Earth Democracy
Dr. Vandana Shiva

Thank you, Jakob!

I feel grateful to have known Jakob von Uexkull - a practical visionary, who thinks big visions. More significantly, he makes his visions real by creating visionary institutions that magnify his own vision by drawing other visionaries together.

Rich men use their money to grow richer; Jakob von Uexkull has invested his personal wealth in creating the Right Livelihood foundation to recognise and honour courageous warriors that are defending the earth, social justice and human rights.

I am honoured to have received the Right Livelihood Award in 1993 for "placing women and ecology at the heart of modern development discourse". I used the award money to strengthen my work with rural women through Navdanya. Being part of the Right Livelihood family is being part of a network of activists whom I respect, admire and work closely with on the most important issues of our times. The recognition that makes me part of this community is a major source of strength.

The vision of creating an alternative prize like the Right Livelihood Award would have been a significant contribution in the lifetime of anyone else .

. but Jakob von Uexkull did not stop there.

He went on to create the World Future Council (WFC), an important institution at the international level for a collective response in our troubled times to ensure that the voice of the earth and of future generations is not silenced. I am pleased to have served as a Councillor since the founding of the WFC. I feel satisfied that I was able to make my small contribution to keeping the integrity of Jakob von Uexkull's vision alive.

Jakob von Uexkull has seamlessly woven concerns for the Earth and concerns for humanity into one whole; and he has brought us together to weave the vision of one humanity on one planet. This vision of unity in diversity is held in Earth democracy.

The Earth is living, Mother Earth has rights

Across history and across cultures, Earth has been seen as a living entity, as our Mother. Mother Earth is Terra Madre, Gaia, Pachmama, Erde, maa, terra, Erde, cré, umhlaba, ?? [dìqiú] duniya, Prithvi, Vasundhara, Bhoomi, Prithivi .

In Indian culture, we see ourselves as children of Mother Earth, related to all other beings who are part of the Earth family:

"The Earth is my mother and I am her child."

Atharva Veda (12)

While ancient cultures sustained themselves by seeing the earth as the source of life, the contemporary movement to recognise the rights of Mother Earth began after the failure of the Copenhagen Climate Summit.

In 2009, US President Barack Obama flew to Copenhagen, where he proposed a dismantling of the legal framework and its substitution with voluntary commitments together with a small group of countries. Outside the conference negotiations, he held a press meeting, and then flew out. Which is why President Evo Morales of Bolivia stood up in the negotiating hall and said, "We are here to protect the rights of Mother Earth, not the rights of polluters." Evo Morales took the initiative of mobilising citizens of the world. He organised a People's Summit, which grew the Draft Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, to supplement and complement the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - and whose drafting process I have been a part of. This Draft Declaration reignited the movement for the recognition for the rights of Mother Earth.

Nature is living, and has rights

Nature is living, and has rights: recognising the rights of nature helps humanity overcome the arrogance of anthropocentrism and the violence of eco apartheid.

The Earth is living - we are not separate from the Earth, we are a strand in the web of life, we are members of one Earth family. Recognition of the rights of nature corrects the arrogance and imbalance of anthropocentrism. Biodiversity - the diversity of species in mutuality and interconnectedness - creates the web of life, and maintains the living planet and the infrastructure of life.

Anthropocentrism is at the root of the extinction crisis and the disappearance of our earth relatives. Protecting biodiversity begins with giving up anthropic arrogance, and recognising the intrinsic worth of all species and the rights of nature. Anthropocentrism grows from mechanistic ontology and mechanistic science. Anthropocentrism is the false assumption that humans are superior to our non-human relatives, who are mere objects and property to be manipulated for profits, or are threats to human life that need to be exterminated.

Colonial mechanistic systems based on separation have sown the seeds of ecological apartheid and human apartheid, of anthropocentrism and capitalist patriarchy, where patriarchal power has converged with greed.

I have called the illusion of separation of humans from nature and human superiority over other species ecological apartheid (apartheid is the word for apartness and separateness, and means "separation" in the Afrikaans language). Eco apartheid is the assumption that humans are separate from nature, are her conquerors, masters and owners. It is a denial of the fact that we are part of nature, not separate from her.

This worldview of separation also engenders hierarchies and the illusion of superiority - of humans as superior to other species, men as superior to women, white people as superior to black and coloured people, one faith as superior to the diversity of belief systems that have nourished cultural diversity. Separation and superiority create structures of violence - violence against nature, violence against women, violence against every "other" defined as a lesser being with the objective of colonisation. Inequality and injustice are rooted in the false assumption of separation and superiority.

Eco apartheid goes hand in hand with anthropocentrism.

In the living world of biodiversity, all life is sacred, and life strives to nourish and support life. Life is the nature of the living.

Nature is self-organised, dynamic and symbiotic

Post mechanistic sciences like quantum theory and the emerging sciences of living systems recognise that nature is self-organised, dynamic and symbiotic.

Denying that the earth is living and has rights is based on an outmoded mechanistic view imposed by people like Sir Francis Bacon and Descartes.

Bacon was named the "father of modern science". He defined the shift from seeing nature as a nurturing mother and source of life to an object of economic exploitation, domination and mastery as "The Masculine Birth of Time". In Masculus Partus Temporum (The Masculine Birth of Time, 1603), a posthumously published text, Bacon writes: "I am come in very truth leading to you Nature with all her children to bind her to your service and make her your slave." Since "the dominion of man over nature rests only on knowledge," the key to man's mastery over the world, according to Bacon, lay in the epistemology of mechanistic reductionism. Science and knowledge were reduced to domination over nature and mastery over the earth and her living beings.

The mechanistic world view has dominated human thinking over the last few hundred years. Central to the mechanistic world view is the ontological flaw that life is a machine and nature is made of inert immutable particles. The mechanistic view of separation and atomisation was blind to the fact that the Earth and her resources are living, and humans, as part of the Earth, have the potential to regenerate resources, create wealth cooperatively in abundance and share it equitably.

There are no ecological limits and no limits to extracting from nature. This is at the root of non-sustainability. It is also at the root of injustice and the violation of human rights. Denying that the earth is alive and we are members of one interconnected Earth family translates into a violation of the rights of communities to their rightful share of land, water, biodiversity, forests and seeds.

This gives licence to exploit and violate nature. As I wrote in Staying Alive: "if nature is dead, and the earth is empty - Terra Nullius - then all violence against nature is defined as 'human progress'".

A century ago, quantum theory showed the mechanical view to be false. The world does not consist of static "things", but rather of potential. Quantum theory also recognises interconnectedness through the principle of non-locality and non-separability, "action at a distance". Nature is creative and alive in the quantum world - and in living organisms and systems.

Technologies based on the mechanistic paradigm, such as the "green revolution" and "genetic engineering", tear apart the interconnectedness of the earth at the ecosystem, the cellular and the genetic levels, and have no method for assessing the damage.

The living earth and earth democracy

Earth democracy as a world view and practise is based on the recognition of and respect for the living earth and for all our relations in the Earth family. It allows us to recognise the connections between the rights of Mother Earth and human rights. It shows us a path to protect both, and ensure the freedom and well-being of all.

There are no hierarchies in earth democracy; there are no privileged species, no privileged humans, in the democracy of the earth.

As Dr....