EARTHKEEPING
NEWS
A NEWSLETTER
OF THE NORTH AMERICAN COALITION FOR CHRISTIANITY AND ECOLOGY
Volume Fifteen, Number Five
Winter 2006-07
A New Jurisprudence
Rights originate where existence originates. That which determines existence determines rights.
The natural world on the planet Earth gets its rights from the same source that humans get 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 fulfill its role in the ever-renewing processes of the Earth community.
All rights are species 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.
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 fulfill their roles in the community of existence.
These rights as presented here are based on the intrinsic relations that the various components of Earth have to each other. The planet Earth is a single community bound together with interdependent relationships.
In a special manner humans have not only a need for but a right of access to the natural world to provide not only the physical need for humans, but also the wonder needed by human intelligence, the beauty needed by human imagination, and the intimacy needed by emotions for personal fulfillment.
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