nature

After three years of hard work, I am pleased to announce that my new book – co-authored with Professor Burns Weston of the Center for Human Rights at the University of Iowa College of Law – has just been published.  Green Governance:  Ecological Survival, Human Rights and the Law of the Commons was recently released by Cambridge University Press.  Here is a short summary of the book:

The vast majority of the world’s scientists agree: we have reached a point in history where we are in grave danger of destroying Earth's life-sustaining capacity.  But our attempts to protect natural ecosystems are increasingly ineffective because our very conception of the problem is limited; we treat “the environment” as its own separate realm, taking for granted prevailing but outmoded conceptions of economics, national sovereignty, and international law.  Green Governance is a direct response to the mounting calls for a paradigm shift in the way humans relate to the natural environment.  It opens the door to a new set of solutions by proposing a compelling new synthesis of environmental protection based on broader notions of economics and human rights and on commons-based governance.  Going beyond speculative abstractions, the book proposes a new architecture of environmental law and public policy that is as practical as it is theoretically sound.

The book has a number of significant endorsements.  At the risk of immodesty, here are a few of the blurbs for Green Governance:

James Gustave Speth, Former Dean, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and Professor of Law, Vermont Law School:

“When a vital body of existing policy and law has run its course, the need for reinvention becomes urgent. So it is with environmental law and policy. It is therefore exiting that two enormously well-informed and creative thinkers, Burns Weston and David Bollier, have joined forces to produce this breakthrough in environmental governance. Their book is a landmark in our thinking about rights-based environmentalism and the law of the commons and how these fields can combine in a powerful synthesis. We must take these ideas very seriously indeed. Highly recommended.”

The brave new world of “owning life” began 32 years ago when the U.S. Supreme Court first approved the patenting of a genetically engineered bacteria that can help decompose oil.  By a 5-4 decision, it was the first instance of U.S. law recognizing ownership in a "manufactured" lifeform.  On Wednesday, I had the opportunity to participate on a panel with the microbiologist who brought that 1980 case, Ananda Chakrabarty, who was then an employee of General Electric. 

The panel was part of a series of live radio programs hosted by Action Speaks! in Providence, Rhode Island, an usually intelligent, spirited show hosted by the genial polymath Marc Levitt.  The theme for this fall’s series is “Private Rights and Public Fights,” which is devoted to looking at “moments when the rights of the individual have clashed with the needs or beliefs of the public—and where the line between private and public has been defined or blurred.”

Anyone who noses around the legal literature soon realizes that the case of Diamond v. Chakrabarty is a real landmark case because it opened the door for the  patenting of lifeforms.  Over the past thirty years, more than 3,000 gene patents have been granted.  Nearly 20 percent of the human genome is now privately owned.  The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued nearly 50,000 patents involving human genetic material.  Patents have been granted for microorganisms, genetically modified plants and animals, stem cells, tissue and many other living things.

Chakrabarty, now is a 74-year-old professor at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Chicago, had few reflections to offer on the seismic impact of the case.  He was proud of his role in legal and scientific history, but he focused mostly on the scientific aspect of his work and of patent law in general.  Too bad, because I think the extra-legal, extra-scientific ramifications of the Chakrabarty case have been significant. 

Can we begin to reconceptualize how we interact with Nature and afford it the legal protections that are now available only to people?  Along with Bolivia and Ecuador, New Zealand appears to be in the vanguard of this fascinating, welcome trend. 

In his blog about the Northern Territory of New Zealand, Bob Gosford reports that a court there “has recognised – perhaps for the first time in legal history – that a river has personality sufficient to allow it to be heard in a court of law.”  (A tip of the hat to Tim Gregory for passing this news along.)  Gosford cites reporter Kate Shuttleworth in the New Zealand Herald:

The Whanganui River will become an legal entity and have a legal voice under a preliminary agreement signed between Whanganui River iwi [“peoples” in Maori] and the Crown tonight. This is the first time a river has been given a legal identity. A spokesman for the Minister of Treaty Negotiations said Whanganui River will be recognised as a person when it comes to the law – “in the same way a company is, which will give it rights and interests” … Under the agreement the river is given legal status under the nameTe Awa Tupua – two guardians, one from the Crown and one from a Whanganui River iwi, will be given the role of protecting the river.

The piece below is by Efren Gerardino, who occasionally writes about the commons in the Philippines when he is not working as the plant manager of a muscovado, or soft brown sugar mill.  I met Efren via my late friend Jonathan Rowe, who periodically visited the Philippines.  It is a pleasure to hear Efren's perspectives on the commonsfromanother part of the world.

“All things bright and beautiful/ All creatures great and small/ All things wise and wonderful/ The Lord God made them all”.  These are the opening lines of a poem I learned from my Grade 3 teacher who also filled my childhood with  nature-themed music.  In the same year, I joined a Baptist Sunday School where my fondest memory is nature walks that kindled my interest on clouds, birds, bees, butterflies and wildflowers.   I guess that year was the starting point of my environmental education.

I am now involved in the review of our town’s Environment and Natural Resources Management Plan, with focus on climate change adaptation. At this stage, much of my time is spent on field reconnaissance, interview and photo-documentation.  I walked across forests and croplands and along the way I rediscovered my fascination for wildflowers.