Will Nature's Rights Be Honored in Ecuador?

UUSC Interim President and CEO Bill Schulz is in Ecuador, meeting with officials and UUSC partners about human and environmental rights. In the blog post below, he reflects on some exciting provisions of Ecuador's new constitution that protect the environment — and the need for real follow-through and enforcement. 

The notion that Nature itself has rights, that the earth, air, and water can bring suit against those who despoil them, is a new and perhaps strange concept to American ears. But here in Ecuador — where Patricia Jones, head of UUSC's Environmental Justice Program, and I are visiting — it is a concept that has been written into Ecuador's new constitution. The provision exists thanks to the hard work of indigenous groups who successfully advocated that the constitution reflect their understanding of human beings' relationship to and responsibility for the earth.

That is just one of many significant changes that were adopted by the Constituent Assembly that wrote the new constitution. For example, our UUSC partners, El Movimiento Mi Cometa (the "My Kite" Movement) and Observatorio Ciudadano de Servicios Publicos (the Citizens Observatory on Public Services), the latter a consortium of community-based social-change organizations, were instrumental in persuading the Assembly to include a human-right-to-water provision. Using coalitions of partners, holding peaceful demonstrations, and confronting corporate powers with the truth — and most of all by being persistent — grassroots groups pulled off something of a constitutional revolution.

Yesterday Patricia and I toured the barrio of Guasmo Sur, a part of the city of Guayaquil where Mi Cometa has its main offices. The programs that Mi Cometa runs, for housing reconstruction, microcredit, music and computer education, and much more, are helping transform this 600,000-person community where raw sewage still runs through the streets. But Mi Cometa knows that all its services will be but a Band-Aid if systemic economic and social change does not take place as well.

The new constitution is a start, but of course its remarkable provisions must be enforced; it is not yet clear if and how that will happen. Today we are in Quito meeting with many of the officials who have responsibility for enforcing human rights. I'll let you know soon if Nature will have a protector in more than name and whether the human right to water will be more than a pretty phrase on paper.