Thoughts for action

Toward the Universal Declaration of Rights of Nature

Alberto Acosta

26/09/2010

Opinión

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"Nature still has much to say and it is high time we, its children, stopped playing deaf. And maybe even God will hear the call coming from this Andean country −Ecuador− and add the eleventh commandment forgotten in the instructions given to us from Mount Sinai, “Thou shalt love Nature, of which thou art part”."

Eduardo Galeano

(18 April, 2008)

The materialistic –mechanistic and endless—accumulation of goods considered as progress has no future. The limits implicit in the lifestyles based on the ideological vision of anthropocentric progress are increasingly marked and a cause for concern. If we want the absorption capacity and resilience of the earth not to collapse, we must stop considering natural resources a condition for economic growth or a mere object of development policies. Additionally, we should accept that mankind is crystallized within a community context, together and as related to other human beings, as an integral part of Nature, without intending to dominate it.

This leads us to accept that Nature, being a social construct, that is, as a term conceptualized by humans, must be wholly reinterpreted and revised if we intend to preserve the life of human beings on the planet. To begin any reflection, let us accept that mankind is not outside Nature and that Nature has its limits.

* Complete document in PDF format

https://www.alainet.org/en/articulo/144391