Our inspirations
We recommend watching the conversation below with Jeppe Graugaard and keynote speaker, Pella Thiel, if you are coming to the conference. Jeppe is publishing a series of short texts with inspirational material in the run up to the conference, which you can find links to here. At the bottom of this page, you will find a series of links to projects and initiatives that we are inspired by and you can also find more resources on EarthWays’ homepage.
Inspiration #1
The Earth Charter
The Earth Charter was produced in a both impressive and comprehensive decade-long consultation which established an international and cross-cultural conversation about common values and goals. Launched in the year 2000 it set out four pillars with each four principles for a common foundation on which to build our lives as human beings. The Earth Charter is a 'soft law' instrument meaning that it sets out an ethical foundation on which the development of 'hard' laws can be developed.
Inspiration #2
The constitutional amendment in Ecuador
Article 71:
"Nature or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution.
Every person, people, community or nationality, will be able to demand the recognitions of rights for nature before the public organisms. The application and interpretation of these rights will follow the related principles established in the Constitution."
Inspiration #3
Mar Menor
Mar Menor is the largest saltwater lagoon in Europe and due to ongoing pollution this ecosystem was close to collapse in 2016. This led to a public outcry and the lobbying for Mar Menor to achieve legal personhood. During the next years around 640.000 people signed the petition for Mar Menor to be granted legal rights. The popular campaign paid off and in September 2022 Mar Menor was granted legal personhood.
Inspiration #4
Nature
On the verge of sounding silly, this is still worth saying: nature is THE inspiration for this gathering. Not nature-as-opposite-or-outside-of-culture but nature-as-the-expression-of-the-beauty-and-mystery-of-life. Nature as evolution and the rhythms of life ever-changing: something that created us and something that will keep creating long after we are gone from the Earth.
Because the modern conception of 'nature' tends to make nature something other than or outside of 'culture', the word nature can lead us to think of the world in terms of binaries. When we use the word nature, we need to hold our attention to the way it is usually used as a short-hand for almost everything, or, at least everything that isn't 'unnatural'.
This can make us think and talk as if we weren't nature ourselves. Within that perspective it can seem odd that human laws and democratic governance could or should be grounded in and include nature. Nonetheless, indigenous communities show how this can work and a lot of people are developing systems of law and the skills of practicing law that are inspired by the Earth system and the ways of nature.
Inspiration #5
Indigenous peoples
To say that indigenous people, knowledge systems or ways of life are an inspiration for this conference is not wrong but it is also not quite right. Because someone being an inspiration for another implies that the other is trying to imitate or mirror the someone. As with the word ‘nature’ language sets up a trap here. We most likely end up doing more harm than good if we label a huge diversity of people ‘indigenous’ and set that up as an aspirational image. We do well to first work through how our own ways of being and seeing have been conditioned by growing up in the house of modernity before we begin imitating other people.
Perhaps it is better to say ‘peoples who experience the world as animate and Earth as a living being’ are inspirations for this gathering. In her text “Learning the Grammar of Animacy”, Robin Wall Kimmerer describes how she discovered the way the English language, and the scientific mindset, is setting us up to relate to the living world as a world of objects. Learning Potawatomi, Kimmerer’s ancestral language, she found a way of speaking where nouns and verbs can be both animate and inanimate – where hills, colours and apples are literally alive.
Inspiration #6
The regenerative movement
The regenerative paradigm, which moves away from the 'reducing harm' approach of sustainability towards actively restoring and renewing socio-ecological systems, understands humans as co-creative of living places. At EarthWays, we have thought of regenerative learning as "learning to recreate, rebuild and reestablish life-affirming relationships with place and those we dwell with in that place".
At its core, regeneration is a process of life itself. As a concept, regeneration is in danger of becoming watered down, hyped or capitalized upon when it is enrolled for this or that strategic effort or sales pitch. But beneath the conceptual muck, regeneration as a principle situates us as creatures with the potential to be a keystone species within our habitats.
Inspiration #7
Friendship
Ivan Illich once said that "if community life exists at all today, it is in some way the consequence of friendship cultivated by each one who initiates it. This goes beyond anything which people usually talk about, saying each one of you is responsible for the friendships he/she can develop, because society will only be as good as the political result of these friendships." Community without friendship seems like no community at all.
Friendship has been at the heart of the efforts that led to the realisation of this conference – from the moment the idea arose, to the funding and organisation of the gathering. Nature's Constitutional Assembly grew from a small circle of friends and acquaintances who were interested in explicitly placing friendship with the living world at the heart of an event celebrating democracy. When I was thinking about how we could widen the circle after last year's Assembly, reaching out to potential friends in the other Nordic countries, seemed like a sensible next step.
Some of the projects and initiatives we’re inspired by
GARN
Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature
International Rights of Nature Tribunal
A forum for people to speak on behalf of Nature
WECAN
Women's Earth and Climate Action Network
Earth Charter
Principles that drive a global movement towards a more just, sustainable and peaceful world
Earth Law Center
Giving Nature a Voice in the Legal System
Bioneers
Breakthrough solutions for restoring people and planet
Movement Rights
Aligning human law with the laws of the natural world
Work That Reconnects Network
A regenerative and thriving world for all beings
Thomas Berry and The Great Work
A site about the work and legacy of Thomas Berry
Indigenous Environmental Network
A coalition of indigenous, grassroots environmental justice activists
Eco Jurisprudence Monitor
A tracker for ecocentric laws around the world
UN Harmony with Nature Program
Strengthening collaborations to advance Earth Jurisprudence
Wild Law Institute
Governance systems for ecologically sustainable and just societies
The Gaia Foundation
Reviving and protect bio-cultural diversity
Pachamama Alliance
Inspiration and training to restore our relationships with the Earth
Stop Ecocide International
Advisory organisation at the heart of the development of ecocide law
Nature on the Board
Implementing the Rights of Nature within organisations
Coming Home to Life
A podcast with Daniel Christian Wahl, Josie Warden, Philipa Duthie and key regenerative thinkers
Science & Nonduality
Acknowledging humanity as a mere part of the intricate web of life
On the Rights of Nature
Pella Thiel’s podcast about the rights for nature movement
Embassy of the North Sea
Representing the plants, animals, microbes, and people in and around the North Sea
Naturens rättigheter
The Rights of Nature movement in Sweden
Embassy of the Baltic Sea
Well being of human society and nature in the Baltic Sea watershed
Confluence of European Water Bodies
Fostering dialogues and relationships with water
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