Respecting the rights of nature is the only way out of climate chaos and biodiversity collapse

With the EarthLore Foundation team, I have the privilege of working with communities in the South African provinces of Mpumalanga and Limpopo, and in the Bikita district of the Masvingo province of southeastern Zimbabwe. Together with these communities, we are reviving traditional culture, practices, ceremonies and rituals, and in so doing we are reawakening our connection to the land and our sense of belonging to the greater community of life. 

Indigenous people in Africa and beyond understand how to be indigenous to place, which is to belong to a territory the way a lion does and the way a river does. For me this is what we learn when we go deep into traditional cultures: we learn that we belong. 

Earth Jurisprudence

Our work in both countries is guided by the philosophy and practice of Earth Jurisprudence. Earth Jurisprudence is a term proposed by cultural historian Thomas Berry, to recognise the fact that the Earth is lawful and ordered and all members of the Earth community are bound by the laws of nature. 

The Earth has her own cycles, rhythms and patterns. Every living being and ecosystem element participates in those rhythms and patterns in their own way, whether they be a river, a laughing dove, a rock or a human. We are all participating in the greater web of life and each member of the Earth community holds inherent rights, by virtue of existence, to perform its unique role within the wider ecological community. 

From an Earth Jurisprudence perspective, no one species or element of the ecosystem is dominant or central. The wellbeing of the Earth as a whole is primary.

To read the laws of nature, we need to develop a refined capacity to observe nature by deepening our relationship with place to become ecologically literate. This requires both a capacity to read the details, such as the lifecycle of a bee or a plant, as well as to see the larger context, the ecosystem and the changing seasons, in which each being exists. Understanding the detail and the interactions over space and time enables patterns to emerge, and one cultivates a sharp appreciation for our interdependence within complex living systems. 

As the elders say, in this way the law becomes written in the heart, so that if we break these laws, we know we will suffer the consequences, or our children will. This holistic knowledge of the detail and the whole, learnt through observation, interaction and deep relationship, is the foundation of indigenous knowledge systems.

Indigenous knowledge

In Africa, there are many communities like those in Mpumalanga, Limpopo and Bikita that hold indigenous knowledge, practices and customary governance systems that inherently recognise and respect the “rights of nature”, even if they do not use the language of rights. 

These land-based, traditional communities understand that they belong to the ecosystems in which they are embedded. 

It is from these communities that we can learn how to live with our more-than-human relatives, restore healthy ecosystems and mitigate the impacts of climate change. 

Rather than “managing the land”, they govern themselves through their customary laws to ensure that the human community does not disturb the health of the ecosystem as a whole, but rather participates with nature in a respectful and mutually enhancing way. 

Our customary governance systems were severely undermined during the colonial era in Africa, however. Though African jurisdictions are “plurilegal”, with constitutions that recognise customary laws on paper, government law dominates and is derived from colonisation. In other words, our state laws are birthed from a system of domination that continues to this day. 

Our modern laws objectify the natural world as “property”, “resource” or “commodity” for human use and legitimise the power of the state and business to plunder and extract from Mother Earth, aggravating climate chaos and biodiversity collapse.

Healing our relationship with Mother Earth

The rights of nature are among the systemic alternatives for transformative change identified in the Climate Justice Charter, which has been endorsed by more than 200 organisations in South Africa, including my organisation, EarthLore. 

Over the past decade, the rights of nature have been recognised in the legal systems of many countries across Mother Earth, including Uganda. This pioneering trend signals a growing consciousness that other living beings and ecosystems have a right to exist, thrive and evolve, and that it is our responsibility to respect these rights.

These novel legal developments emerge from the wider international movement to embed Earth Jurisprudence within our ways of life, ethics, law and governance. Earth Jurisprudence reminds us that we live in an interdependent community of diverse beings. Many of us have forgotten this and instead have become entranced by money and power over others. 

We need to go back to the basics of remembering that we share this precious living planet with so many others in the earth community and that we belong, as all our more-than-human relatives do, to the greater body of Mother Earth. 

This remembrance brings us back home. 

A protester at the Liesbeek Action Campaign against Amazon River Club Development in Cape Town on 12 November 2021. (Photo: Gallo Images / Brenton Geach)