Same sources driving ‘right to nature’ efforts here, elsewhere

Similarities between ‘rights of nature’ movements seen in Spokane with Proposition 1, other parts of the country and even Ecuador aren’t coincidences. The Spokane proposal was the product of years of local organizing with guidance from Pennsylvania based Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. CELDF has had success with similar community and nature based rights efforts in Pennsylvania and also provided assistance to Ecuador, which became the first country in the world to include legal rights for nature in their constitution in 2008. The group is now helping other local communities to create rights-based environmental campaigns elsewhere in the U.S. and around the world. The questions remain the same whether in Washington or elsewhere: is the natural world an object to be owned and exploited for private benefit? Or is it a fragile resource that needs to be cared for and protected for future generations? Has the traditional approach of regulating environmental degradation largely failed? In Spokane, proponents of Envision Spokane’s Proposition 1 (dubbed the Community Bill of Rights), which voters nearly passed last fall, would have, along with giving more power to local communities, granted rights to the Spokane River and aquifer to “exist and flourish” and the right to “sustainable recharge, flows sufficient to protect native fish habitat, and clean water.” While Spokane’s Prop 1 was narrowly defeated, Ecuador approved a new constitution granting such rights to the natural world with public support. A notable passage in the new constitution says that nature “has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution.” Critics from the local business community and others from Spokane and elsewhere scoffed at the notion of granting rights to nature. The anti-Prop 1 group, the Spokane Jobs Coalition, cautioned that granting rights for the Spokane River and aquifer would lead to economy crippling litigation. “This is a vague and over-reaching mandate that is designed to allow for hundreds of frivolous and expensive lawsuits,” their website warned. Those on the other side of the fence, like Spokane CELDF organizer Kai Huschke, argue that Ecuador’s constitutional provision is one of the most progressive environmental moves in the world, something that Spokane could emulate to protect our river and aquifer without the dire consequences predicted by opponents. “Of those 140 communities with similar rights-based law as Spokane could have one day, only a handful of lawsuits have been filed, and they’ve all been by corporations trying to force their will over that of the community’s stance to protect its health, safety, and welfare,” noted Huschke. Ecuador, a developing country with a history of political instability, makes for an interesting and challenging testing ground for implementing the world’s first constitutionally established legal rights for nature. The country has unrivaled ecological diversity and a growing tourism industry but is also facing some serious environmental challenges including the trend toward rapidly developing their rich oil and ore deposits, many of which happen to be underneath some of the most ecologically valuable ground on the planet. Although it’s still too early to tell how successful rights of nature campaigns will be at reining in environmental abuses, it is now possible to watch how it’s playing out on the ground in Ecuador and get an idea of what we could expect in Spokane if voters decide to pass some future version of Prop 1 down the road.