New multimedia project to examine the rights of nature

[Joe Shlabotnik]

Canada is one of only 16 UN members worldwide that do not recognize the right to a healthy environment — and it shows, said a local environmental activist.

Silver Donald Cameron is on an international journey to capture on film the benefits of enshrining environmental rights. He hopes a multimedia project, dubbed GreenRights, will spur Canadians to fight to get environmental rights added to their own constitution.

“I hope it leaves Canadians jealous,” said Cameron from Ecuador, where he had recently attended the Global Rights of Nature Summit and Public Tribunal.

Who it’s not working for is Canadians, said David Boyd. The British Columbia-based environmental lawyer inspired the GreenRights project when he visited Halifax in 2012 for the launch of his book The Right to a Healthy Environment. Boyd, along with the organizations Ecojustice and the David Suzuki Foundation, have been fighting to get the right to a healthy environment added to Canada’s charter.

“Basically, having a constitutional right to a healthy environment would mean that every person in Canada would have a right to breathe clean air, drink safe drinking water, to eat healthy nutritious food and to live in a country that has flourishing, healthy ecosystems,” said Boyd.

“And a constitutional right to a healthy environment delivers on those essential promises by producing stronger environmental laws, better implementation and enforcement of those laws and enabling greater public participation in environmental decision-making.”

More at: http://halifax.mediacoop.ca/story/new-multimedia-project-examine-rights-nature/20971

Now, wouldn't a constitutional right to a healthy environment throw a wrench into the machine. One can dream.