The legal personalization of entities of nature? Why the term “international”? What about the Loire?
Discover some of the inner workings of the Vers une internationale des rivières et autres éléments de la nature project.
crédit photo : bruno marmirolli
The legal personalization of entities of nature? First gear in the story...
“At the root of this project is a revolution in culture, which involves the legal personalization of the entities of nature. So, in short, for centuries, modern law has considered all non-human natural forces as objects or chattels or things. And it's only since the beginning of our century, the 21st century, that we've seen different populations, often indigenous, demanding that their way of seeing the world be recognized in law, and in particular often considering mountains, forests, lakes, rivers as beings, acting beings, beings with which we cohabit, relate, discuss, co-evolve.”
Why the word “international”? Second gear of the story...
“First and foremost, because since the beginning of the 21st century, there has been this magnificent thing, what I have sometimes called the legal uprising of the Earth. We see a whole host of ecosystems, through the demands of human populations, gaining the status of legal subjects. In the case of rivers, it's been the Whanganui in New Zealand, the Atrato in Colombia, the Magpie in Canada... In fact, many rivers and ecosystems around the world are becoming subjects of law, which represents a profound change in our way of seeing things, in our legal concepts. And so there's this conception of a geographical international... But there is also, in this word, a call to return to the 19th century, to the struggles for the social rights of human workers... Today, not only are human bodies exhausted by the pace of work and the quest for productivity, but so too, in solidarity, are earthly bodies... So we need to read the disruption of the Earth and climate, and the depletion of nature, as manifestations of anger tending towards an “international of earthly workers”...
crédit photo : bruno marmirolli
And the Loire? The story's third gear...
“I'd be very happy if the Loire were the red thread, the key-character of this narrative, a river as a place of convergence, of confluence of narratives, of the branches of the narrative; therefore, not a heroic, solitary character, isolated from other forms of life; rather, a great earthly body that connects a large number of other non-human and human characters to be the echo chamber of their struggles, their struggles for recognition. ... for life; because every narrative needs a story, a place, a body... the Loire will be this body-medium, this body-vibratory that launches our narrative of transformation...”
