecology? (L. Weinstein)