Bolivia Grants Human Rights To Planet Earth

By on April 12, 2011 in News 31

Laguna Suches Perú, Bolivia. Photo: Rojk (CC)

In a blur of where Governments begin and end, Mother Nature is granted rights just like humans. Sadly, she still can’t vote. Via Wired:

Bolivia is to pass a law — called la Ley de Derechos de la Madre Tierra (The Law of Mother Earth) –  which will grant nature equal rights to humans.

The law — the first of its kind — aims to encourage a major shift in attitudes towards conservation and to reduce pollution and exploitation of natural resources. It sees a range of new rights established for nature including the right to life; the right to water and clean air; the right to repair livelihoods affected by human activities and the right to be free of pollution.

Bolivia is one of South America’s poorest countries and is seeing its rural communities suffer with failing crops due to climatic events such as floods and droughts. Temperatures are set to rise by up to four degrees centigrade over the next 100 years, while most of its  glaciers are likely to melt within 20 years.

[Continues at Wired]

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  • Mamagriff50

    BRAVO Bolivia! Finally a sane govrnment and people. Maybe the rest of the world will follow suit….I doubt it though. So sad.

    • Edlucas3rd

      Sane and this ruling should not be in the same sentence. This is absolute idiocy.

  • Mamagriff50

    BRAVO Bolivia! Finally a sane govrnment and people. Maybe the rest of the world will follow suit….I doubt it though. So sad.

  • Grooveboss

    They are poor in dollars, but go see the natural beauty their country possesses. Its unique and priceless no wonder they are giving it rights.

  • Grooveboss

    They are poor in dollars, but go see the natural beauty their country possesses. Its unique and priceless no wonder they are giving it rights.

  • pinroot

    Isn’t it sort of arrogant of man to think that he can grant rights to Nature?

    • Guest

      Only about as arrogant as Man thinking he is above Nature and can thus strip it of everything that makes it beautiful and useful to satisfy their business interests and pocketbooks.

    • Guest

      It’s not arrogant. It’s stupid. All those jackass politicians are just riding the global warming train to hold on to power and get the money. That’s all they care about. Even though the whole global warming stuff is slowly falling apart.

      Still waiting for the latest sea level measurements myself, but UC is strangely not updating them.

      • Belcat2

        The Global Warming is irrelevant to this (stuck on a track?). Pollution affects many other kinds of things, from cancers to breathing diseases, to land looking like Moria instead of being forest because of mines. Reckless chopping of trees. Damming and reforming waterways for our purposes, reducing wildlife habitats and ironically often increasing the chances of floods.
        … I will admit though, despite this, it may not change much. Some other poorer countries have such environmental concepts but are powerless in front of the big money industrial countries have.

    • Manel Rodrigues

      completely, this is oging to happen a good thing and unfortunately for us all, it’s just evil disguided ad the light!

  • Anonymous

    Isn’t it sort of arrogant of man to think that he can grant rights to Nature?

  • Mr Willow

    Only about as arrogant as Man thinking he is above Nature and can thus strip it of everything that makes it beautiful and useful to satisfy their business interests and pocketbooks.

  • http://twitter.com/UrsusAlpinus AK

    And all the temperature rising and glacier melting comes from computer models that can’t even prove the past 25 years. Funny how nobody ever mentions that.

    And if nature has the right to live, who’s going to kill all those pesky mosquitos? And other parasites?

    Those politicians aren’t sane. They’re dumber than the politicians in the US and the EU, and I thought those were bad.

  • Guest

    And all the temperature rising and glacier melting comes from computer models that can’t even prove the past 25 years. Funny how nobody ever mentions that.

    And if nature has the right to live, who’s going to kill all those pesky mosquitos? And other parasites?

    Those politicians aren’t sane. They’re dumber than the politicians in the US and the EU, and I thought those were bad.

    • By

      i think you missed the point with the whole mosquito thing

    • Guest

      “who’s going to kill all those pesky mosquitos? And other parasites?”

      Spiders? Antibodies in one’s immune system?

  • http://twitter.com/UrsusAlpinus AK

    It’s not arrogant. It’s stupid. All those jackass politicians are just riding the global warming train to hold on to power and get the money. That’s all they care about. Even though the whole global warming stuff is slowly falling apart.

    Still waiting for the latest sea level measurements myself, but UC is strangely not updating them.

  • Bwmmiller

    With careful application of current technologies, a very high quality, completely sustainable lifestyle is quite possible, almost anywhere on earth. Not, mind you, the American Dream lifestyle: no, a much more modest, much less environmentally destructive, very much less materialistic, much more poetic, even closer to nature, even socialistic, communal in nature, where collective efforts, collective investments reap directly profitable results, lifestyle.
    Once the yoke of commerce is lifted from mankind’s back, once he understands his personal limitations, once his naivety is unblinkered, once he sees the truth through the blinding propagandist’s smoke-screens, once usury is fully understood, and not tolerated, will he be free.
    Even corporatism and capitalism can become friends to society, a regulated, socialized society, where the advantages are to the society, by law, not to the shareholders for their riches only. Unfortunately in America today, this is no longer so, America is not truly a democracy for the benefit of the proletariat therein, but a Corpocracy, readily converting naive proletariat to precariat, and a precariat with heavy debt, incurred just for survival, in an impossible economic bind.
    Bolivia, in an effort to protect herself from the encroaching Multi-Nationals, following America’s formula for incorporation and the terrible, corrupt, corporatist principles they use, has invoked even Mother Nature’s protection as reason to avoid them. Here’s to wishing them good luck, and may they learn one day, all that glitters, is not gold, and gold only has intrinsic value in the beholder’s eye, American money the same, even diamonds, not edible, of no practical use, save for the propagandists notions – Beware, the carpet baggers from America! They will come on an ill wind, and like in Japan, spread misery and poisons through-out your land, if you let them in. Don’t listen to the sales pitch, stay pure, stay faithful to nature, to your land, and when in doubt, look to the disaster in Japan for a reminder of the evils and inadequacies of the great Babylon.

  • Bwmmiller

    With careful application of current technologies, a very high quality, completely sustainable lifestyle is quite possible, almost anywhere on earth. Not, mind you, the American Dream lifestyle: no, a much more modest, much less environmentally destructive, very much less materialistic, much more poetic, even closer to nature, even socialistic, communal in nature, where collective efforts, collective investments reap directly profitable results, lifestyle.
    Once the yoke of commerce is lifted from mankind’s back, once he understands his personal limitations, once his naivety is unblinkered, once he sees the truth through the blinding propagandist’s smoke-screens, once usury is fully understood, and not tolerated, will he be free.
    Even corporatism and capitalism can become friends to society, a regulated, socialized society, where the advantages are to the society, by law, not to the shareholders for their riches only. Unfortunately in America today, this is no longer so, America is not truly a democracy for the benefit of the proletariat therein, but a Corpocracy, readily converting naive proletariat to precariat, and a precariat with heavy debt, incurred just for survival, in an impossible economic bind.
    Bolivia, in an effort to protect herself from the encroaching Multi-Nationals, following America’s formula for incorporation and the terrible, corrupt, corporatist principles they use, has invoked even Mother Nature’s protection as reason to avoid them. Here’s to wishing them good luck, and may they learn one day, all that glitters, is not gold, and gold only has intrinsic value in the beholder’s eye, American money the same, even diamonds, not edible, of no practical use, save for the propagandists notions – Beware, the carpet baggers from America! They will come on an ill wind, and like in Japan, spread misery and poisons through-out your land, if you let them in. Don’t listen to the sales pitch, stay pure, stay faithful to nature, to your land, and when in doubt, look to the disaster in Japan for a reminder of the evils and inadequacies of the great Babylon.

  • Emilianovillanueva

    What a better example for the rest of The countrys

  • Emilianovillanueva

    What a better example for the rest of The countrys

  • Emilianovillanueva

    What a better example for the rest of The countrys

  • By

    i think you missed the point with the whole mosquito thing

  • Mr Willow

    “who’s going to kill all those pesky mosquitos? And other parasites?”

    Spiders? Antibodies in one’s immune system?

  • Anonymous

    The Global Warming is irrelevant to this (stuck on a track?). Pollution affects many other kinds of things, from cancers to breathing diseases, to land looking like Moria instead of being forest because of mines. Reckless chopping of trees. Damming and reforming waterways for our purposes, reducing wildlife habitats and ironically often increasing the chances of floods.
    … I will admit though, despite this, it may not change much. Some other poorer countries have such environmental concepts but are powerless in front of the big money industrial countries have.

  • she

    its sad when this actually has to be done…this shit is a no brainer

  • she

    its sad when this actually has to be done…this shit is a no brainer

  • she

    its sad when this actually has to be done…this shit is a no brainer

  • Manel Rodrigues

    completely, this is oging to happen a good thing and unfortunately for us all, it’s just evil disguided ad the light!

  • Adrian Holman

    yeah offcourse every person have some human rights and they can use of that.
    http://www.articlespeak.com/match-com-free-trial-review-7-days-free-trial/

  • Edlucas3rd

    Sane and this ruling should not be in the same sentence. This is absolute idiocy.