00:00Today, the problems that we know, climate change, biodiversity,
00:05all of this comes from an inadaptation of our rules to the rules of the living.
00:19The laws of nature are a set of rules that aim to recognize ecosystems
00:23such as forests, rivers or glaciers as subject of law.
00:26We recognize these ecosystems as legal entities
00:30and we recognize their right to live, to regenerate, to thrive and not to be polluted.
00:36The human being has been on earth, Homo sapiens, for about 200,000 years
00:39and the Earth has existed for 4.5 billion years.
00:42And for a few decades, a few centuries, the human being has created its own rules,
00:46its own laws, with short-termism, with exchanges that have to be amplified
00:51throughout the world, with a linearity and a finitude of economic processes.
00:57However, the laws that humanity has created are the laws of the homosphere,
01:02in a way, it is a bubble that does not correspond to the rules of the functioning,
01:05to the great mechanisms of the functioning of the biosphere,
01:08the one that surrounds us all, the great mechanisms of life.
01:15In 2008, the first country to recognize the rights of nature was the Equator.
01:20In its constitution, the Equator recognized the rights to the mother earth,
01:23the rights of the Pachamama, to live, to exist and to thrive.
01:27Since then, Bolivia, in 2010, has taken a step forward with a law on the rights of nature.
01:33Throughout the world, now, the rights of nature thrive with recognition by courts,
01:38as in India, which recognized the rights to rivers, to glaciers,
01:41as in New Zealand, with laws that also recognized the Wangani River, subject of law.
01:46To defend the right to nature, there are two systems.
01:48A system of guardianship.
01:49We will name guardians who will be the face of nature,
01:53as is the case in India, as is the case in New Zealand for the Wangani River.
01:56And these guardians, physical people, such as representatives of the state
02:00or representatives of indigenous populations,
02:02will defend the rights of nature in justice if ever a river is polluted.
02:06And the other alternative is a system of broad rights,
02:08where finally, each citizen, each enterprise of territorial collectivities
02:12can seize the rights of nature and go directly defend nature in justice.
02:17This is currently the case of a project that aims to recognize
02:20the rights of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia,
02:22and which provides precisely different legal projects
02:25that would mean that if these laws were adopted,
02:27each citizen could go to court and protect nature.
02:31In Ecuador, it has been 10 years since the rights of nature were inscribed in the Constitution.
02:35There have been about 25 lawsuits concerning the rights of nature.
02:3880% have been won.
02:40About half of these lawsuits are the result of the initiative of citizens,
02:45and the other half, globally, is the result of the government.
02:47So it's an initiative that can be of many people and many different entities.
02:59The Universal Declaration of the Rights of the Motherland is a 2010 text
03:04that was notably inspired by indigenous populations.
03:06The goal is to go to the United Nations, to the UN by the end of 2018,
03:11to submit this million signatures and start a dialogue with the UN
03:15to make sure that maybe tomorrow the United Nations adopts
03:19a future Declaration of the Rights of Nature or the Rights of the Motherland,
03:22which would be coupled with the famous Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man,
03:26which we are celebrating its 70th anniversary this year.
