In these times of COVID-19 and social justice uprising and climate chaos, the time for system change is now. The fast-growing global movement for Rights of Nature provides opportunities for true system change. Join global movement leaders Dr. Vandana Shiva (India), Tom B.K. Goldtooth (Turtle Island, U.S.), Patricia Gualinga (Kichwa People of Sarayaku, Ecuador) and Cormac Cullinan (South Africa) for a deep discussion and Q&A about the Rights of Nature as a paradigm shift for social and ecological justice.
Tuesday, 30 June 2020
TIME ZONES
9 am (Pacific time); 11 am (Central time US and Ecuador)
12 Noon (Eastern time); 9:30 PM (Delhi, India)
6:00 PM (South Africa & Central Europe CEST)
ZOOM registration: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_I4pBX9lOR1u3AmftRptIXw
The webinar will be available online on Youtube and Facebook the day after the event.
This webinar will be moderated by Shannon Biggs (US) and Natalia Greene (Ecuador). Shannon is co-founder of Movement Rights, which assisted the Ponca Nation of OK to become the first tribe in the US to adopt the Rights of Nature. She is also the co-founder and Executive Committee member of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (GARN). Natalia Greene is also a co-founder and Executive Committee member of GARN, Secretariat of the International Rights of Nature Tribunal, and assisted in the adoption of the Rights of Nature statute in Ecuador’s constitution.
ABOUT THE RIGHTS OF NATURE/RIGHTS OF MOTHER EARTH
It is time to stop thinking we must protect nature and recognize that as much as every other life form on Earth, we are nature. Like no other time in human history, we are in a unique position to determine our fate. And from pandemics to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and the movement for Black Lives, how we treat the Earth is how we treat each other.
Recognizing the Earth as a living system of which humans are a part, rather than as human property to be owned and destroyed for the benefit of the wealthiest few is a fundamental shift from the climate capitalism embedded in the DNA of trade deals, environmental policies and treaties around the world; and the systemic racism of a supremacist patriarchal world view that shapes our institutions.
Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge is the basis of the rights of nature and offers an important piece in the social justice and climate justice mosaic. Shifting law and culture to recognize legal standing for nature means that human activities and development must not interfere with the ability of ecosystems and healthy vibrant human communities to absorb their impacts, to regenerate their natural capacities, to thrive and evolve. It requires that those responsible for destruction, including corporate actors and governments be held fully accountable for their actions.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Dr. Vandana Shiva is an internationally renowned Indian scholar, eco-feminist activist, food-sovereignty and biodiversity advocate, anti-corporate globalization leader and the author of several books including Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace, and Soil Not Oil. She is the Founder of Navdanya and Navdanya International, based in in India and Europe, which means nine seeds, symbolizing the protection of biological and cultural diversity. She also serves on the Executive Committee of GARN among several other organizations and has been recognized with many honors including the Right Livelihood Award.
Tom B.K. Goldtooth (Dine’/Dakota) is the Executive Director of the Indigenous Environmental Network based in Turtle Island (North America). He is a local and global Indigenous, climate, environmental and economic justice activist, Rights of Mother Earth advocate, and leading voice for building healthy and sustainable Indigenous communities based upon the foundation of Indigenous knowledge. He also serves on the Executive Committee of GARN and the board of Movement Rights, and has been recognized for his work including winning the Gandhi Peace Award.
Patricia Gualinga is a human rights and land defender, indigenous leader of the Pueblo (First People) Kichwa of Sarayaku, located in the Amazon in Ecuador. She works to protect her community from human rights and nature violations that result form oil extraction projects carried out by Chinese and other transnational corporations on their traditional land. She has participated in the elaboration of the indigenous-led proposal ‘Kawsak Sacha‘, or ‘Living Forest’, that calls for legal protection of the Ecuadorian Amazon. She has spoken before the United Nations, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and around the world. She has been persecuted and received harassment and death threats for her activism to protect her people and the Amazon forest from fossil fuel development since she is a respected voice when it comes to the defense of nature.
Cormac Cullinan is a director of the leading South African environmental law firm, Cullinan & Associates Inc, and the Director of the Wild Law Institute. He is the author of the seminal book, Wild Law: A Manifesto for Earth Justice, which proposes recognizing ecosystems with legal rights, changing our relationship with the natural world from one of exploitation to a more democratic participation in a community of all life. In 2010 he assisted with the drafting of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth. He is a co-founder and Executive Committee member of GARN.