[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about how not to let disappointment slow us down in our crucial struggle for the rights of mother earth. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text].
-What is ultimately needed from believers is for them to commit to work for other living things to be safe from harm and from exploitation.
Empathy has surely been historically important in setting off concerns for nature; but empathy is not enough
1. For empathy to matter, it must lead to changes in policies and norms vis-a-vis nature. At this critical moment, the not-so-conventional wisdom decisions of elites must be actively questioned to overcome the built-in strictures of just empathy. The ultimate goal is policies and norms that will save this planet —and that takes more than empathy and believers. (Adapted from Steven Pinker)
2. In early October 2021, the 47-member UN Human Rights Council officially recognized the right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment. The vote was overwhelming –it passed unanimously with 43 votes and four abstentions from China, India, Japan and Russia– and it was historic: A healthy environment is now proclaimed a human right. The right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment –or in short, the right to a healthy environment (RTHE)– is the recognition that intact ecosystems and animal and plant populations, as well as a stable climate, underpin all human rights (HR).* [“All HR ultimately depend on a healthy biosphere” the UN Special Rapporteur for the Environment and HR David Boyd, pointed out].
From October 2021 to November 2022: How fast do our(?) leaders forget?
3. The deals arrived-at at the COP26 in Glasgow undoubtedly represent a historically shameful dereliction of duty and are nowhere near enough to avoid climate disaster. (Anis Chaudury and Jomo Sundaram) Take its non-binding resolutions: what an affront and how shameless! It is not more of the same; it is the worse of the same. (Rafa Ruiz) If the resolutions hammered out at the last minute ended up being not binding, I daresay they do not represent honest commitments. Will all the scientifically sound measures that were made plenty clear during the negotiations be condemned to just gather dust in the in-trays of world leaders? (Federico Mayor)
4. If a people’s natural resources were sold or assigned pursuant to colonial and neo-colonial obsolete treaties or contracts, these agreements must consequently be revised from the point of view of the UN Charter if they are to vindicate the sovereignty of peoples over their own resources and environment (e.g., indigenous peoples are entitled to reparation for the lands and resources that were and are being stolen from them. Therefore, any future agreements concerning indigenous lands and resources are to be conditioned on free, prior and informed consent). (Alfred de Zayas)
5. The challenge and the defy posed to the global community by neocolonial-natural-resources-predators regarding life on the planet is total and immense. ‘The dominants’ do not joke; they act, they colonize, they subjugate, they destroy. Today’s financial predators are ecological criminals. The experiences of the last twenty years show that the citizens cannot limit themselves to continue to just petition. In the name of humanity and life on Earth, they must fight to reverse history, to achieve a totally other agenda for the world. The workers of the worlds invented the general strike and the results were and continue to be rather better than worse. It is time for the people of the world to use the right tactics and tools so as to proactively engage to counter the crises we live-in. (Riccardo Petrella)
6. Therefore now, more than after previous 25 COPs, states have a duty to protect and preserve the natural environment and the common heritage of humankind. But are they discharging this duty? The crime of ecocide continues to entail the irreversible degradation/destruction of the human environment. This clearly constitutes a crime against humanity that must be addressed by the international community and prosecuted under article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. (A. de Zayas)
What our(?) leaders disregard at the cost of their/our own descendants
7. The potential irreversibility of several natural phenomena adds an inter-generational responsibility to humanity that must take top place in the values that ought to be at the center of global governance. Our descendants will be able to understand many things, many of our decisions and indecisions, except those with irreversible consequences! Only by being conscious of reality and of the fact that, for the first time in history, we are facing irreversible changes in nature, will “We, the People” be impelled to mobilize globally to forge a common livable future for humanity. For this to happen we, not only have to be counted, but must be heard loudly. Those who recognize the crises we live-in are deadly wrong if they simply propose to reinstate ‘the previous order’; it will simply not do.
8. Humanity has to evolve from ‘having’ to ‘being’, from ‘more’ to ‘better’, from ‘asymmetric abundance’ to ‘shared sobriety’. For the last decades, we are living in the midst of an extraordinary conceptual confusion where the governance system is based on money and ‘short-termism’. “We the People” does not refer to states and governments; it refers to ‘the people’. It is thus up to civil society to assume the historical role it is called to play. “We the People” is also the best expression of democratic multilateralism –the only formula of acceptable global governance and the only one that can confront the plutocratic groups that neoliberalism has imposed upon us and that has brought us to the deep systemic crisis we are living-in.** (F. Mayor)
**: The de-politicization of what is eminently political is characteristic of the international predator’s discourse about the causes-of and the solutions-to the climate, biodiversity and depletion of natural resources crises. There is ample evidence that the neoliberal model that has dominated economic activity in most of the world –and that is responsible for growing inequalities both between and within countries– has been one of the major determinants of these crises the world over. (Vicente Navarro)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com