Wild Law: Protecting Biological and Cultural Diversity First Edition
Author(s): Cormac Cullinan (Author)
Publisher: Green Books
Publication Date: 20 Nov. 2003
Edition: First Edition
Language: English
Print length: 240 pages
ISBN-10: 1903998352
ISBN-13: 9781903998359
Book Description
We are rapidly destroying our only habitat, Earth. It is becoming clear that many of the treaties, laws and policies concluded in recent years have failed to slow down, let alone halt or reverse, this process. Cormac Cullinan shows that the survival of the community of life on Earth (including humans) requires us to alter fundamentally our understanding of the nature and purpose of law and governance, rather than merely changing laws. In describing what this new Earth governance and Earth jurisprudence might look like, he also gives practical guidance on how to begin moving towards it. Wild Law fuses politics, legal theory, quantum physics and ancient wisdom into a fascinating and eminently readable story. It is an inspiring and stimulating book for anyone who cares about Earth and is concerned about the direction in which the human species is moving.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Wild Law is a stimulating, eminently readable response to our governance crisis. ” — Dr Vandana Shiva, President of the Research Foundation for Science,
About the Author
Cormac Cullinan is an author, practicing environmental attorney, and governance expert who has worked on environmental governance issues in more than twenty countries. He is a director both of Cullinan and Associates, Inc., a specialist environmental and green-business law firm, and the governance consultancy EnAct International.
At the invitation of Bolivia, Cullinan spoke at the 2009 Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen and led the drafting of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, which was proclaimed on April 22, 2010, by the People’s World Conference on Climate Change and the Environment in Bolivia.
In September 2010, Cullinan played a leading role in establishing a Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature and currently sits on the Executive Committee of the Alliance. Cullinan is also a research associate of the University of Cape Town, sits on the City of Cape Town’s climate-change think tank, and is a nonexecutive director of ICLEI Africa. He lives in Cape Town, South Africa.
Almost every day I notice signs that more and more people are longing for our species to cease its self-destructive war with Earth and with one another. Despite the hype around the brave new globalised world that is supposed to bring all manner of blessings for our children, an unsettling stench is seeping out through the cracks in the information super-highway. Beneath the shiny surface of our super-, techno-, digitalised-, genetically engineered, globalised, wonder-societies, our planet and our humanity is decaying. Have you ever looked into the bright, clear eyes of a child and tried to explain why the whales are being killed and the forests burnt? Why playing naked in the sun is dangerous and some streams are poisonous? Why some frogs now have five legs and teenagers blow themselves up in the process of killing other children in the Middle East? Do you ever wonder why some of us work so furiously while others can t find work and why either way, a deep satisfaction and a sense of belonging is so elusive?
This book doesn t try to provide all the answers to these questions. However, it is an attempt to look one aspect of our 21st-century reality in the eye. The truth is that the dominant civilisations on the planet are behaving in a way that is leading our children and us into a bleak, unsustainable future that most of us do not want. It is a future that involves the casual destruction of ancient human cultures and biological communities, and the extinction of a shocking number of living beings that have co-evolved with us. Their passing involves not only the wanton destruction of millions of years of the Earth s experience and wisdom recorded in genetic structures and the complex webs of relationships within ecosystems; it also permanently diminishes the Earth Community and robs the survivors of the opportunity to co-evolve with them.
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