Rights of Nature is the recognition and honoring
that Nature has rights. It is the recognition that our ecosystems –
including trees, oceans, animals, mountains – have rights just as human
beings have rights. Rights of Nature is about balancing what is good for
human beings against what is good for other species, what is good for
the planet as a world. It is the holistic recognition that all life,
all ecosystems on our planet are deeply intertwined.
Rather than treating nature as property under the law, rights of nature acknowledges that nature in all its life forms has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles.
And we – the people – have the legal authority and responsibility to
enforce these rights on behalf of ecosystems. The ecosystem itself can
be named as the injured party, with its own legal standing rights, in
cases alleging rights violations.
For indigenous cultures around the world recognizing rights of nature
is simply what is so and consistent with their traditions of living in
harmony with nature. All life, including human life, are deeply
connected. Decisions and values are based on what is good for the
whole.
Nonetheless, for millennia legal systems around the world have
treated land and nature as “property”. Laws and contracts are written
to protect the property rights of individuals, corporations and other
legal entities. As such environmental protection laws actually legalize
environmental harm by regulating how much pollution or destruction of
nature can occur within the law. Under such law, nature and all of its
non-human elements have no standing.
By recognizing rights of nature in its constitution,
Ecuador – and a growing number of communities in the United States – are
basing their environmental protection systems on the premise that
nature has inalienable rights, just as humans do. This premise is a radical but natural departure from the assumption that nature is property under the law.
By Cormac Cullinan with contributions from Thomas Berry. Cited in “Earth Jurisprudence: From Colonization to Participation” by Cormac Cullinan, State of the World 2010, State of the World 2010: Transforming Cultures: From Consumerism to Sustainability (p.144 & 145.)
The Earth Community and all the beings that constitute it have fundamental “rights”, including the right to exist, to have a habitat or a place to be, and to participate in the evolution of the Earth community.
The rights of each being are limited by the rights of other beings to the extent necessary to maintain the other beings to the extent necessary to maintain the integrity, balance, and health of the communities within it exists.
Human acts or laws that infringe these fundamental rights violate the fundamental relationships and principles that constitute the Earth community and are therefore illegitimate and “unlawful.”
Humans must adapt their legal, political, economic, and social systems to be consistent with the fundamental laws or principles that govern how the universe functions and guide humans to in accordance with these, which means that human governance systems at all times must take account of the interests of the whole Earth community and must:
Determine the lawfulness of human conduct by whether or not it strengthens or weakens the relationships that constitute the Earth community;
Maintain a dynamic balance between the rights of humans and those of other members of the Earth community on the basis of what is best for Earth as a whole;
Promote restorative justice (which focuses on restoring damaged relationships) rather than punishment (retribution; and
Recognize all members of the Earth community as subjects before the law, with the right to the protection of the law and to an effective remedy for human acts that violate their fundamental rights.
With contributions from Thomas Berry and cited in “Earth Jurisprudence: From Colonization to Participation” by Cormac Cullinan, State of the World 2010, State of the World 2010: Transforming Cultures: From Consumerism to Sustainability p.144 & 145.
Forest gardening is a low-maintenance sustainable plant-based food production and agro-forestry system based on woodland ecosystems, incorporating fruit and nut trees, shrubs, herbs, vines and perennial vegetables which have yields directly useful to humans. Making use of companion planting, these can be intermixed to grow in a succession of layers, to build a woodland habitat.
Forest gardening is a prehistoric method of securing food in tropical areas. In the 1980s, Robert Hart coined the term "forest gardening" after adapting the principles and applying them to temperate climates.
Robert Hart pioneered a system based on the observation that the natural forest can be divided into distinct levels. He used inter-cropping to develop an existing small orchard of apples and pears into an edible poly-culture landscape consisting of the following layers:
‘Canopy layer’ consisting of the original mature fruit trees. ‘Low-tree layer’ of smaller nut and fruit trees on dwarfing root stocks. ‘Shrub layer’ of fruit bushes such as currants and berries. ‘Herbaceous layer’ of perennial vegetables and herbs. ‘Rhizosphere’ or ‘underground’ dimension of plants grown for their roots and tubers. ‘Ground cover layer’ of edible plants that spread horizontally. ‘Vertical layer’ of vines and climbers.
A key component of the seven-layer system was the plants he selected. Most of the traditional vegetable crops grown today, such as carrots, are sun-loving plants not well selected for the more shady forest garden system. Hart favored shade-tolerant perennial vegetables.
Wikipedia Article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_gardening#In_temperate_climates