December, 02 2020, 11:00pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Stacey Schmader:,info@celdf.org
Major Gains for Rights of Nature Movement Met With Corporate and State Backlash
Following 2020 developments in Ecuador, French Guiana, the Nez Perce Tribe, Costa Rica, Spain, the Yurok Tribe, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, the American Petroleum Institute and lawmakers in Missouri respond to repress momentum in the United States.
WASHINGTON
So far in 2020, important developments for the global Rights of Nature movement have been made in Ecuador, French Guiana, Australia, the Nez Perce Tribe, Spain, Costa Rica, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, the Tsilhqot'in Nation, and the Yurok Tribe, which helped win an historic agreement to remove dams on the Klamath River (whose rights the tribe formally recognized in 2019.) This week, backlash to the movement has come from the American Petroleum Institute (API) and lawmakers in Missouri.
On December 1, 2020, the API, perhaps the most influential fossil fuel lobby in the nation, filed a brief in opposition to a federal civil rights case brought by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, in defense of local communities' right to vote on qualified local Rights of Nature laws.
The same day the API filed its legal brief, a bill (HB 54), to try to ban Rights of Nature in the courts was introduced in the Missouri House of Representatives. The language is almost identical to language passed in 2019, by the Ohio Legislature, that was drafted by the Ohio Chamber of Commerce in direct response to the passage of the Lake Erie Bill of Rights.
Weeks ago, following the U.S. Supreme Court's historic decision in McGirt, which ruled that much of Eastern Oklahoma falls within Indian reservations who have sovereignty to pass environmental law (including Rights of Nature lawmaking by the Ponca Tribe), Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt and allies sought to undermine the decision by asking Congress to strip environmental authority from tribes. (Ponca Environmental Ambassador Casey Camp Horinek and the group Movement Rights have been organizing to defend tribal sovereignty and the Rights of Nature in the state.)
Additionally, in September, a corporate law firm that filed a lawsuit against the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, used civil rights law to demand attorney fees from the City of Toledo, for its fleeting defense of the people's law. This amounts to financial reprisal against residents of Toledo, Ohio for their enactment of the historic law.
For supporting documentation contact simon@celdf.org.
The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) is helping build a decolonial movement for Community Rights and the Rights of Nature to advance democratic, economic, social, and environmental rights-building upward from the grassroots to the state, federal, and international levels.
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Youth advocates with the Green New Deal for Schools campaign notched up their first victory on Tuesday when Colorado's Boulder Valley School District Board of Trustees unanimously approved a resolution drafted by students at Fairview High School.
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The Daily Camerareported that the board's president, Kathy Gebhardt, "urged the students to take their advocacy beyond Boulder Valley to local governments and the state Legislature, saying most school districts in the state are struggling to pay teachers and don't have the resources to add solar panels or buy electric buses."
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Resolutions on the environment go back to 1978. In 2009, BVSD created a sustainability action plan, with updates in later years with a long-term goal of reducing greenhouse gases by 80% and also committed to a goal of zero net energy by 2050. It was one of the first school districts in the nation to make such a commitment.
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Spearheaded by U.S. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), a former educator and principal, the legislation would invest $1.6 trillion to transform the country's education system while "creating 1.3 million jobs and eliminating 78 million metric tons of carbon emissions" over a decade.
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The November 24 ruling against Minera Panamá, a subsidiary of the Canadian company First Quantum Minerals, followed weeks of nationwide protests against the open-pit mine, which began operations in 2019 and where mainly copper, but also gold, silver, and molybdenum, are extracted. Opponents say the mine threatens area water supplies. A gunman shot and killed two people at a protest against the mine earlier this month.
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"The Panamanian people have spoken," Kherson Ruiz, executive director of the London-based Sustainable Development Foundation, toldMongabay. "The people have spoken and expressed that they don't want more mines, that they want sustainable economic development and have no intention of destroying the country for profit."
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Rengifo Navas Revilla, secretary of the National Coordinator of Indigenous Peoples of Panama, said in a statement that "when all this nature is contaminated, we all die."
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Since Ecuador became the first country to constitutionally enshrine the Rights of Nature in 2008, more than 30 nations have taken similar actions to protect their environment.
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Amnesty International USA, Avaaz, Demand Progress, Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), MoveOn, and Oxfam America circulated similar petitions in response to the war, which Israel launched after a Hamas-led attack on October 7.
The groups delivered the petition signatures to the White House on Wednesday as the world waited to see if a temporary truce would be extended. The initial four-day pause in fighting—during which Hamas freed some hostages taken last month and Israel released some Palestinian prisoners—was extended by two days on Monday, but as of press time, no new announcement had been made.
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Since October 7, the list of members of Congress calling for a Gaza cease-fire has grown to about four dozen—though as The Intercept's Prem Thakker noted Wednesday, "a closer look at some lawmakers' statements raises questions about whether they are truly pushing for an end to the violence."
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The civil society groups behind the petitions shared the testimony of a practicing nurse volunteering in a Gaza hospital: "We heard nearby explosions. I rushed to assist, only to discover it was my own family. Witnessing their extraction was heartbreaking. Some lost their lives, while others were wounded. They started pulling out dead children from under the rubble in front of me."
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