Bolivia and Mother Earth

“Bolivia is set to pass the world’s first laws granting all nature equal rights to humans. The Law of Mother Earth, now agreed by politicians and grassroots social groups, redefines the country’s rich mineral deposits as ‘blessings’ and is expected to lead to radical new conservation and social measures to reduce pollution and control industry.

The country, which has been pilloried by the US and Britain in the UN climate talks for demanding steep carbon emission cuts, will establish 11 new rights for nature. They include: the right to life and to exist; the right to continue vital cycles and processes free from human alteration; the right to pure water and clean air; the right to balance; the right not to be polluted; and the right to not have cellular structure modified or genetically altered.”

Politically very refreshing, but I do have philosophical objections to the continued notion of nature as one pure realm and humans as another pure realm that should not taint one another with interaction. I’ve not yet heard an answer to Latour’s We Have Never Been Modern, which had to be one of the most important philosophy books of the 1990’s. And it settled this particular dispute, as far as I’m concerned.

Nonetheless, Bolivia’s is a step in an interesting direction, and I’d like to see more ideas of this sort floated, if only for their provocation value.

And by the way… if “nature,” then why not animals? Why not “the right not to be slaughtered and eaten”? Otherwise, it seems as though nature is being defined as just a big loving human.