fighting for environmental rights
The legitimization of environmental
rights is critical for communities around
the world that are struggling to protect
their livelihoods and ecosystems from the
impacts of economic globalization. One of
the most essential environmental rights is
access to and control over the natural
resources that enable survival, including
land, shelter, food, water and air.
Environmental rights also include political
rights for indigenous peoples and other
collectivities including fisherfolk and
farmers; the right to information and
participation in decisionmaking; freedom of
opinion and expression; and the right to
resist unwanted developments. Friends of
the Earth International also believes in
the right for people displaced by
environmental destruction to claim
reparations for violated rights; the right
to claim ecological debt; and the right to
environmental justice.
Environmental rights, and more
specifically collective rights, are
essential for indigenous and tribal people.
There are some 370 million indigenous
peoples in the world constituting some
5,000 different cultures, and they live in
some of the most biodiverse areas of the
planet. When measured by most social and
economic indicators, indigenous and tribal
peoples generally rank among the poorest in
the world. They are often afflicted with
health problems, limited access to basic
services, social conflict and migration.
Their languages, cultures and livelihoods
are often under siege.
However, indigenous peoples bring their
own perspectives to development, which are
based on principles of interdependence and
the sustainable use of natural resources.
Indigenous peoples also have their own
perceptions of what poverty means and how
it should be addressed. For indigenous
peoples like the Ayoreo of Paraguay , for
example, one of the most important
indicators of wealth is the access they
have to the forest and its resources. For
the indigenous Katkari forest people of
India , obtaining legal rights to land has
allowed them to regain some of their
previous economic self-sufficiency (see
page 39
).
In the industrialized world, sustainable
communities must often be created from
scratch. In many southern countries,
however, communities that manage their own
resources have existed for centuries; their
greatest challenge is simply to resist
external threats by claiming their
environmental rights.
