The natural world is the larger sacred community to which we belong. To be alienated from this community is to become destitute in all that makes us human. To damage this community is to diminish our own existence.
Thomas Berry
The idea of developing ‘Earth Jurisprudence’ first emerged in 1996 through a workshop and talks at Schumacher College, by Thomas Berry and based on his recent book The Universe Story. For the Gaia Foundation and other colleagues, this was the seed of what has become the Earth Jurisprudence initiative.
Copies of The Universe Story, The Great Work and other writings by Thomas Berry were soon circulated to colleagues around the world, and Gaia’s own history and involvement with indigenous and traditional communities provided a wealth of experience and networks to draw from.
A ‘pilgrimage’ took place in 1999, to visit Thomas Berry at his home and discuss practical ways of moving forward. This led to the 1st Earth Jurisprudence meeting in April 2001, co-organised with the International Centre for Technology Alternatives, and involving colleagues from the USA, UK and South Africa with experience in legal, environmental, community rights and indigenous issues. Those present were: Jules Cashford (mythologist, author), Edward Posey (Gaia Foundation), Liz Hosken (Gaia Foundation), Cormac Cullinan (EnAct, environmental lawyer), Bruce Dell (Wilderness Leadership School), Mike Bell (working with Inuit peoples), Andrew Kimbrell (attorney, activist and author), Martín von Hildebrand (COAMA, ethnologist).
The meeting at Airlie Center, Washington, provided the foundations from which a small network began to develop. It was a unique opportunity for sharing ideas, and Thomas Berry’s thoughts on basic principles for Earth Jurisprudence became known as the Airlie Principles.
With financial support from the Network for Social Change and the Foundation for Deep Ecology, further meetings were held in London and South Africa involving lawyers, academics, NGOs and community representatives. The 7th World Wilderness Congress in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, in November 2001, then provided an opportunity to start a wider discourse, and a workshop was hosted on ‘Earth Jurisprudence and Wilderness’, by Gaia, EnAct and the Wilderness Leadership School. It was a rare opportunity to influence a traditionally conservative international forum. Funding from the Finnish Government enabled the participation of over 40 African delegates, mainly community leaders and mobilisers.
In early 2002, many of the African delegates had formed the African Biodiversity Network, a regional network that promotes the sustainable development and conservation of biodiversity based on local community rights and ecosystems in Africa. They adopted Community Ecological Governance as a major thematic area, and as a way of exploring Earth Jurisprudence without using a term that might be too overwhelming for some in the network. A workshop was held in Kwazulu-Natal, in March 2002, and the Valley of 1000 Hills Declaration was drafted.
This was also a time of preparing for the Peoples-Earth-Summit, parallel to the official World Summit on Sustainable Development, WSSD, held in Johannesburg. Copies of “Wild Law” and a special edition of Resurgence magazine (co-edited by Gaia, on the theme of Earth Democracy) were circulated widely.
Again, this provided a rich forum for discussing Earth Jurisprudence with individuals, organisations and policy-makers from different continents, including Michael Meacher (former Environment Minister, UK), Vandana Shiva (Navdanya), Martin Khor (Third World Network), Juan Mayr (former Environment Minister, Colombia), Jacquie McGlade (European Environment Agency), Tewolde Berhan Egziabher (Environmental Protection Agency, Ethiopia). An Earth Governance Colloquium was organized at Ithala Game Reserve, in Kwazulu-Natal, for an international group of 20 lawyers and activists, interested in developing and promoting Earth Jurisprudence.
A visit by Thomas Berry to London, in May 2003, gave further momentum to the process and another international group, from Brazil, Colombia, Ethiopia, Kenya, India, South Africa and the UK, gathered for what became known as the ‘May Summit’. This was another cornerstone in the EJ initiative, drawing together like-minded people, many of whom are working on community rights, environmental protection and related issues.
During Thomas Berry’s visit, a meeting was held with a small group of leading UK environmental lawyers, at University College London, where proposals were made for practical steps such as promoting the UN World Charter for Nature. Brian Swimme, co-author of The Universe Story, was also in the UK and gave enthusiastic support for the growing Earth Jurisprudence initiative; and he encouraged some of the network to join a distance-learning course on the Universe Story.
Another achievement was the founding of the Earth Community Network, to link different experiential learning centres, such as Schumacher College (UK), Bija Vidyapeeth (India), Lang’ata Centre (Kenya), Ngwenyama Lodge (Botswana), Rinçao Gaia (Brazil) and the Gaia Learning Centre (UK) that are committed to the principles of Earth Jurisprudence. Training at the Ngwenyama Lodge in Botswana, and residential workshops/trainings at Bija Vidyapeeth already form an important part of the capacity building in the African Biodiversity Network. An intensive course at Ngwenyama Lodge, for example, demonstrates the practical value of drawing on the traditional wisdom and practices of Africa, and creates a greater understanding of the core Earth Jurisprudence ideas underpinning African customary law. This has provided important bases for work with local communities especially with the knowledge-holders, and in 2004 the African Biodiversity Network produced its own Botswana Principles of Earth Jurisprudence.
By 2005, it was time to start gaining legal acceptance of EJ principles and concepts, and to start documenting practical examples of governance systems that are Earth-centred.
Partners in African countries began to focussed their efforts at the community level, to revive culturally and environmentally-based governance systems. A number of interesting case studies have resulted. There has also been growing interest in identifying and protecting sacred natural sites and reviving rituals and Earth ‘lore’ around these potent places. Meanwhile in Ethiopia, the Civil Service Training College now offers two courses through which Earth Jurisprudence can be taught to policy makers: one on land rights and one on indigenous rights.
In the UK, the first Wild Law Conference took place in November 2005, at the University of Brighton. The event was the initiative of Liz Rivers, an environmental mediator, and the UK Environmental Law Association, UKELA. Speakers included Michael Meacher and Jacqueline McGlade. A second Wild Law conference took place in 2006, with John Elkington (SustainAbility), Prof. Nick Robinson (Pace University, NY), Satish Kumar (Resurgence Magazine), Begonia Filgueira (Gaia Law Ltd), and Cormac Cullinan.
Other recent events include a conference in London by the Environmental Law Foundation, ELF, in June 2006, on “Society and the Environment: Does the Law Reflect this Special Relationship?”. The panel included Ian Pearson (Environment Minister, UK), Norman Baker (politician, Liberal Democrats), Kevin Martin (President, Law Society), Stephen Hockman (QC), Liz Hosken (Gaia Foundation). In April 207, the Center for Earth Jurisprudence, invited Cormac Cullinan and Liz Hosken to join Thomas Linzey and Richard Grossman from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, CELDF, in the USA, as guest speakers at a three-day colloquium on “Earth Jurisprudence: Defining the Field and Claiming the Promise”.
The next UK conference and workshop, “A ‘Wild Law’ Response to Climate Change”, in September 2007, aims to develop a practical approach for applying Wild Law principles. Organised by UKELA, ELF and Gaia, with funding from the Body Shop Foundation, the residential workshop includes Andrew Kimbrell, Cormac Cullinan, and barrister Peter Roderick (Climate Justice Programme, UK).
The Gaia Foundation
30th August 2007
The well-being of each member of the Earth community is dependent on the well-being of the Earth itself. Within this context, the following principles, expressed in terms of rights, should be recognised in national constitutions and in courts of law.
“It is our responsibility to make these principles the foundation of the new legal system all over the world. The time has come when human laws and Earth laws must be brought together”. (Thomas Berry, Rights of the Earth, 2002)
- The natural world on the planet Earth has rights, which come with existence. These rights come from the same source from which humans receive their rights, from the universe that brought them into being.
- Every component of the Earth community has three rights: the right to be, the right to habitat, and the right to fulfil its role in the ever-renewing processes of the Earth community.
- All rights are specific and limited. Rivers have river rights. Birds have bird rights. Insects have insect rights. Humans have human rights. Difference in rights is qualitative, not quantitative. The rights of an insect would be of no value to a tree or a fish.
- Human rights do not cancel out the rights of other modes of being to exist in their natural state. Human property rights are not absolute. Property rights are simply a special relationship between a particular human ‘owner’ and a particular piece of ‘property’ so that both might fulfil their rules in the great community of existence.
- Since species exist only in the form of individuals, rights refer to individuals and to those natural groupings of individuals into flocks, herds, packs, not simply in a general way to species.
- These rights are based on the intrinsic relations that the various components of Earth have to each other. The planet Earth is a single community whose members are bound together with interdependent relationships. No living being nourishes itself. Each component of the Earth community is dependent on every other member of the community for the nourishment and assistance it needs for its own survival. This mutual nourishment, which includes predator-prey relationships, is integral with the role that each component of the Earth has within the comprehensive community of existence.
A number of other documents have been produced with ‘guiding principles’ for those working on Earth Jurisprudence. These include the Airlie Principles (2001) and the Botswana Principles (2004).
