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THE HUMAN RIGHTS OF MOTHER EARTH

Bolivia demanded tougher carbon emissions targets and was ridiculed. Now, says CIWEM executive director, Nick Reeves, it is being laughed at for passing legislation that grants equal rights to nature.

The Tory-led government will commit to halving carbon dioxide emissions by 2025; but, in doing so, it is facing a barrage of criticism from business leaders who only see a threat to growth and not the dawn of a green revolution.

Let's be honest, Britain is struggling to 'get it' and carbon emissions are heading the wrong way. As a political issue, the environment barely rates a chat. The growth at all costs lobby has won out over the advocates of sustainable economic development.

A lack-lustre performance in negotiations at successive climate change summits adds to our embarrassment. It is pathetic that we are unable to engender high level commitment to building a green global economy. And it angers me that environmental debate in government is so constrained that no adult dialogue can really happen. In Cabinet, Osborne, Pickles and Cable have lined up against Chris Huhne and the ideologically-driven shrinking state agenda is set to banish hard-won environmental regulation.

For the real deal, though, Latin America is the place to look. This is where the systematic raid on finite resources is at its very worse and where climate change is affecting the lives of ordinary people. This is where the politicians of a country in danger are pretty fed up and are taking a lead. They're giving nature a chance through a form of 'species egalitarianism'. Bolivia is looking to its cultural past for answers to its present climate challenge.

Although not alone by any means, Bolivia is a paradigm example of a country that has struggled to cope with the reality of climate change. Rising temperatures, melting glaciers and other extreme weather events including floods, droughts, frosts and mudslides have now become the norm and part of everyday life for ordinary people. But a happy coalition of the ruling classes and community leaders is determined to act, drawing on the traditional values of nature, nurture and replenishment.

But why now? Temperatures have been rising steadily for 60 years and more. And, in 1979, they started to accelerate and are now on course to rise a further four degrees Celsius over the next century. The trend is truly alarming and - unabated - will turn an ecologically diverse land in to a desert. Glaciers below 5,000 metres are expected to disappear completely within 20 years, leaving Bolivia with a much smaller ice cap, water scarcity and an agricultural crisis of vast proportions. It's not hard to see why Evo Morales, Latin America's first indigenous president, is a fierce and outspoken critic of those industrialised nations unwilling or unable to hold temperatures to a one degree Celsius increase and why he is sometimes regarded as a heretic.

Bolivia has been panned by Britain and the US in the UN climate change talks for demanding tougher carbon emissions cuts. It now risks scepticism and ridicule as it is set to pass the world's first laws granting nature equal rights with humans. The 'Law of Mother Earth' has been hatched by politicians and community groups and Bolivia has reinvented its rich mineral deposits as 'blessings' to be valued and not abused or taken for granted.  This new law will lead to radical new conservation and social measures to reduce pollution, control industry and deliver the goals of low carbon living and sustainable development. But, more significantly, it will 'place humans alongside all other living things and not above them'.

These measures will astound the industrialised world because of their spiritual and religious roots and because they trump conventional economic models; models that are no longer fit for purpose and are the root cause of Bolivia's unfolding environmental disaster. They include eleven rights for nature: the right to life and to exist; the right to continue vital cycles and processes 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 structures modified or genetically-altered.

So far, so controversial. But the legislation will also enshrine the right of nature 'to not be affected by mega-infrastructure and development projects that affect the balance of ecosystems and the local inhabitant communities'.

Announcing the law, Bolivia's vice-president, Alvaro Garcia Linera, said: 'It makes world history. Earth is the mother of all. It establishes a new relationship between man and nature, the harmony of which must be preserved as a guarantee of its regeneration.' (Actually, it re-establishes an old relationship between humankind and nature that pre-dates the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution.)

The law, which is just part of a complete overhaul of the Bolivian legal system following a change of constitution in 2009, has been influenced by a resurgent Andean spiritual world view, which places the environment at the heart of all life and where humans are equal to all other entities. Not a view that prevails in corporate boardrooms I imagine, but one that companies will have to take seriously if they want to do business in Bolivia.

But the new laws are not intended to slam the breaks on industry and neither is the economy expected to wither. While it is not yet clear what actual protection the new legal rights will give to plants, animals and ecosystems, the government will establish a ministry of mother earth and appoint an ombudsman. It is also committed to giving communities new legal powers to monitor and control polluting industries and overdevelopment.

Bolivia has suffered, and continues to suffer, from serious environmental problems. Especially as a direct consequence of mining for tin, silver and gold; and for the other raw materials that we in the industrialised world demand for the consumer goods we crave.  Existing laws have been unable to tackle degradation head on and it is hoped that the mother earth laws will. Radical measures, transparency and regulation at a local, regional and national level offer greater hope for the future. And traditional values that put humans alongside all other living things will 'help indigenous people contribute to solving the energy, climate, water, food and financial crises in our lives'.

What the Bolivian government is doing is brave. It has recognised that the real value of nature is not a number that carries a dollar sign or can be measured in terms of GDP. But it is also fraught with danger. There is a fine line between increased regulation of companies and giving way to the powerful social movements who have pressed for the law for some time. Bolivia earns £305million a year from mining companies, which provide nearly one third of the country's foreign currency. That the country's political leaders are prepared to put the environment above economic and financial considerations is proof-positive that politicians can be weaned off old-style economic models and are capable of environmental leadership.

The draft of the new law makes interesting reading. It states: 'She is sacred, fertile and the source for all living things in her womb. She is in permanent balance, harmony and communication with the cosmos. She is comprised of all ecosystems and living beings, and their self-organisation.' It's hardly the language of a civil service mandarin or a politician - more like an extract from a sacred religious text.

And Bolivia isn't the only Latin American country to adopt a more spiritual approach to the stewardship of its environment. Ecuador, which also has powerful and noisy indigenous groups, has altered its constitution to give nature 'the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution'.  However, Ecuador's abstract rights haven't, yet, led to new laws or prevented oil companies from destroying some of the most biologically diverse and ecologically rich areas of the Amazon.

In his recent article for this magazine, Prince Charles reminded us of something that Rachel Carson wrote in her iconic book Silent Spring: 'In an age when Man has forgotten his origins and is blind even to his most essential needs for survival, water along with other resources has become the victim of his indifference.' Not in Bolivia, apparently.