GOVERNING PEOPLE FOR EARTH – THE CHALLENGE OF THE 21ST CENTURY - an address by Cormac Cullinan to the United Nations
This address was made by Cormac Cullinan, the author of Siber Ink's WILD LAW, the second edition of which will shortly be published, to the United Nations General Assembly Interactive Dialogue on living in harmony with Nature, on Wednesday 20 April 2011. In it he proposes a radical revision of the way legal systems regard the Earth and the way in which legal rights are viewed and granted. Read his introductory comments below and download the entire address in pdf form by clicking the link provided.
THE CONTEXT FOR THIS DIALOGUE
Living on borrowed time
Perhaps the most obvious but fundamental point to make is that human activities are degrading Earth, the community that gave rise to humanity and is our only home, at an accelerating rate. Human activities have already caused such severe impacts on natural systems that several crucial boundaries or limits have been exceeded, for example in relation to the emission of greenhouse gasses and the degradation of many ecosystems. This has destabilised ecological balances and means that unless we are able to reduce those impacts to within these boundaries, Nature will establish new ecological balances – probably under conditions unsuitable for humans. In other words we are already living on borrowed time. It is no longer valid to ask how much further we can exploit Earth. We must now focus on preventing further harm and healing the damage already done.
The magnitude of the task
The second point to appreciate is the magnitude and significance of the challenge now facing humanity because under-estimating this has led us to pursue inadequate responses. Human impacts have precipitated changes in Earth’s systems that are significant, not merely on historical time-scales, but on geological time scales. The point here is that we are not dealing with an historic crisis such as a world war, which is significant on a scale of decades or possibly even a century. The transition in planetary conditions that has already commenced is significant on a scale of many millions of years. To give but one example, as many of you will know, we are already in the early stages of the 6th period of mass extinction – the last one of which saw the demise of the dinosaurs approximately 65 million years ago.
The United Nations and the international community has in the past dealt with many wars, political changes and humanitarian crises and other events of great historic significance. However it is important to appreciate that the situation that we now face is of a different order of magnitude and that a different order of responses is required. We are dealing here with issues that go far beyond national self-interest and geo-political balances of power – we are required now to make decisions and to take action that will play a significant part in determining the future conditions for life on this planet. We are dealing with a transition that is unparalleled in our evolutionary history, a transition the likes of which our species has never seen before. In my view we have been attempting to deal with these issues using governance techniques designed for dealing with problems of a different order of magnitude and of a different nature. If we use inadequate tools and approaches we will fail.
A crisis of governance
Thirdly it is important to appreciate that what are commonly referred to as “environmental crises” are in fact symptoms of flawed governance systems. Climate change, desertification, the loss of fertile soil, the depletion and pollution of fresh water systems, deforestation, the catastrophic decline in biological diversity, the collapse of fish stocks, and so and so on, are all caused by what humans are doing. For thousands of years the human species has flourished largely as a consequence of modifications that we made to our environment which altered it in our favour and made it possible for more and more of our children to survive. However it is now clear that we have modified Nature, our habitat, to the extent that the prospects of the majority of our children surviving and flourishing is now being diminished rather than enhanced. Any species that degrades its habitat to the extent that it severely diminishes the prospects of its offspring flourishing is heading for a precipitous decline in population and potentially extinction. In other words, from an evolutionary perspective our on-going degradation of Nature does not make sense and the fact that we are continuing to behave in this manner indicates that our methods of regulating and guiding human behaviour are dysfunctional. In other words there is something fundamentally wrong with our governance systems.
By governance I mean the systems which societies consciously use to influence the behaviour of people, including policies, laws, institutional arrangements, values and economic instruments. This is closely related to our own internal governance systems such as personal ethics, morals and values. Changing the patterns of human behaviour that are degrading Earth is primarily, a question of governance systems – and as you all know, the governance of world affairs is at the heart of the United Nations.
Inadequate responses
The fourth point that is essential to contextualise this dialogue is that the strategies, actions plans, treaties and laws that the international community and national governments have adopted to date in response to these issues are failing. Furthermore, in my opinion, it is now implausible to conclude that doing more of the same will succeed.
This may sound like a harsh assessment. The last two or three decades has seen an unprecedented increase in the volume of international instruments dealing with environmental issues as well as a proliferation of regional, national and sub-national legislation, policies and other instruments dealing with the environment. However despite some notable successes, judged by the standard of the health of Earth, rather than by political standards, we are undoubtedly failing. Only has to read the succession of reports produced by the United Nations itself, such as the Global Environmental Outlook series, to appreciate that the situation is getting worse not better. In fact, despite technological advances and a greater public awareness, global society has almost certainly never been as far away from being ecologically sustainable as it is today. And tomorrow it will be further away.
What the decades of data about the deteriorating condition of the global environment is telling us is that our current governance systems are not fit for purpose.
THE CRUCIAL QUESTIONS
If our governance responses are not working it raises the question of why not?
Cormac Cullinan's entire address can be downloaded by clicking on this link. The second edition of Wild Law will be published in May 2011 by Siber Ink and will be available as an ebook and a conventional paper book. If you wish to be sent an order form on publication, please click here.