Climate Action gem in the rejected Chilean Constitution
Disclaimer: This piece doesn’t discuss the politics of the draft, it only discusses one small but important element of it relevant to climate action.
As nations face extreme weather conditions from climate change, data confirms, absent meaningful climate action, losses will continue to compound rapidly. This didn’t have to be our fate. Many cultures and nations have long believed in the sanctity of nature and the need for harmonious co-existence. Unfortunately, these common-sense ideas were obscured and largely discarded without meaningful risk analysis. No surprise then the “enterprise” now faces headline risk.
Simple but Profound — Nature’s Rights
In the anthropocentric view of the world the planet barely has any rights and no voice at all, combined with hyper capitalism we have created an existential crisis for ourselves. It requires us to re-imagine and re-write the “rules of the game”, to ensure the very survival of our planet.
Enter “Nature’s Rights” —A first principles approach to addressing climate change developed by a democratically elected assembly comprised of scientists, teachers, students and Indigenous representatives., “Nature’s Rights” delivers hope in an otherwise despair ridden divided discourse largely characterized by blame game and inadequate action. It bestows rights upon nature which could be legally protected even in the absence of direct harm to people. In my view this is visionary both in spirit and substance. In spirit, because it proposes the state take responsibility for climate action in a foundational meaningful way and in substance, because enshrining environmental rights within the constitution is materially transformative to all aspects of public/civic life but especially to the economic calculus.
Responsibility and Resolve
The failure to recognize nature as a stakeholder and a finite degradable resource epitomizes a chronic myopia that must be discarded wholesale in favor of a long-sighted risk aware model. As the old saying goes — with power comes responsibility — sitting atop the evolutionary chain, humans are being called to act with responsibility and resolve to save our dying planet; and enshrining “Nature’s Rights” in constitutions and conscience seems like a good place to start.
