The Day Started with an early press conference with Bolivian president Evo Morales. In contrast to yesterday’s rock concert atmosphere, today was much more focused on what needs to be done and how we can bring about change. Evo, as everyone here calls him, spoke without any notes and his comments were very heart-felt.
He began his talk by saying that social movements need to organize to produce concrete results in defending the rights of Mother Earth and that we need to focus on the real causes and not the effects. If we look beyond the the pollution, destruction and disharmony we see that our social and political systems are broken. You cannot have continuous growth and exploitation with finite resources. It is not about capitalism, communism or socialism, it is about protecting Mother Earth!
Morales said that we need to create a new grass roots global organization that represents Mother Earth. This organization must have a tribunal that is responsible for enforcing the agreements. If there is no punitive action, he asserted, there will be no compliance. Who will obey? This is the problem with the Copenhagen Accord, it has no teeth. An international Tribunal must deal with countries that do not obey or don’t want to participate. This can be done with peaceful sanctions and restricting trade…
Evo also talked about Human rights vs. Earth rights. The focus he said needed to be on the rights of the earth, if we focus on that we will have to deal with human rights. It made me think about the whole issue of human rights and how it is an outgrowth of our holding ourselves above and separate from nature. But, in reality we are a subset and if we respect natures rights then all life will be respected. Perhaps it sounds overly idealistic to some that we could actually give rights to nature, but it has already been done. Ecuador was the first country to grant rights to trees, rivers and mountains in their new constitution, which has been a huge inspiration to activists around the world. Other countries are looking at how to follow in their footsteps.
Here in Bolivia most of us feel strongly that something is emerging — a global revolution of epic proportion is taking place — a new story of our human earth relationship is being defined and people around the planet are waking up to a new possibility…
