Conference of birds, batik by Robin Paris
Rebuilding true security in an age of insecurity.
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HUMANITY SEEMS TO be in a free fall towards disaster. The ecological fabric of our existence is being torn apart, as the violence of corporate globalisation combines with the violence of war.
Alternatives to war, non-sustainability and social and economic injustice are becoming a survival imperative. These alternatives need to combine our making peace with the planet and our making peace among people from diverse cultures. One is not possible without the other. The roots of terrorism, violence and war lie in environmental and economic exclusion and the insecurity it generates. People's security does not lie in larger military budgets, bigger bombs and stronger police states. It lies in ecological security, in economic security, in cultural and political security. Rebuilding these multiple securities is the only way to create peace, justice and sustainability.
Why are we as a species destroying the very basis of our survival and existence? Why has insecurity been the result of every attempt to build security? How can we as members of the Earth community reinvent security to ensure the survival of all species and the future of diverse cultures? How do we turn from the ruins of the culture of death and destruction, to the culture that sustains and celebrates life?
We can do it by breaking free of the mental prison of separation and exclusion
and see the world in its interconnectedness and non-separability, allowing
new alternatives to emerge. Despair turns to hope. Violence gives way
to non-violence. Scarcity transforms into abundance, and insecurity to
security. We need once more to feel at home on the Earth and with each
other. We need a new paradigm that allows us to move from the pervasive
culture of violence, to a culture of non-violence, creativity and peace:
that is the Earth Democracy Paradigm.
EARTH DEMOCRACY IS based on creating living economies that protect life on Earth and provide basic needs and economic security to all. It is based on living democracy, which is inclusive. The Earth Democracy Movement is a commitment to go beyond the crisis of economic injustice and inequality, ecological non-sustainablility, the decay of democracy and the rise of terrorism. Earth Democracy provides an alternative world-view in which humans are embedded in the Earth family. We begin to see that we are connected to each other through love, compassion, ecological responsibility and economic justice, which replace greed, consumerism and competition as objectives of human life.
In Earth Democracy, economics, politics and society move from negative systems that benefit a few in the short run, to positive systems that ensure the fundamental right to life of all species. The maintenance of life in its diversity and integrity is the basis of relationships in Earth Democracy.
As the basis of relationships, Earth Democracy transforms our minds and our actions, and liberates us from patterns of thought and paradigms that have pushed us to our contemporary predicament. It helps address the common roots of problems that are defined separately as economic, ecological and political. Earth Democracy enables us to make mind shifts that are conducive to meeting our needs without destroying other species and cultures, and to improving human welfare while ensuring the welfare of all beings. In India, we pray: "Let all beings be happy."
Earth Democracy embodies principles that enable us to transcend the polarisation, divisions and exclusions that are pitting the economy against ecology, development against environment, people against the planet, and nations against one another in a new culture of fear and hate. It is symbolised in farms rejuvenating biodiversity, and species acting in mutuality to benefit one another. Earth Democracy re-contextualises humans as one member of the Earth family and diverse cultures in the mosaic of cultural diversity.
SINCE OTHER SPECIES do not vote, cannot lobby, and have no purchasing power in the marketplace, Earth democracy creates an obligation on us as humans to take their well-being into account. As His Holiness the Dalai Lama said on his 60th birthday, "All beings have a right to well-being and happiness. We have a duty to ensure their well-being." This creates human responsibility as trustees, instead of the dominant notion of mastery, control and ownership.
Earth Democracy privileges diversity in nature and society in form and in function. When the intrinsic worth and value of every life form are recognised, biological diversity and cultural diversity flourish. Monocultures result from exclusion and dominance of species: one variety, one race, one religion, one world-view. Monocultures are an indication of coercion and loss of freedom. Freedom implies diversity. Diversity signifies freedom.
Earth Democracy nourishes diversity by going beyond the logic of exclusion, of apartheid, of 'us' and 'them', of 'either/or'. It implies multifunctionality, the logic of 'and', of inclusion. It transcends the false polarisation of wild vs. cultivated, nature vs. culture, or even the false clash of cultures. It allows for the forest farm and the farmed forest; it recognises that biodiversity can be preserved and can also meet human needs. Through diversity replacing monocultures, and multi-dimensionality replacing one-dimensional systems, the negative economics of scarcity-creation can be replaced by the positive economics of mutually shared abundance and guaranteed provision of basic needs and access to vital resources. Diversity and creativity flourish in nature and in culture.
EARTH DEMOCRACY PUTS responsibility at the centre of our relationships, with rights flowing from responsibility, instead of the dominant paradigm where there are rights without responsibility and responsibilities without rights. The separation of rights and responsibility is at the root of ecological devastation and gender and class inequality. Corporations that earn profits from the chemical industry, or from genetic pollution resulting from genetically engineered crops, do not have to bear the burden of that pollution. The social and ecological costs are externalised and borne by others who are excluded from decisions and from benefits.
Earth Democracy is based on those who pay the price for having a say, and those who carry responsibility for having the rights. This creates direct or basic democracy. On the one hand this implies decisions moving downwards, from global institutions and centralised governments to local communities. On the other hand it implies a shift in our interpretation of sovereignty. Therefore, Earth Democracy moves the constellation of power from corporations to the people, and in so doing, rebalances the role and functions of the state, which is becoming increasingly undemocratic.
Earth Democracy is about life. It is about natural rights to the conditions of staying alive. It is everyday life and decisions and freedoms related to everyday living - the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the water we drink. It is not just about elections and casting votes. It is a permanently vibrant democracy. It combines economic democracy with political democracy and ecological democracy. It creates positive economies, positive politics, positive identities. It creates security, and hence the conditions of peace.
Earth Democracy offers a potential for changing the way governments, intergovernmental organisations and corporations operate. It creates a new paradigm for global governance while empowering local communities. It creates the possibility of strengthening ecological security while improving economic security. And on the foundations of ecological and economic security it makes societies immune to the virus of hatred and fear. Earth Democracy offers a new way of seeing in which everything is not at war with everything else, but through which we can cooperate to create peace, sustainability and justice. o
Vandana Shiva is author of Water Wars, Pluto Press, £12.99.
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