WILD LAW
THE RIGHTS OF THE EARTH
By Stephanie Marohn
stephaniemarohn.com
stephaniemarohn.com
For: North Bay Natural Pages (October 2007 – March 2008)
Every component of the Earth Community has three rights:
1. The RIGHT to BE,
2. The RIGHT to HABITAT,
3. The RIGHT to FULFILL its role in the ever-renewing processes of the earth community. Thomas Berry
Remember how suddenly the Iron Curtain came down, despite how solidly it had been in place for almost 50 years?
Remember how the firmly entrenched apartheid system in South Africa ended so abruptly, and the man who had been imprisoned for 27 years, because of it became the country's president?
Yes, many people struggled over decades - many gave their lives - to bring those two events to pass, but when the change occurred, it happened relatively quickly.
This supports the view that when the world is ready for a paradigm shift, the shift is often rapid.
With global warming waking up even those previously in deep denial about the dire state of the environment the embrace of wild law may be the next paradigm shift. And if that shift comes within the next ten years (scientists warn that we have ten years to change our ways or our destruction of the planet will become irreversible), humans and the planet may actually have a chance.
Note, however, that paradigm shifts do not occur without great effort by many humans. A paradigm shift is not something you can just sit back and wait for, but requires that critical mass be reached. So in the case of wild law, many people need to help bring a whole new way of looking at nature into mainstream cultural acceptance.
THE LAW OF THE WILD
Wild law recognizes the rights of rivers to flow instead of being dammed to the detriment of their health,
the rights of mountains to remain intact instead of having their tops blown off for coal mining,
the rights of old growth forests to remain unlogged, and
the rights of all humans, animals, birds, insects, amphibians, reptiles, and other beings to a habitat
that supports their existence.
Wild law requires that decisions made by communities, governing bodies, courts, or other social or cultural authority adhere to, rather than violate, these rights.
Wild law does not place humans above every other component of nature, or
the other members of "the Earth community;' as visionary sage Thomas Berry terms it.
Wild law is ecocentric (Earth-centered) rather than anthropocentric (human-centered).
And if we make the paradigm shift, we will enter what Berry dubs the" Ecozoic Era;'
taking our rightful place in the Earth community instead of attempting to rule it.
Wild law is a framework for the reform of our current approach to law and governance, which currently accords corporations the right to pillage and plunder, destroy the habitats of humans as well as other beings, and send species after species into extinction.
Our current framework gives humans the right to exploit the natural world as we see fit, rather than acknowledge that we are members of a planetary community in which all beings and earth elements are equal.
It would be bad enough to have humans using and abusing the Earth, but we have allowed corporations to gain "personhood'; meaning they can claim the same rights as people. This enables them to override communities of actual people trying to stop the polluting of their air, soil. and water by a factory farm, for example.
The corporation (which wreaks destruction on a far greater scale than that perpetrated by individual humans) can claim that the attempt to keep them out is a violation of, their civil rights and the community is forced by courts and state and federal government to comply. So, humans, too, have lost their rights.
Wild law restores these rights, along with those of all of nature,
Thus wild law is far more than reform of law and governance; it is a fundamental cultural transformation of how humans view their place in the world.
Wild law is both new and old. It is a relatively new movement seeking to restore the age-old worldview and harmonious relationship with nature of indigenous peoples around the globe.
South African attorney, former anti-apartheid activist. and current wild law activist Cormac Cullinan coined the term "wild law" and authored a book of the same name to serve as a text for the new movement.
He explains the term: "I was looking for something sexier than 'Earth jurisprudence' (Thomas Berry's name for the philosophy of law that recognizes the rights of nature).
Initially I was casting around for that, but after a while it did prove to be quite a rich phrase. Partially because it's incongruous for lawyers to put 'wild' and 'law' in the same sentence, because law is seen as being very much about stamping out wildness.
Wildness is also synonymous with the vital natural forces that drive the evolution of the universe and we also associate it with creativity and passion. Part of the problem is that that is exactly what our systems try to stamp out and with that we've lost soul, meaning, and a sense of fulfillment."
Cullinan now travels the world as a legal consultant, lecturer, and organizer for wild law.
He cites Thomas Berry as the inspiration for the wild law concept.
Berry had been calling for a "new jurisprudence" that would recognize the rights of the Earth Community. Cullinan and others are in the process of developing how to put this new jurisprudence into action throughout society.
While some object to the systemic change this will entail, Cullinan notes, "The feedback we're getting from the planet is that the existing system is not working. It's dysfunctional on a catastrophic level.
If that's where we're at we've got to try something new. And it seems to me that attempting to bring ourselves into alignment with the system of which we are part, must be a good start:'
As for what individuals can do toward that realignment, Cullinan says, ''As a personal practice, renewing and strengthening one's personal contact with the wider natural world, with other species or plants or beautiful places, is very important.
And then the next thing to do is to be willing to stand up for it. In other words, both to try and change one's personal life to reflect one's belief, but also to go out in the world and say. 'I'm not willing anymore to be a party to gratuitous assault on the rest of the planet:"
Here are four recent developments in the field of wild law that give hope that the paradigm shift to Earth justice may be closer than we think:
the first wild law conference in the U.S.,
the establishment of a wild law center inside a U.S. law school,
a web of wild law communities around the world, and
the first actual wild law enacted in the U.S.
FIRST CONFERENCE - FIRST LAW CENTER
In April 2007 –
the first wild law conference ever held in the U.S. took place at
the first earth justice law center in the U.S., the Center for Earth Jurisprudence (CEJ).
CEJ, which opened in 2006, is co-sponsored by two Catholic universities,
Barry and St. Thomas, in Miami Gardens, Florida, and
is the first Earth jurisprudence entity operating within a law school.
CEJ's mission is "to re-envision law and governance in ways that support and
protect the well being of the entire Earth community:'
To that end. CEJ hosted a conference for law faculty and students, to introduce them to the concepts of wild law. The official title was" Earth Jurisprudence: Defining the Field and Claiming the Promise".
The keynote speakers were Cormac Cullinan and Thomas Linzey (see "A Landmark Legal Case").
The Gaia Foundation had held the first Earth jurisprudence conferences in South Africa and the U.K. two years before, but the CEJ conference was a first in the U.S. More are likely to follow, however, as Cullinan and Linzey embarked after the conference on a 10 day tour to speak at law schools across the country.
Meanwhile, CEJ's first law school course in Earth jurisprudence came to a close, with enthusiastic reviews from the 19 law students who completed it.
Patricia A. Siemen, O.P., J.D., director of CEJ, is a Dominican Sister and civil attorney who came to Earth jurisprudence from a social justice background of working with the underrepresented on civil rights, voting rights, and immigrant rights issues.
Her own experience during that period led her to regard the embracing of wild law principles as a continuum. Some, like Thomas Berry (she, too, found a mentor in him) are at one end of the continuum, with naysayers at the other end. Despite her rights advocacy, she was a naysayer.
"In the midst of trying to get land and provide housing for immigrants in Florida:' she says, "I remember being so annoyed at the state EPA and the land-use policies, because we had to slow down our housing, becausewe had a threatened jay. I remember being so indignant, saying, 'My god, housing is more important than these birds!' So I have a lot of compassion for people who are at different points on this continuum:'
What changed her view was listening to a Thomas Berry tape. He said, “I would hazard a guess that if the rest of the species had a right to vote in an Earth democracy, they would vote the humans off the planet.”
“That was shocking to me”, she recalls. She suddenly realized she had been working all these years
for human justice and had never considered the rights of other species and nature in general.
That pivotal moment led Siemen to begin serving what is the most underrepresented community today: Earth and Nature.
An eventual meeting with the presidents of the two universities and the deans of their two law schools to propose that they sponsor CEJ within their walls earned their immediate support.
Siemen notes that the fact that CEJ is founded within two faith-based law schools is no accident, but reflects their common ground with the wild law movement of "recognition of the sacredness of the natural world, the sacredness of creation."
ASK THE KNOWLEDGE HOLDERS
Like Cormac Cullinan, Liz Hosken, the cofounder and director of the Gaia Foundation in London, is from South Africa and was exiled due to her antiapartheid activism. Also like Cullinan, she now travels the world on behalf of wild law. The foundation "is committed to cultural and biological diversity, and a living Earth democracy".
To this end, Hosken and others worked with indigenous communities in the Amazon to develop a model that could be applied to any community in the world - a model based on the primary laws of the Earth and aimed at restoring wild law and a recognition of the sacredness of nature. The foundation then took a group of Africans to experience Amazon communities, as a living example of Earth jurisprudence in practice.
Most recently, the foundation has been developing this work with divergent communities in Sweden and
along the Thames River in the U.K.
At the recent CEJ conference, Hosken spoke on "Earth Jurisprudence: Lessons from Indigenous Peoples:'
to explain the link between wild law and indigenous wisdom. She says, "Indigenous people see themselves
as part of a living whole. That's their cosmology, that's their world view based on Earth lore. And of course, that's what Earth jurisprudence is trying to say, that the Earth is the primary giver of law, the primary text,
and that human beings should regulate themselves according to that primary law, and that law as it governs
all life systems."
The methodology that the Gaia Foundation, the Amazonians, and the Africans have developed is based on tapping into the wisdom of the eiders or "knowledge holders" in any community, those who know the workings of the primary law in their particular ecosystem, with the goal of reconnecting the whole community to that natural world.
The first step is to identify the knowledge holders and hold community meetings to stimulate community dialogue and create a map of the community's ecosystem. Hosken describes this eco-mapping as "a very
interesting powerful tool for bringing out the knowledge of the wisdom holders and engaging others in connecting with their place and understanding how it works:'
In the process, community members connect with each other in a new way, and cohesion is re-established as a basis for good governance. The young gain new respect for their elders and the traditions of their people, their heritage, and their identity. Excitingly, Hosken and her colleagues have discovered that the methodology works as well in communities in developed countries as it does in the Amazon and Africa,
Restoring wild law at a grass-roots level, in individual communities, and linking those communities in a region, throughout a country, and internationally is how wild law will become the law of the land. Hasken notes that the Amazonians talk about sacred sites as critical places where the Earth needs to rest and be protected and that these sites used to all are linked. "Of all the things we need to do - the destruction is so huge, but we have to begin somewhere - they say to us that sacred sites are the places we really need to prioritize in any ecosystem;' she says. "The vision they have is that we work with these little small nodes of interested people in different countries and try to get this process going, try and get it to spread and to link up into a global alliance. The interlinkage is a really important part of building up the critical mass for change:' It is the knowledge keepers in your community who know where the sacred sites are in their ecosystem.
A LANDMARK LAW PASSES
Recent events in Pennsylvania highlight American communities that are taking back control of their own ecosystems and restoring nature's stolen rights. On September 19, 2006, the Tamaqua Borough Council in Pennsylvania became the first municipality in the U.S. to strip corporations of rights and recognize the rights of Nature, thus becoming the first in the country to enact wild law.
The council passed an ordinance prohibiting corporations from applying sewage sludge in the borough.
(Land applied sewage sludge is a known hazard to the health of humans and the environment.)
Four other communities in the state have since passed similar ordinances denying corporations personhood and recognizing Nature instead.
The municipalities were able to do this with the assistance of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), a nonprofit law firm in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, that provides legal services to groups and local governments seeking to protect their community's quality of life and natural environment.
CELDF's cofounder and executive director, attorney Thomas Linzey, now receives calls from all over the country from communities facing unwanted incursions by corporations. The first thing he helps them figure out is how to regain control of their local government, if they don't already have it or, if they do, what ordinances they need to pass to keep the toxic waste incinerator, sewage sludge, factory farm, cell phone tower, or other environmental hazard out of their community.
CELDF's project director, Ben Price, said of the landmark Tamaqua ordinance, that the council took "an extraordinary - but logical-step. Since this nation's founding - and for thousands of years before - 'Law' in
the Western world has treated rivers, mountains, forests, and other natural systems as 'property' with no rights that governments or corporations must respect. This has resulted in the destruction of ecosystems and natural communities, backed by law, public policy, and the power of government.
The people of Tamaqua have changed how the law regards Nature, and have acted in the grand tradition of the Abolitionists, who launched a people's movement in the 1830s to end the legal but immoral treatment of slaves as property and to establish forever their rights as people entitled to fundamental and inalienable human rights:' With these "new-generation ordinances:' as Linzey calls them, Nature's inalienable rights are beginning to be restored, and the five Pennsylvania communities are likely the start of a movement.
The wild law heroes described here and the many others working in a variety of ways toward the goal of restoring the rights of Nature cannot alone bring about the paradigm shift from our, current anthropocentrism to a worldview of ourselves as members of an Earth community that includes all beings and natural elements. But the more of us who take action toward this goal, the closer we will be to wild law, perhaps suddenly, becoming the status quo instead of being regarded as a radical or idealistic concept.
Cormac Cullinan - www.enact-internationaJ.com
Liz Hosken and the Gaia Foundation - www.gaiafoundation.org
Thomas Linzey and CELDF - www.celdf.org
or call 717-709-0457
Patricia Siemen and CEJ - www.earthjuris.org
or call 305-623-2389.
