Ecuador Constitution Recognizes Rights of Whole Community, Including Environment

Linda Sheehan
Op-Ed
09/29/2008

The September 29th report on the new Ecuadorean constitution (“Ecuadoreans back new charter”) left out a critical element, one that sets a 21st-century standard for protecting local communities. The new constitution endows not only people but also, for the first time, their environment with inalienable rights. This includes the right of the environment to "exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution." The constitution further grants communities, elected officials and individuals the legal authority to defend these rights on behalf of the environment. This action may prove to be a watershed moment in environmental law equal or greater than the first Earth Day.

Effective laws allow and constrain behavior to promote desired relationships in a community. They work in two directions, to reflect each party’s respective rights. For example: I can’t take your horse, and you can’t take mine. Climate change, the collapse of the Delta, and other environmental failures result from modern environmental laws that don’t recognize the two-way relationship that exists between us and the water, air, land and life around us. These laws focus on the rights and needs of people to exist and thrive, but ignore the same rights and needs on the part of the environment. They allow us to take from the environment, and only regulate how much.

The fact that our laws ignore the two-way relationships between us and our environment does not mean that the environment does not object. In fact, the environment is increasingly reacting to ongoing abuse. We see the environment objecting with the rapid death spiral of the Bay-Delta Estuary. Decades of damming and pumping as much water as we could, and of pouring back polluted irrigation water and undertreated municipal wastewater, has pushed the Delta and its fish and wildlife to the brink of collapse.

We also see the environment objecting globally, through the collapsing glaciers, disappearing species, and increased droughts, fires and floods that have sprung from the climate change that we caused. Think about that. We can actually change the climate of the planet now. Legally. This is not sustainable for long, if we want healthy communities for ourselves and our children and grandchildren.

Ecuador has adopted a constitution that recognizes the inherent rights of ecosystems to be healthy, to thrive, and to evolve. It reflects science in law, by acknowledging the interdependence between us and our environment, and it respects both sides of that relationship.

Fortunately, Ecuador is not alone. Communities around the United States are starting to create their own rights-based environmental laws. For example: Packer Township, Pennsylvania recently enacted a law that bans the local dumping of contaminated sewage sludge as “fertilizer” and recognizes the “enforceable right of natural communities and ecosystems to exist and flourish” within the Township. Two towns in New Hampshire similarly enacted laws against privatizing local water supplies, adding that “natural communities and ecosystems possess the inalienable and fundamental rights to exist and flourish” within their boundaries.

Ecuador’s constitution, and the growing body of environmental ordinances in the United States, set the stage for a 21st-century wake-up call on the inherent rights of the environment, as well as our own inherent rights to protect the health of our communities for ourselves and our children. Let’s hope others heed this call.

Linda Sheehan is an attorney and the Executive Director of the California Coastkeeper Alliance,representing 12 Waterkeeper organizations coast-wide. She lives and works in Fremont.