The following post was written by Alina Evans and Anna Campanelli, interns with the Global Exchange Community Rights Program.

community_rightsHydraulic Fracturing (Fracking) is one of the most destructive energy processes on planet Earth – even the EPA reports show that fracking is the second-biggest contributor of U.S. Greenhouse gases. But as California activist RL Miller reports in the Daily Kos, “California’s oil is as dirty as the Canadian tar sands. State data shows that several California oil fields produce just as much carbon dioxide per barrel of oil as the tar sands do. A handful of fields yield even more.”

Contrary to gas and oil company propaganda, this drilling process is unsafe, unclean, and absolutely not renewable. The truth is fracking is yet another dirty energy scheme poisoning our air, soil and groundwater, and now it’s poisoning us. Gas and oil companies are quietly bringing fracking to the Golden State, placing not just Californians, but the planet at risk. In fact the process has already begun, promising to make California the #1 oil producing state, or as some call it—the Saudi Arabia of the USA—but at what cost? Global Exchange is working with communities to say “no” and along with our partners we’re leading a speaking tour April 15-22 through California’s  fracklands to educate and mobilize for action.

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Photo: thinkprogress.org

 

How Fracking works:
Fracking is an enhanced drilling technique that through a process of vertical and horizontal drilling enables fracking rigs to extract natural gas and/or oil from shale formations. Millions of gallons of water, sand, and “proprietary” carcinogenic chemicals are injected at high pressures, fracturing the underground shale and releasing “trapped” natural gas and oil. Vertical fracking is employed to increase the lifespan of a pre-existing well, while horizontal fracking is used to tap previously inaccessible shale deposits through an injection process. For a good fracking primer, check out EARTHWORK’s Hydraulic Fracturing 101.

Doing the numbers:

  • Between 3-5 million gallons of water are used to frack a single well one time; one well can be fracked 18 times; this means that one fracked well requires between 54-90 million gallons of water in its lifetime-that’s enough to fill up to 9 Yankee Stadiums!

    YankeeStadium-NewYork-SeatingBowl-990x442

    Water used for fracking just one well fills up to 9 Yankee Stadiums (Photo: Populus.com)

  • 90% of wells in the United States are currently being fracked, that’s over 800,000 wells and counting.
  • 596 chemicals (known carcinogens) are used in fracking.  These chemicals are undisclosed under the trade secret provision protecting energy companies’ proprietary “recipes”
  • Each time a well is fracked, millions of gallons of these toxic chemicals are pumped into our earth along with our water.
  • On average, 330 tons of chemicals are used per fracking operation—2/3 of the toxic chemicals remain underground.
  • Earthquakes in frack zones have skyrocketed in places like Ohio, (not a state previously known for seismic activity) placing geologically sensitive California at extreme risk.
  • Extreme energy methods = climate chaos. California’s 15 billion barrels of fracked oil will release 6.45 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, on par with the Keystone XL pipeline’s carrying capacity in its lifetime (7 million metric tons).

The millions of gallons of toxic waste water produced cannot be processed by wastewater treatment. If the steel/cement casing of a well cracks from the pressure the toxins seep into the water aquifers that we drink from. Exploding wells, dwindling ecosystems, toxic sink water, sickness and deaths of animals and even humans are not uncommon reports coming from US communities who have been subjected to fracking, depending on whether it is natural gas or oil being fracked. The latest report come from Columbus, Ohio where, since March of this year, 11 earthquakes have resulted from fracking operations in the area.

aerialFracking

Baldwin Hills (Los Angeles County) California’s largest frack field (photo Transition Culver City)

California’s Dirty Secret is about to blow
In the Golden state, fracking is unregulated and unmonitored. Corporations do not need to disclose the toxic chemicals they are using or inform communities that fracking is happening. As a water-poor state, fracking and its toxic wastewater presents a serious danger to our communities and ecosystems. And in a state prone to earthquakes, human induced fault pressures present an alarming geological risk. Fracking proponents claim fracking has been going on for 70 years in California with no harmful effects—a misleading apples and oranges statement at best.  Old-school fracking did not use the same chemicals or drill as deeply or horizontally, nor inject the kinds of chemicals that modern fracking uses. As a result of all of this, fracking in California is a well-kept secret: only 50% of residents know what fracking is.But that is about to change. Here in California, as communities are learning about fracking’s dangers, they want to stop it.

Along with our partners, Global Exchange’s Community Rights Program is embarking on a 7-day speaking tour from April 15-22. The tour will visit impacted California communities from San Francisco to San Diego and expose the reality of fracking in the state and engage community members in the movement to oppose and stop this harmful and dangerous practice, exploring with our partners all of the efforts underway statewide to stop fracking from transforming the state and the climate.

 

Tour stops include: San Francisco, Monterey, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Culver City, and San Diego, **with others still to be added.**

Each stop on the tour will include a day of action: along with our allies, we are working with host communities to strategize and develop unique actions that meet each community’s needs. Each day’s activity will be preceded by a local media plan, social media outreach, collaborative efforts, and planned meetings with various community groups. We expect much of the energy we generate on this tour will build toward larger statewide action.

don't frack shannon

Community Rights Director Shannon Biggs

Confirmed Speakers and partners on the road:  We’ll bring Doug Shields, former Pittsburgh PA councilman enacting the first “rights-based” ban on fracking in the nation,

scientists, fractivists, and fracking experts from our partner organizations, many of whom take different approaches to regulate or ban or place a moratorium on the process.  Our allies on the road include the Center for Biological Diversity, Food and Water Watch, 350.org, Clean Water Action, Transitions Towns, community-based groups, host community partners, and you! If you are concerned about fracking in your community or in general we are here to help you too! If you would like to join the tour, if you are interested in having us visit your community or if you would like to attend one of the events set up for the tour we’d love to hear from you.

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Jessica Nuti and Executive Director Carleen Pickard at the Global Frackdown Bay Area

Global Exchange is helping Communities assert their right to say “NO fracking”

Five years ago, Global Exchange launched the Community Rights Program confronting corporate power at its core: by challenging unjust law and shifting the balance of power from one that protects the rights of corporations, to one that protects the rights of our communities and the environment. The Community Rights Program enters the California and national fracking debate via our expertise in grassroots, “rights-based” organizing, where we work with communities confronted by various corporate harms to enact local laws that place the rights of residents and nature above corporate interests. A right-based approach not only offers communities a way to stop the harmful practices of fracking in their midst, but addresses the core issue of a system of law that legalizes harmful corporate practices like fracking.

We’ve already been working with a handful of communities to pass rights-based fracking bans, including San Luis Obispo, and Culver City, and we hope to be working with many more. This efforts builds on the success of more than nine communities who have stopped fracking through passing rights-based fracking bans – the most notable in Pittsburgh, PA, led by featured tour speaker, Doug Shields.  Across Pennsylvania, New Mexico and New York, nine other communities have followed suit (with many more underway), declaring their right as communities to protect the health safety and welfare of residents and the groundwater they depend on.

LEARN MORE:  Want to be a part of the tour? Want the tour to come to YOU?

Contact Community Rights Program Director Shannon Biggs at: Shannon@globalexchange.org or 415.575.5540.
Stay updated on the specifics for the tour at our webpage: or join our list serve (emails twice monthly)

For another take on fracking in California from our Global Exchange colleague Corey Hill, check out this article at the East Bay Express.

Alina Evans and Anna Campanelli, authors of this blog post are interns with the Global Exchange Community Rights Program.

Shannon Biggs, Community Rights Program Director at Global Exchange, shares some holiday reading suggestions for fans of community rights, followed by a few staff picks.

COMMUNITY RIGHTS HOLIDAY READING

  • Exclusive! David Korten shares some thoughts on nature and the future of economics: A rights-based economy begins with the biosphere. In 2013 Global Exchange will be looking at how the rights of nature can play a role in shaping a new economy (or more correctly new economies) based on the needs of ecosystems and the human communities they support. What does that look like? Ecological economist, author and YES! Magazine co-founder David Korten gives Global Exchange a sneak peak of a piece he’s working on. For more related to this topic, read David Korten’s article in the latest issue of Yes! Magazine.
  • An Inconvenient Truth About Lincoln (That You Won’t Hear from Hollywood): Have you seen the movie Lincoln? I watched it over the Thanksgiving break, and quite enjoyed the romp through the inner workings and backroom political dealings that go on (spoiler alert!) when passing an Amendment to abolish slavery. However much we love to love Lincoln, it’s worth noting that as a former railroad lawyer, he was a huge advocate of corporate personhood, as a means to ensure that the plantation system was replaced by a corporate version. Before you sit down to watch Daniel Day Lewis inhabit our favorite President, this Huffington Post piece is a quick and entertaining read.
  • How the Mayan Calendar Works: Next, check this out for a short read before the End of Days.

STAFF PICKS available at your local independent booksellers:

  • Community Rights staff suggest reading: Taming Democracy by Terry Bouton. Americans are fond of reflecting upon the noble Founding Fathers, who came together to force out the tyranny of the British and bring democracy. Unfortunately, the Revolutionary elite often seemed as determined to squash democracy after the war as they were to support it before.
  • This is what Shannon Biggs is REALLY reading at home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson. Bryson takes us on a room-by-room tour through his own house, using each room as a jumping off point into the vast history of the domestic artifacts we take for granted. As he takes us through the history of our modern comforts, Bryson demonstrates that whatever happens in the world eventually ends up in our home, in the paint, the pipes, the pillows, and every item of furniture.
  • Executive Director Carleen Pickard is reading: The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts by Louis de Bernières. Set in an impoverished, violent, yet ravishingly beautiful country somewhere in South America. When the haughty Dona Constanza decides to divert a river to fill her swimming pool, the consequences are at once tragic, heroic, and outrageously funny.
  • Online Communications Manager, Zarah Patriana is reading: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  A masterpiece that tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendía family.
  • And finally, in case you missed it, check out our most popular community rights blog post (to date), which was also cross-posted on AlterNet. Read it here.

Happy holidays!

Global Exchange Gift Membership Package

We all have our own ideas on what the Holidays are all about. Family. Laughter. Good will.

Corporate greed and commercialization? They certainly don’t make the list.

It’s time to take back the Holidays.

The true meaning of the season cannot be packaged in a box. Instead of taking part in the corporate craziness, why not get the loved ones on your list something that brings them the true meaning of the holiday season?

A Global Exchange Gift of Membership is the perfect gift! You can give the gift of Fair Trade, peace, justice, people power, and human rights. You pick the gift and we’ll take care of the rest.

6 Gift Memberships to choose from:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

—

 

 

 

 

 

When your family and friends unwrap their Global Exchange Gift Membership, they will join a compassionate community of dedicated activists working for peace, justice and human rights.

We’ll send out the membership card and gift package, plus keep your recipient in the loop about Global Exchange programs and events with our newsletter and e-mail action alerts.

Order your gifts by December 14th at midnight to guarantee delivery by December 24th 2012.

Wishing you joy, justice, and peace this Holiday Season!

Now to set the mood, here’s a little poem written by Global Exchange Generation for Justice member Andy Klase:

Click on the poem to see larger version on Facebook

 

P.S. If you live in the Bay Area or DC, please be sure to join us for our Fair Trade Store holiday event on December 6 from 5pm – 8pm. Shop for all your Fair Trade gifts, meet our staff, and if you’re a member double your discount (20% for one night only.)

 

I celebrated Earth Day along with hundreds of other earth-conscious individuals at San Francisco’s Civic Center/UN Plaza. Everyone came out that day under a common idea: we live in a wondrous community of life that is planet Earth and that community deserves our awe, respect, and attention. There was an array of speakers and musical performances as well as booths and vendors featuring local non-profit organizations, green businesses, and organic food.

I participated in a panel discussion at the celebration on Sunday around the question of “co-creating our sustainable future – what are the successful tools for coalition building and collaboration both within and beyond your organization’s work?” I was joined by leaders of the non-profit environmental movement including Rolf Skar from Greenpeace, Sarah Hodgdon of the Sierra Club, and Kevin Connelly from the Earth Island Institute.

It was insightful to hear about the different work that each of us is doing to make the future of the planet and us humans that inhabit it more sustainable and less destructive. There was one common thread throughout the discussion and that was: in order to ensure a positive future for people and the planet we must figure out how to live in balance – or in ‘harmony’ – with nature. And, in doing so, we must also learn how to work in harmony with one another towards the common goal of protecting and conserving Mother Earth and the resources that our human societies depend on for survival.

I spoke about how the emerging global movement for community and nature’s rights works to build coalitions and develop collaborations with a wide variety of groups. Our present-day global economic system and indeed our structures of law have been built upon a mindset that places humans not just apart from, but actually above nature. We codify our values in our laws and so in order to change the system, we must transform the laws that govern it.

Polar bears making a point about climate change at Earth Day

We are building a movement and there is a role to play for everyone.

The idea of organizing to actually challenge our current structures of law to recognize that nature itself has inherent rights to exist, thrive, and flourish is a big one.  We must ask ourselves the following question: If Rights of Nature is to succeed as an alternative framework to our current property-based system of law, how are we going to implement it?

The movement for nature’s rights is unique in its ability to be all-inclusive because the dire need to better protect the environment and the concept of ‘rights’ is something that everyone can understand and agree upon, despite different political beliefs or affiliations. . Most people know that allowing decision-making based on money, greed or narrow self-interest to sacrifice the well being of the planet is foolish, they just can’t see how to move to a better way of doing things.

This is because our current structures of law actually facilitate the on-going exploitation of nature. Climate change, water withdrawal, and deforestation are all symptoms of the same problem; that communities do not have the right to make decisions about how to protect the environment under the current system. Instead, this right is reserved for corporations and the state.

In addition to our coalition building with communities, policy makers, indigenous allies, and climate justice allies, I also spoke about the role of small farmers in creating viable alternative systems to corporate-dominated agriculture. If large, corporate factory farms are not what we want our food system to look like then what is the alternative? The answer lies in small, community-based farmers selling, growing, and sharing their own food.  Food sovereignty is a growing issue for communities across CA (and the rest of the world) and we have been getting an increasing number of calls from places like Nevada City, and Mendocino, CA, where citizens are looking to pass a law that asserts their right to local food sovereignty without interference from government regulations and raids on small farms.

Occupy the Farm

Meanwhile on Earth Day, across the Bay in Albany, California, the Occupy Movement was taking a stand for local food sovereignty by taking over a portion of property known as the ‘Gill Tract’. It is the last remaining 10 acres of Class I agricultural soil in the urbanized East Bay. The owner of the land, UC Berkeley, plans to sell the property to Whole Foods to open a new retail store. For decades the UC has thwarted attempts by community members to transform the site for urban sustainable agriculture and hands-on education. In solidarity with Via Campesina, “Occupy the Farm” is a coalition of local residents, farmers, students, researchers, and activists that have begun planting over 15,000 seedlings at the Gill Tract. Over 300 people turned out on Sunday to help plant seeds and till the land.

The goals of “Occupy the Farm” echo the calls of communities across California and the US that there is a dire need for people to have access to uncontaminated land for farming if we are to reclaim control over how food is grown and where it comes from. That sustainable, community-based farming is the best alternative to corporate control (and poisoning) of our food systems.

The time for a new system is now and the well being of the planet, our health, and that of future generations absolutely depends on it. We are up against an enormous task to remove the power of decision-making from profit-driven corporations (and the state) and put it back in the hands of people and communities, thereby enabling us to co-create our sustainable future.

TAKE ACTION!

•    Watch this video documenting the first day of Occupy the Farm.
•    Learn more about the movement for Community and Nature’s Rights.

The Following piece was written by Shannon Biggs of Global Exchange, and Osprey Orielle Lake. You can also find it on the Women’s Earth and Climate Caucus news page.

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‘When we speak of ecosystems as ‘resources’ — it is as if we are saying the Earth is in the business of liquidating itself.”
— Randy Kapashesit of the Cree Nation

The sacred fire was lit as over 100 primarily Indigenous peoples gathered—and hundreds more participated online—for the RIGHTS OF MOTHER EARTH: RESTORING INDIGENOUS LIFE WAYS OF RESPONSIBILITY AND RESPECT International Indigenous Conference APRIL 4 – 6, 2012 at Haskell Indian Nations University, Lawrence Kansas.

As Renee Gurneau of the Chippewa Nation explained, the fire is an important spiritual tradition acknowledging our relationship with the rest of creation in all things we do, and part of “getting into our ‘right Indigenous mind.’ As she said, “We must always give before we can take, and the fire reminds us of our Original Instructions and helps us wake up to our own knowledge.”

The Sacred Fire

Each day as we walked by the fire circle right outside the auditorium where the conference was held, we felt very grateful and honored to participate in this historic gathering to hold a discourse about Rights of Nature / Rights of Mother Earth with Indigenous leaders and activists from the Global North and South.

Conference organizers, Tom BK Goldtooth (Indigenous Environmental Network) and Dan Wildcat (Haskell University) stated, “This is the greatest challenge facing humanity in the 21st Century. How do we re-orientate the dominant industrialized societies so that they pursue human well-being in a manner that contributes to the health of our Mother Earth instead of undermining it? In other words – how do we live in harmony with Nature?”

Buen Vivir
In part, the gathering was a response to the Cochabamba World People’s Summit on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth conference called forth by President Evo Morales of Bolivia who proposed that the United Nations adopt a declaration that recognizes that Nature or “Mother Earth” is an indivisible living community of interdependent beings with inherent rights, and that as human societies we have responsibilities to follow the true laws of nature, and to live within the carrying capacity of the planet.

Marlon Santi and Patricia Gualinga Montalvo of the Sarayaku Tribe with Shannon Biggs and Ben Price

In the Kichwa  language of the Indigenous people of Ecuador it is called “sumak kawsay,” in Spanish it is “Buen Vivir” — decolonial concepts that mean ‘living well’, as opposed to consumer-driven notions of living more.  But how do we get there? Starting from where we are now, can we really envisage a future other than that which has come from enslaving nature, and treating all other life as mere “resources” for exploitation?

The conference focused on a system of earth jurisprudence (rights of nature) that views the natural world, Mother Earth, not as property to be destroyed at will, but as a rights bearing entity with legal standing in a court of law. The intent of the gathering was to bring primarily Indigenous people together with some non-Indigenous allies to explore questions about how the rights of nature legal framework could re-direct the dominant industrialized society to one of living in respect of natural laws.

The Trail of Tears

The Trail of Tears, which refers to the forced resettlement of Native Americans from their homelands and spiritual sites to far-away encampments remains present in the stories of modern colonization, theft and destruction of lands throughout Indian country. It was quite humbling and heartbreaking to realize how little we learn in our conventional school systems about the history of Native American peoples, their brutal struggles, and their outstanding resilience to hundreds of years of ongoing assaults.

Modern stories of broken promises from government officials, corporations, speculators and lawyers have created a wariness among Native leaders to partner with outsiders, and for those of us “non-native allies” present, it was a constant learning of how to engage with love and humility in a space that was first and foremost—Indigenous. Tom Goldtooth spoke at the conference on the idea of Indigenous leaders partnering with non-native allies to promote Rights for Nature:

Although not everyone saw eye-to-eye throughout the 3-day event, it was clear to all in attendance that the basic tenants proposed by the rights of nature framework, while new to western legal systems, are actually based on”original instructions” — Indigenous worldviews and philosophies that uphold the essential interrelatedness of all life and our human responsibility to respect and protect the natural world that we are part and particle of. This basic unifying principle has the potential to create new alliances and protections for every community as we face the challenging years ahead.

Shannon Biggs and Clayton Thomas-Muller, Tar Sands Campaign Director for IEN enjoy some traditional eats

Almost all of the speakers at the conference were Indigenous—from as far away as Hawaii, Ecuador and Canada.  Shannon Biggs of Global Exchange (co-author of this blog) and Ben Price from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund had the honor and opportunity to present the work we do with communities confronted by unwanted and dangerous projects to write new laws to recognize legal rights for communities and ecosystems.

•    Watch a video of Shannon and Ben present on Community and Nature’s Rights.

•    For video and audio archive of the conference, go here.

Rights and Responsibilities to Future Generations

Representing Global Exchange and the Women’s Earth and Climate Caucus as well as our shared collaboration with the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature, we listened and learned a great deal from Indigenous leaders exploring concerns about rights of nature and how they might interface or interfere with existing Indian Native and First Nations laws.  We have much to learn about how Indigenous communities define responsibilities as much as rights, and that the rights of future generations—not just of human but all species—is critical to building a bridge toward common understanding in the shared work that we do.

Renee Gurneau at the Harvest Banquet  hosted by the Osage Nation

The call for environmental justice in Indigenous communities on the frontlines of uranium mining, tar sands extractions, water takings and more are all potential opportunities for rights of nature and community rights to come into action.

We look forward to further alliance building with Indigenous communities and offering all that we can as we look towards the Rio + 20 Earth Summit and beyond and how we can create broad support for the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth and care for all of our communities and bioregions in a truly just and respectful manner. As Tom Goldtooth said at the conference,

“We cannot flourish breaking the laws of nature. Rights of Nature is a human recognition that we are part of a larger Earth community and if we want to continue we must recognize the laws of that community; the true system governing our own well being.”

Further resources/links

  • Hawaiian Rev. M. Kalani Souza, storyteller, songwriter, musician, poet, 
philosopher, priest, political satirist, and peacemaker joins a banjo playing friend impromptu 
for a song on the grass at Haskell College.
  • Shannon Biggs and Osprey Orielle Lake are offering  Rights of Nature Trainings through the Women’s Earth and Climate Caucus and if interested, please contact Wyolah Garden (wgarden@ix.netcom.com). Also if you are interested in hosting a Rights of Nature Training in your community please contact Wyolah Garden.

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Shannon and Osprey at the conference

Shannon Biggs is the Director of the Community Rights program at Global Exchange. She recently co-authored a book, Building the Green Economy: Success Stories from the Grass Roots  (PoliPoint Press). Her current work focuses on assisting communities confronted by corporate harms to enact binding laws that place the rights of communities and nature above the claimed legal “rights” of corporations.

Osprey Orielle Lake is a lifelong advocate of environmental justice and societal transformation. She is the Director of the Women’s Earth and Climate Caucus (WECC) and an International Advocate for the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature. Her book, Uprisings for the Earth: Reconnecting Culture with Nature (White Cloud Press) is a 2011 Nautilus Book Award winner.

The international peasants and farmers organization, La Via Campesina, ends their global Call to Action for the upcoming June 16-18 Rio +20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) with ‘GLOBALIZE THE STRUGGLE!! GLOBALIZE HOPE!!!’

The stakes are high in Rio. As Via Campesina points out, “Twenty years later, governments should have reconvened to review their commitments and progress, but in reality the issue to debate will be the “green economy” led development, propagating the same capitalist model that caused climate chaos and other deep social and environmental crises.”

Critiquing the focus on corporate ‘Green Economy’ evident in the march to Rio documents and planning, Via states:

“Today the “greening of the economy” pushed forward in the run-up to Rio+20 is based on the same logic and mechanisms that are destroying the planet and keeping people hungry. For instance, it seeks to incorporate aspects of the failed “green revolution” in a broader manner in order to ensure the needs of the industrial sectors of production, such as promoting the uniformity of seeds, patented seeds by corporation, genetically modified seeds, etc.

The capitalist economy, based on the over-exploitation of natural resources and human beings, will never become “green.” It is based on limitless growth in a planet that has reached its limits and on the commoditization of the remaining natural resources that have until now remained un-priced or in control of the public sector.

In this period of financial crisis, global capitalism seeks new forms of accumulation. It is during these periods of crisis in which capitalism can most accumulate. Today, it is the territories and the commons which are the main target of capital. As such, the green economy is nothing more than a green mask for capitalism. It is also a new mechanism to appropriate our forests, rivers, land… of our territories!

Since last year’s preparatory meetings towards Rio+20, agriculture has been cited as one of the causes of climate change. Yet no distinction is made in the official negotiations between industrial and peasant agriculture, and no explicit difference between their effects on poverty, climate and other social issues we face.

The “green economy” is marketed as a way to implement sustainable development for those countries which continue to experience high and disproportionate levels of poverty, hunger and misery. In reality, what is proposed is another phase of what we identify as “green structural adjustment programs” which seek to align and re-order the national markets and regulations to submit to the fast incoming “green capitalism”.

Investment capital now seeks new markets through the “green economy”; securing the natural resources of the world as primary inputs and commodities for industrial production, as carbon sinks or even for speculation. This is being demonstrated by increasing land grabs globally, for crop production for both export and agrofuels. New proposals such as “climate smart” agriculture, which calls for the “sustainable intensification” of agriculture, also embody the goal of corporations and agri-business to over exploit the earth while labeling it “green”, and making peasants dependent on high-cost seeds and inputs. New generations of polluting permits are issued for the industrial sector, especially those found in developed countries, such as what is expected from programs such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD++) and other environmental services schemes.

The green economy seeks to ensure that the ecological and biological systems of our planet remain at the service of capitalism, by the intense use of various forms of biotechnologies, synthetic technologies and geo-engineering. GMO’s and biotechnology are key parts of the industrial agriculture promoted within the framework of “green economy”.

The promotion of the green economy includes calls for the full implementation of the WTO Doha Round, the elimination of all trade barriers to incoming “green solutions,” the financing and support of financial institutions such as the World Bank and projects such as US-AID programs, and the continued legitimization of the international institutions that serve to perpetuate and promote global capitalism.

In April 2011 Global Exchange, in collaboration with the Council of Canadians and Fundacion Pachamama, released a book called The Rights of Nature: The Case for a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, which featured a chapter by then-Ambassador to the UN for Bolivia, Pablo Solon, titled ‘The Green Economy Versus the Rights of Mother Earth’. In it, he states,

“…From the point of view of these proponents of the green economy, in order to re-establish equilibrium with Nature, we must assign an economic value to the environmental “services” nature provides. An underlying assumption is only that which can be owned and profited from deserves stewardship.”

“…We are facing a debate in the United Nations among those that believe we need to strengthen the capitalist logic as it related to Nature, and others that suggest we should recognize the Rights of Nature. These are two very different conceptions. One advocates the path of the market, and the other the past of recognizing and respecting the larger system of the planet Earth on which we all live. The future of humans and Nature depends on the path humanity chooses.”

Global Exchange will be on the ground in Rio – promoting the Rights of Nature. Read more about the Community Rights Campaign here and join Via Campesina in the Call to Action. They:

… declare the week of June 5th, as a major world week in defense of the environment and against transnational corporations and invite everyone across the world to mobilize:

•    Defend sustainable peasant agriculture;
•    Occupy land for the production of agroecological and non-market dominated food;
•    Reclaim and exchange native seeds;
•    Protest against Exchange and Marketing Board offices and call for an end to speculative markets on commodities and land;
•    Hold local assemblies of People Affected by Capitalism;
•    Dream of a different world and create it!!

Global Exchange stands with Via Campesina to ‘GLOBALIZE THE STRUGGLE!! GLOBALIZE HOPE!!!’

  • Live in the Bay Area and want to learn more about the call for the Rights of Mother Earth at Rio+20? Attend the upcoming Rights of Nature seminar hosted by the Women’s Earth and Climate Caucus in Marin County April 13th-14th.

Photo by Brett Weston, Corbis

Last week our friends at the Earth Island Journal published a cover article on the Rights of Nature in their spring issue. The spread, titled Natural Law: From Rural Pennsylvania to South America, a Global Alliance is Promoting the Idea that Ecosystems Have Intrinsic Rights; takes a deep look at the evolution of the movement to grant legal rights to nature from its origins in the small community of Tamaqua Borough, Pennsylvania; to the ground-breaking developments in Ecuador in 2008 when that nation became the first to recognize nature’s rights in its national Constitution; up to the present moment as environmental and climate justice activists gear up to advocate for nature’s rights at the Rio+20 United Nations Earth Summit in Brazil this June.

This critical disclosure comes at an important time both for the movement and for Mother Earth. Rising temperatures and sea levels resulting from climate change, deforestation, mountaintop removal, and harmful methods of oil and natural gas drilling which are forever altering natural landscapes are just a few of the ill affects on the environment from human activities that come to mind.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. It is possible for us to continue to evolve in a way that is sustainable for people and the planet – but in order for this to happen we must first change the way we view our human relationship with nature, away from one that is property-based and towards a rights-based model of balance. This is the driving idea behind the Rights of Nature.

As author Jason Mark says in the article,
“This is happening. It is occurring through the work itself, as the changes in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Pennsylvania force some people to re-imagine how they think about, and feel about, the world we live in. Over time, the once- marginal starts to sound mainstream, even ordinary.”

Global Exchange’s Community Rights program is working with allies here in the US and around the world to put forward the call for nature’s rights and to say loudly and clearly that the time for a new approach to environmental protection is now – not later.

•    Stay updated on the upcoming events at Rio+20 as well as our work organizing locally in California communities by joining our e-mail list-serve.

•    Live in the Bay Area? Attend the upcoming Rights of Nature seminar hosted by the Women’s Earth & Climate Caucus April 13th-14th in Marin County.

•    Want to learn more about Rights of Nature and the emerging global movement? Get a copy of the book, The Rights of Nature: The Case for a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth. Contact Kylie Nealis (kylie@globalexchange.org) or by phone at 415.575.5551

•    Find out more about Rights of Nature work internationally by visiting the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature website.

•    Read an article by Shannon Biggs in Tikkun Magazine ‘A Community Perspective on the Rights of Nature’

Which president told Congress: “I recommend a law prohibiting all corporations from contributing to the campaign expenses of any party…let individuals contribute as they desire; but let us prohibit in effective fashion all corporations from making contributions for any political purpose, directly or indirectly?”

If you recognize this Presidential quote, it probably means you’re a history buff (or you watch too much Jeopardy). The correct answer: Who was Theodore Roosevelt?

While the speech has become a notable quotable, it’s often forgotten that it followed public outrage surrounding Roosevelt’s acceptance of huge corporate contributions that locked-in his election in 1904.  This popular clamor for accountability (the Progressive Era; maybe they were the Occupiers of their times) was enough to move Teddy and Congress to pass the first ever Federal legislation prohibiting corporations from making monetary contributions to national political campaigns, called the Tillman Act.

Now for extra points: What happened to the Tillman Act?

Like so many other attempts over the last 100+ years to restrict, reform, reign in, eliminate and otherwise account for Big Money in politics, the Tillman Act didn’t even need to be overturned for the corporate elite to get around it. It was simply whittled away. How is this done?  In the same way Congress later banned unions from making political contributions in the 1940’s, only to see Big Labor skirt the restrictions by forming the first-ever PAC, and collecting campaign donations (sometimes coercively) outside of regular worker’s dues.

OK, now for a Civics question: What is the source of power for the corporate elite?

Throughout our history as a nation, the wealthy elite have always held power, and its not an accident, or the result of a few bad decisions, or even corruption (though those all exist), its far more structural and insidious than that.  The Constitution itself provided—from the beginning—for a government by and for the 1%. The Founding Fathers truly believed that the best form of government was one in which wealth made the rules. At the time the Constitution was being debated, the majority of people were against it, despite how our folklore has remembered it.

Turns out the 99% of yesteryear were quite prescient indeed.

Fast-forward to the present day, the ways money has seeped through the cracks of our political system and pooled into the pockets of our elected officials has only grown despite generations upon generations of ever-ongoing reform efforts.

* Dozens of Acts of Congress have been passed attempting to address corruption in government and our elections yet for every reform our system has enabled bigger, better ways for wealth to hold the reigns.

* Lobbyists. They walk right into lawmaking areas and help write bills and buy votes. They present politicians with corporate-friendly Bills already drafted. They are well paid to successfully influence, chop and change legislation, and work deals with our elected officials and even with Supreme Court Justices. Under our Constitution this is protected as free speech and despite the numerous laws to regulate lobbyists, the practice is only on the rise.

*  Constitutional laws.  Many states—not only Montana— wrote their Constitutions to include the subordination of corporations to the will of the people, and banned corporate political expenditures in state elections.  Over the years, most of those Constitutional provisions have been amended to pave the way for more corporate-friendly laws. (Montana, of course still has this language in their Constitution, and has used it to challenge Citizen’s United)

*  The Supreme Court. We ended the plantation system and slavery with the passage of the 14th and 15th Amendments.  Yet it was the unelected lifers of the USSC that added corporate monsterhood to the 14th Amendment, providing the new vehicle for wealth to continue to rule after slavery was abolished. They also made sure that our labor and environmental laws are placed under the Commerce Clause, so that our worker and environmental laws have the seal of approval from business.

(Fun fact: did you know that the Constitution didn’t specify how many Justices there could be? It could have been just one!). Find out more here.

* The Commerce Clause – it looks so benign in the Constitution—15 little words that empowers Congress to regulate commerce—but it is one of the most powerful weapons in corporate arsenal. Anything defined as commerce (and everything is defined as commerce, including toxic waste) has been used by corporations and the courts to strip state and municipal governments of lawmaking designed to protect communities and ecosystems from harm. It has been exported around the world to do the same  (see NAFTA). Its powers have quietly grown over the last 100 years. For a great history of the Clause, click here (pages 18-37).

The list goes on and on. But the point is, there isn’t just ONE tool, or two, or even three. The system is designed to be an underground burrow for a never-ending game of Corporate-Whack-A-Mole. You know, the arcade game where you take a big mallet and smack the “mole” when it pops up from its hidey-hole…only to find that once you whack it down, it comes up in another place, faster and faster until you can’t keep up? We can’t stop the moles from popping up; it’s the function of the game.

The point is, if we think the system is broken,  then we could fix it, we could reform it. We could ask our elected leaders to work with us to amend or otherwise throw in some new rules to work out the bugs, and strike down laws that are inconsistent with a functioning democracy.  That makes sense—if it’s merely broken.

But if we find that its not broken at all—but rather working perfectly as the manufacturers designed it— a Constitutional structure that is designed around Property and Commerce (rather than Rights and Democracy) then the time has come to stop playing corporate whack-a-mole, and start taking a step toward something more revolutionary.

We could begin to ask new questions like: what if corporations aren’t the problem at all? Or: If the Supreme Court had never granted “personhood” rights to corporations, would they still be trammeling the rights of citizens and riding roughshod over communities and nature—Would we have democracy?

The revolution for new rules is already here. Its happening at the grassroots. 150+ communities have already begun to challenge the system by writing new laws that place community and ecosystems above corporate profits and they’ve challenged the entire structure of law—right from Main Street, where they  live. These brave communities want real democracy and government in the hands of the people, and they are not afraid to challenge unjust laws that deny their rights and place corporate harms in their midst.

Revolutionaries who fought for Independence from Britain wanted nothing so much as the right to govern themselves locally. They trusted themselves to make critical decisions at the local level on issues that directly affected them.  We could learn a lot from our real founding brothers and sisters. We could join today’s Community Rights rebels across the country, make a nationwide movement that asserts (rather than asks for) our rights.  After all, upholding the rights of the people is the real job of government and just law.

So. Final Jeopardy question:  What are we truly prepared to do to put government in the hands of the people?

For more information on Community Rights visit us here, or call Shannon at 415.575.5540.

By Shannon Biggs

Global Exchange’s Community Rights program director Shannon Biggs is in South Africa with our allies from the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature for a series of activities in Durban to advance the Rights of Nature as an alternative framework to the corporate-led agenda of the COP 17 and the global economic system.

Our day began early as we worked feverishly with students who travelled across South Africa on the “Climate Train,”(one of the most visible campaigns in the COP 17 process) to finish decorating 10 4-foot tall beach balls emblazoned with “Earth Rights NOW” in English, French and Spanish.

Earth Rights Now beach ball used in the march

These marches have a different flavor in South Africa, where music and dancing remain deeply embedded in the culture, a vital part of the solidarity movement that ended Apartheid.  As we arrived at the gathering spot, jubilant voices were raised in chanting and song from every group present, creating an atmosphere of oneness, no matter where you were from.

The march travelled several miles through the streets of Durban, stopping at the US Embassy, and the official ICC conference site, where speeches were made over the wall, and beyond the somber police line.  We playfully tossed our Earth balls across the fence, symbolically entering Rights of Nature into the official space.  The balls were returned by police forces caught somewhat off-guard at the gesture.  You can find yours truly at minute 11:20 throwing the ball to the ICC. Watch the video here!

Ultimately, the message of those participating was recognition that solutions to climate change were not to be found inside the process. The march culminated in the handing over of memoranda of understanding to UNFCCC COP17 President Nozipho Mxakato-Diseko, who came out to address the crowd.  She called upon civil society to “do more, and then…to do MORE, ” to which the assembled marchers responded in unison for her and officials to “do more.”

Below are some pictures and videos from the march, as well as some blogs from global participants.

Check out these other blog posts and reports on the events in Durban around COP17 this week:

Pictures taken by Shannon Biggs from the Global Day of Action People’s March for Climate Justice in Durban, South Africa December 3rd, 2011

  

By Shannon Biggs

The sun rises at 4:45 each morning in Durban, and like most of those still on California time, I woke soon after.  The beach here is beautiful and nearby so I decided to take a brisk walk amongst the shore fisherfolk and shell collectors, a great change the mad bustle of the ICC center, where the official negotiations for the climate conference are taking place.

Oil on the beach in Durban

The bluff beach is several miles south of the harbor—the largest on the African continent—and a few miles north of South Durban, where two oil refineries and dozens of other industrial plants operate. I walked and admired the wild coastline for a mile or so, then sat to watch the waves. Something black and sticky was on my feet, hands and shoes: it was oil.  Looking around, I noticed there were large plate-sized piles of black goo…everywhere.  Seaweed was coated in it, and as far as the eye could see there were literally tons of large and small deposits everywhere. Some firefighters up on the road were surprised when I showed them the sample I’d collected, and speculated that perhaps it came from a tanker spill in Kenya from last October, but no one knew for sure. Yesterday I’m told that the South African government is denying the “rumors” of oil deposits on the shore (and on my shoes and in my clear plastic bag). There were no big news items or beach warnings posted.

Shannon holding a bag of oil collected on the beach in Durban, South Africa

The disturbing and angering irony of a country hosting international climate talks while ignoring (and possibly denying) millions of tons of crude in the very midst of the negotiations is indicative of why international leaders will predictably fail to come to resolution or agreement on how to halt human induced climate change despite the stakes.  Instead, they speak of “adaptation” (get used to it) or “risk assessment” (what are we willing to lose next to feed the economic status quo).

Cynical, you say?  Not in the least.

Also gathering are pan-African and South African civil society and international climate justice activists—some to Occupy, protest and critique the continuing failure of the UN process itself to reach agreement on greenhouse gas emissions, some hoping to influence negotiators on minor concessions, and many others with reasons of their own. So many of the civil society participants come to talk about climate change in the context of the tangible work they are doing to stop dams, incinerators, deforestation or promote food sovereignty and indigenous rights.

We are here to talk to them—because when we stop putting false hope into the UNFCCC, we can finally turn to each other as the ones we’ve been waiting for. Global Exchange —and our partners including 2011 Human Rights Award Winner Pablo Solon (Bolivia) Fundacion Pachamama (Ecuador) South African activists from South Durban and environmental Earth Rights lawyer Cormac Cullinan, Indigenous Environmental Network, World Futures Council, and many others from the Global Alliance on the Rights of Nature — are here not just to critique the general framework of the UN climate process, but to share and discuss an alternative that requires we the 99% taking action.  The week ahead is for us, in this sense, is full of promise.

Banner from Duban protesting oil extraction

I brought my non-existent bagged oil along with me throughout the day’s activities. First to the Indigenous People’s Caucus, where Indigenous delegates report on the prior day’s negotiations around forestry, and to several other gatherings in the official and People’s space.  Saturday morning we gather for the Peoples’ march.