scholarly journals Indigenous Natural and First Law in Planetary Health

Challenges ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 29
Author(s):  
Nicole Redvers ◽  
Anne Poelina ◽  
Clinton Schultz ◽  
Daniel M. Kobei ◽  
Cicilia Githaiga ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Global Environmental Change ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Planetary Health ◽  
Natural Laws ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Indigenous Paradigm ◽  
The Universe

Indigenous Peoples associate their own laws with the laws of the natural world, which are formally known as or translated as Natural or First Law. These laws come from the Creator and the Land through our ancestral stories and therefore, they are sacred. All aspects of life and existence depend on living and following these natural First Laws. Since colonization, Indigenous Peoples’ Natural Laws have been forcibly replaced by modern-day laws that do not take into account the sacred relationship between the Earth and all of her inhabitants. The force of societies who live outside of Natural Law has ensured the modern-day consequences of not living in balance with nature. Pandemics and global environmental change, including climate change, are all consequences of not following the Natural Laws that are encapsulated by the interconnected nature of the universe. Here we discuss Natural Law from an Indigenous paradigm and worldview which carries implications for planetary health and wider environmental movements around the globe.

The Archaeology of Global Environment Change

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carole L. Crumley
Keyword(s):  
Human Activity ◽  
Global Environmental Change ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Human Environment ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Urgent Task ◽  
The Two Cultures ◽  
Non Linear System

Recent, widely recognized changes in the Earth system are, in effect, changes in the coupled human–environment system. We have entered the Anthropocene, when human activity—along with solar forcing, volcanic activity, precession, and the like—must be considered a component (a ‘driver’) of global environmental change (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000; Levin 1998). The dynamic non-linear system in which we live is not in equilibrium and does not act in a predictable manner (see Fairhead, chapter 16 this volume for further discussion of non-equilibrium ecology). If humankind is to continue to thrive, it is of utmost importance that we identify the ideas and practices that nurture the planet as well as our species. Our best laboratory for this is the past, where long-, medium-, and short-term variables can be identified and their roles evaluated. Perhaps the past is our only laboratory: experimentation requires time we no longer have. Thus the integration of our understanding of human history with that of the Earth system is a timely and urgent task. Archaeologists bring two particularly useful sets of skills to this enterprise: how to collaborate, and how to learn from the past. Archaeology enjoys a long tradition of collaboration with colleagues in both the biophysical sciences and in the humanities to investigate human activity in all planetary environments. Archaeologists work alongside one another in the field, live together in difficult conditions, welcome collaboration with colleagues in other disciplines—and listen to them carefully—and tell compelling stories to an interested public. All are rare skills and precious opportunities. Until recently few practitioners of biophysical, social science, and humanities disciplines had experience in cross-disciplinary collaboration. Many scholars who should be deeply engaged in collaboration to avert disaster (for example, specialists in tropical medicine with their counterparts in land use change) still speak different professional ‘languages’ and have very different traditions of producing information. C. P. Snow, in The Two Cultures (1993 [1959]), was among the first to warn that the very structure of academia was leading to this serious, if unintended, outcome.

scholarly journals Planetary Health Ethics: Beyond First Principles

Challenges ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Foster ◽  
Jennifer Cole ◽  
Andrew Farlow ◽  
Ivica Petrikova
Keyword(s):  
Code Of Ethics ◽  
Global Environmental Change ◽  
Ethical Framework ◽  
Future Health ◽  
Transdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Planetary Health ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Health Community ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Operating Space

Planetary health is a transdisciplinary approach that aims to advance the understanding of the links between human-driven changes to the planet and their consequences, and to develop appropriate solutions to the challenges identified. This emerging movement has not yet agreed upon a code of ethics to underpin the rapidly expanding body of research being carried out in its name. However, a code of ethics might support the principles for planetary health set out in the Canmore Declaration of 2018. Phrases such as “Public Health 2.0”, “Human Health in an Era of Global Environmental Change”, or “A safe and just operating space for humanity” are often used in planetary health discussions, but are not always clearly defined and so far, the field lacks a strong guiding ethical framework. In this paper, we propose a starting point towards a code of ethics for planetary health that builds on the Canmore Declaration. We chose to propose 12 ethical principles in recognition of the need for a 12-Step Programme for the planet. The human race must identify and reject damaging behaviours. Evidence of the harm we are causing the planet is no longer enough and refraining from certain current practices is essential for Earth’s future health. We must motivate advocacy and calls for action. We believe a shared ethical code can act as a tool to enable and encourage that process. This paper is presented to the planetary health community as a starting point, not as a finished agenda. We welcome comments, critiques, additions and the opportunity to rework our approach accordingly.

THE LIMITATIONS OF RELIGIOUS ENVIRONMENTALISM FOR INDIA

2002 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Tomalin
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Intrinsic Value ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Use Value ◽  
Aesthetic Value ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Nature Religion ◽  
Religious Systems

AbstractMany environmentalists draw upon religious teachings to argue that humanity ought to transform its relationship with the natural world. They maintain that religious systems teach that the earth is sacred and has an intrinsic value beyond its use value to humanity. However, whilst many cultures have religious practices or teachings associated with the natural world, such traditions of nature religion ought to be distinguished from religious environmentalism. This paper suggests that religious environmentalism is limited because it is a product of Western ideas about nature, in particular a 'romantic' vision of nature as a realm of purity and aesthetic value. Although in India, for example, people worship certain trees, this is not evidence of an inherent environmental awareness, if only because such practices are very ancient and pre-date concerns about a global environmental crisis. Moreover, many people in developing countries, such as India, are directly dependent upon the natural world and cannot afford radically to alter their behaviour towards nature to accommodate religious environmentalist goals.

Plant Sex from Empedocles to Theophrastus

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lincoln Taiz ◽  
Lee Taiz
Keyword(s):  
Direct Observation ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Biological Information ◽  
Natural Laws ◽  
Physical Laws ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Plant Sex ◽  
Divine Order

“Plant Sex from Empedocles to Theophrastus” investigates Greek philosophies concerning plants. The Pythagoreans and pre-Socratic philosophers taught that the universe was governed by a divine order that could be understood through mathematical or physical laws, and that “natural laws” were discoverable by observation and logic. This tradition eventually gave rise to modern science. Unlike Plato, who viewed the physical world as “shadows,” knowable only through mathematics and abstract philosophy, Aristotle and Theophrastus regarded everything in the natural world that could be perceived by the senses as both real and knowable, and believed direct observation combined with reason and logic were the most reliable guides to truth. They systematized a prodigious amount of biological information, but were unable to elucidate the problem of plant sex. Theophrastus’ failed to understand the so-called “degeneration” of trees grown from seed because it couldn’t be understood without a two-sex model. Biblical theorists fared no better.

Social Movements as Problematic Agents of Global Environmental Change

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Yearley
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Environmental Change ◽  
Global Environmental Change ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Environmental Groups ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Political Objective ◽  
Movement Organizations

By the end of the old millennium, social movement organizations (SMOs) had become the most popularly acclaimed and, in many respects, trusted agencies advocating global environmental change. They had won widespread public admiration because of their daring and heroic undertakings, because of the verve and symbolic acuity of their actions and because they seemed to be in the vanguard of environmental change. Of course, commentators noted that governments and inter-governmental agencies might have more power to set and influence environmental standards, that companies might be making the greatest impacts on the environment, that it was often scientists who identified possible environmental problems which were ‘off the radar’ of environmental groups, and that the daily consumer choices of the industrialized world’s massed citizens and commuters might outweigh their efforts. All the same, social movements represented the quintessential environmental actor. In cultural terms, environmental organizations stood for the environment in a way which the Environment Minister, the collected scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or Shell simply could not. Moreover, those movement organizations which focused on issue of global environmental change seemed particularly successful; in the late 1980s through to the early 1990s—around the time of the Earth Summit— they were rewarded with disproportionately rapid growth and cultural cachet (see McCormick 1991: 152–5 who cites Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in this regard). And their market prominence within the NGO sector has largely continued. At the same time, social movements commanded the attention of social scientists and commentators. For one thing, social movements and the associated movement organizations appeared to confound expectations. Far from politics as usual, social movements indicated how successfully and how enduringly people could be organized—or organize themselves —around non-conventional political objectives. Standard economic and political theories did not anticipate that people ‘ought’ to mobilize so successfully around a diffuse political objective such as global environmental improvement.

4. The Great Acceleration

2018 ◽  
pp. 52-74
Author(s):  
Erle C. Ellis
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Global Environmental Change ◽  
System Level ◽  
Earth System ◽  
System A ◽  
The Earth ◽  
System P ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Earth’S Climate ◽  
Great Acceleration

The challenge for the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) in 1999 was how to integrate the evidence of humans transforming Earth’s functioning as a system into a coherent overview of global environmental change. The IGBP report Global Change and the Earth System: A Planet Under Pressure (2004) identified a dramatic mid-20th-century step-change in anthropogenic global environmental change, which would come to be called ‘The Great Acceleration’. ‘The Great Acceleration’ outlines the complex, multi-causal, system-level set of processes that have altered the Earth system, from domestication of land to human alterations of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere. It also discusses tipping points that result in relatively rapid, non-linear, and potentially irreversible ‘step-changes’ in Earth’s climate system.

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