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with nearly 70% of the vote, which, among other things, grants legal status to Nature itself, and the right of Nature and its critters to exist and to function properly--a first in the world!
What this means is this: In Ecuador, several groups of extremely poor people who live in the rainforest sued Chevron-Texaco for $20 billion, for a series of toxic oil spills that were worse than the Exxon Valdez, and are described as the "Rainforest Chernobyl." These very poor people now have a completely polluted and degraded environment--fisheries gone dead, for instance, and water pollution in streams and rivers that stretches all the way to Peru--and a very high cancer rate. They are suing for a cleanup and for health care. This lawsuit has been in the courts--first in the U.S., then remanded to Ecuador--for more than a decade. It is dependent now on one lawyer--a very poor man himself, who has had to take two and more jobs in his young lifetime, to support half a dozen siblings, and when he took on the lawsuit against Chevron-Texaco, it was his first case. He and others involved in the lawsuit have suffered death threats, and all the hardships of poverty (and a highly toxic, polluted environment), along with the difficulties and expenses of litigation.
The poor tribes are winning the lawsuit. A $15 to $20 billion judgement against Chevron-Texaco is expected soon.
But what if the people involved in this lawsuit had succumbed to the many pressures upon them? This new Constitutional provision in Ecuador, giving legal standing to Mother Nature, means that anyone could intervene--the government, environmental groups--suing on behalf, not of injured humans, but of injured and destroyed ecosystems and their fish, birds, waterways and other elements.
It is a revolutionary concept that could help save the planet. We need sanctuaries, for sure, but we also need reparations, to repair extensive damage to Nature--most often inflicted by unaccountable global corporate predators--and very stiff consequences for pollution and destruction of Nature, as a deterrent.
Fish sanctuaries have proven to be a boon to the fishing business. Fisheries quickly recover in ocean sanctuary areas, and the fish migrate to permissible fishing areas. Everyone benefits. And most fishermen, especially the small operators, are respectful of sanctuaries and intolerant toward violators. Ocean sanctuaries need to be expanded, and need to include more than whales or dolphins. The whales and dolphins have to eat, and humans have to eat, and the creation of large, all inclusive ocean sanctuaries--as well as curtailment of pollution--is the best way to accomplish that. The oceans are DYING. Large areas are now bereft of life. We MUST reverse this. Ocean sanctuaries, and laws like Ecuador's, are the way to do it. Make pollution extremely expensive, and make fishing illegal in large ocean nurseries, and enforce these rules, and we may save the planet yet.
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