Ecuador First Nation in the
World to Shift to Rights-Based Environmental Protection Using Legal Defense Fund
Support
Ecuadorians Follow Lead of U.S. Communities Partnering With - Legal Defense Fund
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
On July 7, 2008, the
Ecuador Constitutional Assembly – composed of one hundred and thirty (130)
delegates elected countrywide to rewrite the country's Constitution – voted to
approve articles for the new constitution recognizing rights for nature and
ecosystems.
"If adopted in the final
constitution by the people, Ecuador would become the first country in the world
to codify a new system of environmental protection based on rights," stated
Thomas Linzey, Executive Director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense
Fund.
"Ecuador is now leading the way for countries around the world to make this
necessary and fundamental change in how we protect nature," added Mari
Margil, Associate Director of the Legal Defense Fund.
Over the past year, the Legal Defense Fund has been invited to assist Delegates
to the Ecuador Constitutional Assembly to re-write that country's constitution.
Delegates requested that the Legal Defense Fund draft proposed Rights of Nature
language for the constitution based on ordinances developed and adopted by
municipalities in the United States.
The Legal Defense Fund has now assisted communities in Pennsylvania, New
Hampshire, and Virginia to draft and adopt new laws that change the status of
natural communities and ecosystems from being regarded as property under
the law to being recognized as rights-bearing entities.
Those local laws recognize that natural communities and ecosystems possess an
inalienable and fundamental right to exist and flourish, and that residents of
those communities possess the legal authority to enforce those rights on behalf
of those ecosystems. In addition, these laws require the local governments to
remedy violations of those ecosystem rights.
In essence, these laws represent changes to the status of property law,
eliminating the authority of a property owner to interfere with the functioning
of ecosystems and natural communities that exist and depend upon that property
for their existence and flourishing. The local laws allow certain types of
development that do not interfere with the rights of ecosystems to exist and
flourish.
Background
The Legal Defense Fund, created in 1995 as a public interest law firm, works
with communities that recognize that environmental protection cannot be attained
under a structure of law that treats natural communities and ecosystems as mere
property.
By most every measure, the environment today is in worse shape than when the
major U.S. environmental laws were adopted over thirty years ago. Since then,
countries around the world have sought to replicate these laws. Yet, species
decline worldwide is increasing exponentially, global warming is far more
accelerated than previously believed, deforestation continues unabated around
the world, and overfishing in the world's oceans is pushing many fisheries to
collapse.
These laws – including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and similar
state laws – legalize environmental harms by regulating how much pollution or
destruction of nature can occur under law. Rather than preventing pollution and
environmental destruction, these laws instead codify it. In addition, under
commonly understood terms of preemption, once these activities are legalized by
federal or state governments, local governments are prohibited from banning
them.
The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund is the only public interest law
firm in the U.S. that specializes in building a body of law focused on
establishing rights for nature. In pursuit of that goal, the Legal Defense Fund
has served as special legal counsel to over one hundred municipal governments
across the U.S., and serves as a legal advisor to organizations and governments
in other countries, including Ecuador, who are focused on driving similar laws
into their governing frameworks.
Mari Margil
Associate Director
Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund
126 NE Mason Street
Portland, Oregon 97211
(503) 284-2814
mmargil@celdf.org
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