Human rights: Food for a profoundly troubling thought ‘The rights of nature’
HRR 773
[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about the biosphere under attack, the failed attempts to defend it and what to do about it next. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
—To solve the climate crisis and the environmental chaos, power must flow away from the billionaire class. (Peter Kalmus)
1. At the outset, a disclaimer: The conventional use of the word ‘environment’ reflects anthropocentricity. Environment just means surroundings or real estate. Instead, we and our fellow creatures need to adopt the term ‘biosphere’ (meaning living world) or to speak of ‘the natural world’. But such radical thought and action is beyond the brief and the capabilities of any conceivable government and is not even on the agenda of any mainstream party*. So, I suggest that, to put things right, we people at large need to take matters into our own hands. (Colin Tudge)
*: The political, social and economic position of these entities is opaque in this regard. But their indifference and silence can indeed be broken with arguments even of plain common sense.
The idea of sustainable development has perhaps triumphed. But in its practice, it is in profound trouble
–I wonder whether or not the green revolution (‘agreecultural’) centers around the world are genuine gift horses for the South or Trojan vacuum cleaners sucking the South’s resources into Northern coffers. (C. Tudge)
–Today’s Northern policy makers are not willing to apply needed true sustainable policies. (The Ecologist)
2. Sustainability does not depend on ending human progress, only on abandoning the myth that equates such progress with growth. Poor countries must forego illusory dreams of instant prosperity based on foreign financial inflows. What we have yet to accept is that no amount of fine-tuning of the growth engine will make growth, as presently defined, sustainable.
3. It is precisely the non-sustainability of growth that gives urgency to a new concept of sustainable development. The earth’s ecosystem develops (evolves), but does not grow. Its subsystem —the economy–– must eventually stop growing (but can continue to develop and change indefinitely). The term sustainable development, therefore, could make sense for the economy, but only if it is understood as development without growth, i.e., as qualitative improvements of a physical economic base that is maintained in a steady state defined by the limits of the ecosystem. (Herman Daly)
For a greater possibility of survival, human societies must learn to coexist in their diversity (Raul Montenegro)
4. Our species, drunk on technology and love of growth, does not seem to realize that the planet where we live is threatened. The species that is at risk of extinction is ours. There is a big difference between being an intelligent species, and an intelligently adaptable species. It is up to us to decide, collectively, if we want to live longer as a species adapted to ourselves and the biosphere. Or on the contrary, hasten our extinction between luxuries, glamour and a nuclear war with no return.
5. The most important decisions are made by quite a small number of persons, usually only one (e.g., presidents, prime ministers, kings or dictators), but also by very powerful and relatively small collegiate bodies. The smaller the number of people who make decisions, the greater the probability that those decisions may not be adaptive, or worse, eventually be disastrous for nature and for the majority of populations. Every day, there are more people ruled by single leaders with greater power. But beware that the exercise of concentrated power also wreaks havoc in countries whose government leaders are elected ‘democratically’.
6. Homo sapiens, not only does not adapta to the rest of the biodiversity in its evolution**, but competes with most species so that all those species that bother or hinder ‘human development’, are exterminated.
**: Facetiously, “My understanding/interpretation of the theory of evolution is that Darwin was adopted”. (Steven Wright)
7. Unfortunately, most of our populations, governments and corporations, still do not understand native biodiversity. On average, our species does not seek coexistence and mutual adaptation to biodiversity and eco-diversity: we impose on other species our patterns of simplification by the use biocides, other chemicals, fires, mechanical destruction, industrial agriculture, hunting, fishing and replacement of adaptive species with exotic species.
8. For the survival of the human species –a highly menaced species– the challenge covers two fundamental fields: the coexistence of Homo sapiens with Homo sapiens and the coexistence of Homo sapiens with native biodiversity and the biosphere. In both cases, most of the indicators are negative and worrisome. (R. Montenegro)
Western development uses a ‘nature-conquering’ philosophy. It considers man above nature, not a part of it (Khamla Bhasin)
9. Because in the sustainable development parlance, the ecological aspect has been overplayed to the detriment of the socioeconomic aspects, the attitude that we need to adopt –but do not– is that sustainable development is a socially and politically defiant form of development; it is thus my problem, because I can do something about it; because I want to do something about it; because I must do something about it. Am I doing something about it?***
***: Just as smoking turned from glamorous to gross, climate action needs a commensurate mindset shift. (UN)
10. Finally, note that it is not enough to reduce complicated issues to T-shirt slogans like ‘save the planet’; it is only useful if the slogans are a stimulus to thought and debate, but they should not become a substitute for understanding and acting (…and this is the problem with fashionable social marketing…). (John Tinker)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com