A new constitution for the UK needs ‘rights of nature’ at its heart

Human rights are well established in constitutional and international law. But in the face of dangerous climate change and ecosystem collapse, do we need ‘rights of nature’?

The Ecuadorian constitution protects the rights of nature PXhere/CC0

Brexit has triggered a near complete breakdown in parliamentary government as discord and chaos reign within and between parties, as well as between executive (government) and legislature (House of Commons). It has brought the legislative work of Parliament to a halt and exposed the abject failure of our uncodified constitution to protect our rights, challenge an over powerful executive, and give clear guidance in the face of political deadlock. The celebrated flexibility of our ‘unwritten constitution’where we “make up the rules as we go along” has led us up a blind alley, with seemingly no way back.

Brexit is a full blown constitutional crisis. But there is a convergence with another seemingly unrelated but greater crisis bearing down on us: dangerous climate breakdown. Climate change has moved from an abstraction presented in graphs and bar charts to the visible, anxious face of schoolchildren demanding why their parents’ generation and politicians have done nothing to protect their future and that of the planet. The School Strike for Climate and Extinction Rebellion movement have joined a well-established movement of climate change activism; and their message has been given added force by the most recent U.N. report which has warned us that we have only 12 years to avert climate catastrophe.

It is the intersection between these two crises which demands whole scale system change, not merely a change of government or incremental democratic reform. In short, a rapid transfer to a zero carbon economy must be accompanied by a constitutional revolution that entrenches ‘rights of nature’ at its heart. Is this possible?

Yes. Take Ecuador, for example. Its constitution states the following: MORE

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The Generational Backlash to Europe’s Climate Activists

From Germany to the United States, some of the angriest reactions to demonstrators are from older citizens.

Activist Luisa Neubauer at a Berlin FridaysforFuture protest (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Fourteen-year-old Franzi, who helps organize the climate-oriented Fridays for Future marches in Berlin, prefers angry responses from onlookers—like the father who shouted “fuck you” at a Munich demonstration blocking traffic in front of a school last month. “It shows that people are scared,“ she said. Now, after complaints, the kids have to protest peacefully on the side of the road under police supervision and the same father flashes them a thumbs up whenever he drives by.

In October 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published a report estimating that the world has 12 more years to radically reduce carbon emissions in order to avoid climate catastrophe. Since then, inspired partly by ninth-grade Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who in early fall 2018 skipped school to protest climate change outside the Swedish parliament, European-led climate protest movements Fridays for Future, Youth Strike 4 Climate, and Extinction Rebellion have gained traction, spreading across continents and oceans, and motivating ever-more people to disruptive nonviolent protest such as skipping school or blocking the roads. On March 15, it resulted in a climate strike featuring young activists in some 112 countries.

While headlines jump between Donald Trump and Brexit, these protests are designed to inconvenience, to force people to confront the current scientific research, and to offer a voice to children who can’t yet vote, but who will soon pay the price for climate inaction.

The language of the father that day in Munich is symptomatic of the increasingly frank—and frustrated—rhetoric around the issue. “If we don’t respond to this crisis as if it’s an emergency now, we are (very nearly) totally fucked,” British activist Liam Geary Baulch wrote to me via email.

Governments, so far, have not responded with similar urgency. In the face of an estimated 30,000 student protesters, including Franzi, across Germany in January, the German government’s coal commission still only agreed to quit coal by 2038—a date activists say violates Paris Agreement targets by being too far in the future. And while, in the United States, ambitious proposals such as the Green New Deal grow ever more prominent, they seem no nearer to being passed into law. MORE

 

Extinction Rebellion Rising Up In Canada

Source: Extinction Rebellion Canada Facebook page

The Extinction Rebellion (XR) movement was formally launched with a declaration and a direct action on October 31, 2018 in London, England. Just over four months later, how is it faring?

First off, XR was formed as an explicitly direct action-focused movement. Guardian columnist and XR supporter George Monbiot has written, “This is a movement devoted to disruptive, non-violent disobedience in protest against ecological collapse.”

UK Actions

UK-based XR campaigner Tiana Jacout has commented, “We have tried marching, and lobbying, and signing petitions. Nothing has brought about the change that is needed.” And her colleague Gail Bradbrook has stated, “Only large-scale economic disruption can rapidly bring the government to the table to discuss our demands.”

 “XR community [should] never say we’re a climate movement. Because we’re not. We’re a Rebellion.”

To date, some of the group’s direct actions in the UK have included: blocking roads that lead to Parliament Square (October 31), blocking and spray-painting the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (November 12), shutting down the Brazilian embassy with an LGBTQ+ dance party (November 15), occupying five bridges in central London (November 17), calling on the BBC to make coverage of climate breakdown a top priority (December 20), and disrupting Fashion Week to highlight the climate impacts of disposable fashion (February 17).

Canada

There are now XR Facebook pages in most Canadian cities and XR chapters have participated in actions in Victoria, Ottawa, Charlottetown and other communities. MORE

How to Keep your #ClimateHope Tanks Full

The tide of public opinion about the urgency of climate action is turning. And once it crosses that tipping point, it isn’t going back. We are close to that historic moment.

The promise of youth striking from school around the globe under the banner of #FridaysForFuture, combined with the groundswell of ordinary citizens flocking to the Extinction Rebellion movement, is causing consternation to world leaders who are failing to deal adequately with the world climate emergency before us.

My recent piece on #climatehope for 2019 is followed by this blog post resourced from the Climate Reality Project.  MORE

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What gives me Climate Hope for 2019

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The award-winning atmospheric scientist on the urgency of the climate crisis and why people are her biggest hope

 Katharine Hayhoe: ‘Fear is a short-term spur to action, but to make changes over the long term, we must have hope.’ Photograph: Randal Ford

What are the most positive developments you have seen in the past year in the climate field? 

I’m asked what gives me hope on a daily basis, and my answer is, I don’t find hope in my science, I find it in people. Over the last few years, the number of people who want to talk about and do something about climate has increased exponentially. Then, there is the unexpected leadership of organisations such as Young Evangelicals for Climate Action, RepublicEN, the Iron and Earth group – young professionals in the oil and construction industries who want to be part of the move from fossil fuels; and the take-up of renewables even in conservative states like Texas, which now gets 20% of its energy from wind and solar power.

Finally, there’s the encouraging news such as solar being the fastest-growing power source around the world, clean energy jobs growing from India to the US, and new technology being developed every year that drops the price and increases the accessibility of fossil fuel alternatives. MORE