First-in-California law seeks to make sustainability legal
Santa_Monica_PCHOn April 9, the City Council of Santa Monica voted 7-0 to adopt the state’s first ever Bill of Rights for Sustainability, directing the city to “recognize the rights of people, natural communities and ecosystems to exist, regenerate and flourish.” Santa Monica joins dozens of U.S. communities, the nations of Ecuador, Bolivia, and New Zealand in the fast-growing movement for Nature’s Rights.

With the passage of this ordinance, Santa Monica challenges the legal status of nature as merely property, and empowers the City or residents to bring suit on behalf of local ecosystems. While not eliminating property ownership, these new laws seek to eliminate the authority of a property owner to destroy entire ecosystems that exist and depend upon that property. The ordinance also mandates the City to follow the Sustainable City Plan as a guide for decision-making to maximize environmental benefits and reduce or eliminate negative environmental impacts.

“Becoming a model for sustainability and moving toward self-reliance is important for our community’s long term well-being,” says Cris Gutierez, organizer for Santa Monica Neighbors Unite!, a group that organized and mobilized residents to support the law. “We’re proud to be on the cutting edge of environmental protection.”

The idea came about from conversations between Mark Gold, the 20-year Chair of Santa Monica’s Task Force on the Environment, and Linda Sheehan, who now directs the nonprofit Earth Law Center. “Linda and I had been pretty successful over the years in the water quality arena,” says Gold. “But we realized that despite all our good work protecting public health and environmental resources, we were still as a society going backwards in the big picture. It was time to shake things up, recognize the existing environmental laws just weren’t doing the job and that sustainability wasn’t actually possible as long as we treat nature as a thing to be exploited.”

In a water-poor community, recycling water is part of sustainable living.

In a water-poor community, recycling water is part of sustainable living.

Sheehan, also an environmental attorney, brought in California-based Global Exchange and Pennsylvania law group, the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), organizations specializing in assisting communities to write new laws to place the rights of communities and ecosystems above corporate profits, to hold a 3-day “Democracy School” training in Santa Monica.

Sheehan and Global Exchange’s Community Rights program director, Shannon Biggs then presented draft ordinances to the Task Force on The Environment. As Shannon Biggs, Community Rights Director for Global Exchange told the Task Force, “Recognizing rights for nature does not stop development; rather it stops the kind of development that interferes with the existence and vitality of those ecosystems.”

The process took about three years in total, and the ordinance went through several changes during the course of numerous Task Force and other public meetings.  The ordinance was eventually submitted to the city council in 2012.  At that time, before a packed chamber, dozens of residents spoke in support of the ordinance, spurring the council to pass a resolution in support of its Rights of Nature provisions.

Then, in a surprise move, Santa Monica’s City Attorney, Marsha Jones Moutrie, met with Sheehan and Gold to talk about the ordinance and its framework of rights, and ended up drafting a new version — ultimately becoming the ordinance that passed by unanimous vote of the Council this year. “The final ordinance is not as strong as the original, notes Global Exchange’s Biggs, citing a few examples, “it doesn’t strip Constitutional protections like corporate personhood or the Commerce Clause that enable corporations to override community concerns, and it doesn’t strictly prohibit any activities, which means it is up to the community to keep the pressure on the city to enforce it when something comes up. But it’s a step forward for brand new environmental protections.”

Gold and Gutierez don’t believe holding the City’s feet to the fire will be a problem, and the ordinance does mandate regular public reviews of the Sustainability City Plan and forces the city to take action if goals aren’t being met. As Gutierez notes, “Working to educate people about rights of nature and the ordinance was a challenge, but now our work really begins. Many goals we could not lay out in the ordinance, but at the same time, that’s what we should be driving for, practical measurable goals. Turning it into an educational tool is exciting. Sustainability is now our legal commitment.”

Exactly 13 years after the #N30 actions to shut down the WTO, Global Exchange returns to Seattle with a similar message: #StopTPP!

We all know free trade agreements are politically, economically, and environmentally harmful.

But this weekend at TPPxBorder, hearing people speak to the real consequences of these deals brought my understanding of the dangers of these Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) to a very human scale.

Listening to the voices of people who are affected by these FTAs – a pulp mill worker from Everett, WA, who got laid off two years before pension, HIV positive people who won’t be able to afford life-saving medication because of patent laws that protect profits instead of access, a Philippine woman who was forced to leave her family in search of work – these voices remind me that free trade isn’t just an ‘issue’ to discuss or debate. Free trade is about about profits at the expense of people’s health and safely. About trade over ethics. About politics over people and planet.

Free trade ‘agreements’ are anything but consensual.

In fact, the only partnering happening in the TransPacific ‘Partnership’ is is the stitching together of the 1%- corporations and politicians-  whilst the entirety of civil society is excluded and ignored… for now.

That’s why on Saturday December 1, a crowd of hundreds gathered at the U.S.-Canada border to demonstrate our unity and solidarity against the TransPacific Partnership. Representatives from four of the 13 negotiating countries – along with New Zealand by phone – spoke of the risks that the TPP presents to their communities, and the powerful international unity being built to stand up and protect our dignity, our planet, and our human rights.

Jill Mangaliman, Philippine U.S. Solidarity Organization pusoseattle.wordpress.com/

We called this one TPPxBorder: The People’s Round. What I loved about this rally wasn’t only the fiery speakers, the diversity, the music, the unity, the hot coffee, and the ultra-legitimacy of our opposition to this heinous version of the TPP…. what I loved was learning about what an alternative deal would look like- one by and for the people. Listening to speakers and experts articulately describe what fair trade looks like, what it offers communities internationally, reminds me why these fights are so important, and the promise of real, practical, and respectful trade solutions. We have answers – now is the time to join hands and fight for them.

After our rally, and piñata action (in which people managed to overcome ‘blindfolds’ of corporate greenwashing and lobbyist money to finally destroy the TPP piñata and release the affordable jellybean ‘medicines’ and GMO-free popcorn trapped inside!) we headed indoors to a warm meal and strategy sessions to plan future action.

Global Exchange & Witness for Peace co-led a “Social Media to #StopTPP” breakout group to discuss “Twitterstorming”  the corporations secretly negotiating TPP.

The breakout group I co-lead was about how we can use social media to #StopTPP. Our strategy is to call out the corporations negotiating the TPP in secret… and put their secrets in public view on social media channels. This week, our coalition members are calling out two corporate interests a day on their ties to the TPP… would you like to join the Twitterstorm? Just follow @GlobalExchange and @ElectDemocracy on Twitter, then retweet our actions every day this week at 11am and 2pmPST to help spread the word about #StopTPP using the very follower lists that these corporations have built. We can use your help and you can participate from anywhere.

The TransPacific Partnership is on a 1%-gilded beltway and it’s moving fast. But there is time (and enough of us) to stop it. The first thing we all can do is help spread the word. None of us can afford another NAFTA. Help us get the last 250,000 signatures needed this year to reach 1 million on the Avaaz petition against the TPP! And ask your organization to sign the Unity Statement.

VIDEO: Unity Statement at TPPxBorder Rally Dec. 1, 2012

For more information about the TransPacific Partnership and what you can do to stop it, see “10 Reasons to Oppose the TPP.” Thank you for supporting Fair Trade this holiday season, and telling corporations negotiating the TPP in secret exactly what you think of them. Together, we can #StopTPP.

That’s right folks, the sign says “Free Trade, my Ass!”

 

Five days a week, for three months, leaders from all walks of sustainable living – from green activism to green lifestyles – will share the latest insights and best solutions to help you make your home, workplace, and community sustainable so that our planet can THRIVE.

From March 26 – June 22, 2012, you can tune in to Jane Goodall, Bill McKibben, Vandana Shiva, Van Jones, John Robbins, Hazel Henderson, Frances Moore Lappe’, John Perkins, Thom Hartmann, Aqeela Sherrills, Julia Butterfly Hill live on the phone or webcast or later on recorded replays. This is a one-time chance to participate in an event of truly global proportions – with tens of thousands of people like you committed to bringing forth a thriving new world!

Sound interesting? Download the flier (SoS Overview Flyer) and sign up for free!

On April 28, I’ll be co-hosting with Thom Hartmann, to focus on Thriving Communities. Join me to explore what it takes to create them, maintain them, principles and practices. We’ll have six hours of programming with:

Produced by The Shift Network in partnership with the Sustainable World Coalition, the Spring of Sustainability is the world’s largest-ever sustainability events program. Sound interesting? Download the flier (SoS Overview Flyer) and sign up for free!

"Solutionaries" attend Green Festival in Chicago, May 2010

The average lifetime of a species on planet earth is about one million years. Seeing as we humans are about 200,000 years old, you could say that we are exiting our adolescence and entering adulthood. We are waking up to the simple fact that our actions have consequences, such as degrading the environment, and we need to take responsibility for those consequences.

Correspondingly, progressive forces around the world are going through a maturing process, transitioning from being focused on protest (complaining about what we don’t like), to being focused on projects (actually building the next system—sustainability). We are going from a largely negative approach—standing up in opposition to things we define as bad (war, environmental destruction, inequality, injustice)—to creating the alternative institutions that will eventually become mainstream.

The term Solutionary is far better than revolutionary because it carries none of the negative, destructive connotations of revolution. The human race is entering a new epoch. Every revolution up until now has been a national process, with the revolutionaries seeking to gain control of the capital city in order to run that nation differently. The current transition is a global revolution in values: making a transition from a system where money values rule over the life cycle to one where life values rule over the money cycle.

Solutionaries can be activists or entrepreneurs. They know that the key skill set is organizing. They see each problem in the world as an opportunity for action that fixes the problem or at least lessens the suffering and increases the joy. Here are some examples.

Solutionaries look at the inequality in the world economy and address it by:
• opening Fair Trade shops that sell craft products made by low-income producer groups;
• developing Fair Trade certification systems (e.g., TransFairUSA) to educate consumers and drive revenue to the poorest;
• providing financing and technical assistance to grassroots groups in the global south so they can earn their way out of poverty and not be dependent on charity.

Solutionaries look at the fact that we are running out of clean, drinkable water, and they use that fact as the starting point for:
• inventing waterless urinals that each save 40,00 gallons of water per year;
• designing rain catchment systems;
• educating the public about the bogus bottled water industry and promoting the use of reusable water containers filled with tap water.

Huge crowds enjoy the Green Festivals in Washington, DC, San Francisco, Seattle and Chicago.

Solutionaries look at the 245 million tons of garbage we Americans send to landfills every year and they address it by:

• starting companies such as TerraCycle, which makes dozens of products from waste materials;
• launching recycling and composting programs that divert waste into productive uses (e.g., San Francisco diverts 72% of its waste into recycling and composting, generating income and saving money in landfill costs);
• expanding the Green Festivals, which for nine years have brought together hundreds of thousands of solutionaries and divert more than 90% of the events’ waste into recycling and composting.

So, from now on, when you see a problem in the world, put on your SOLUTIONARY hat and think of how that problem is an opportunity and a challenge to your creativity to find an organizational answer to the problem.

We can either curse the darkness, or we can create cooperative workshops making beeswax candles.

Are you a Solutionary? Check out this video where I discuss how we can unite Solutionaries. And if you have solutionary ideas, we’d love to hear from you!