Guest Opinion | Amend the Charter with a “Universal” bill of rights that includes the rights of nature

||| FROM JULIENNE BATTALIA FOR COMMUNITY RIGHTS SAN JUAN ISLANDS |||

Is there potential for expanding San Juan County’s Home Rule Charter to include a Bill of Rights recognizing the Rights of Nature within the Salish Sea ecosystem? The Salish Sea is a transboundary body of water that goes from Olympia all the way up to the Johnstone Strait in British Columbia. The threats to this sea are multiple and diverse. To be really successful in a movement for rights of nature, for rights of the Salish Sea, we ultimately must build coalition across counties, countries and with the indigenous communities who have engaged within the Salish Sea since time immemorial.

But as always, movements must begin at home. Our home here is in the heart of the Salish Sea and as such it has the potential to be a powerful beacon, catalyst and connector for that eventual wider effort.

For me the idea that nature has a right to survive to thrive and reproduce her life cycles, well I think this just cuts to the heart of what is the essential core issue of the ecological crisis. Nature is continually considered only a resource, as property to be owned used and abused by us, and by corporations. We are blind to the fact that nature is a living being. This deep misunderstanding, that we are separate from nature, has been culturally absorbed by us for generations. But now, within our culture and around the world a paradigm shift is happening. The movement to recognize that nature has inherent rights, holds a tremendous seed of potency, turning our hearts and minds toward seeing the truth, the truth of how we live in a shared world with nature, and we have a shared future with nature. For if our environment fails to thrive we also fail to thrive.

I have been politically active in all kinds of campaigns from anti nuclear weapons, to individual environmental causes, to the public health questions about electromagnetic radiation, but this, this cause, this action for the earth and for the Salish Sea, this has set my heart on fire more than any other political action I have engaged in before.

On November 8, 2005, San Juan County became the sixth and smallest county in Washington State to adopt a charter form of governance. The SJC Home Rule Charter, as it stands now, is a document that provides structure and laws about the framework of our government, and it provides a limited path for us to pass laws by initiative. It states nothing about our values as a Community, though it can and it should. Now is the time to take this seed of true democracy and build upon that work and move it to the next step.

The Home Rule Charter is basically our County’s constitution, and as such it has the potential to be expanded to include a Bill of Rights, a ‘universal’ Bill of Rights, that includes not only human rights but also rights of nature. This would develop the document into something that states our values as a community, that presents those values as rights, rights that provide protections for our Community and for the communities in the natural world with whom we share. Our Federal and State Constitutions do this, they state our values and turn them into laws.

I think people in San Juan County want a real say in how they want our County to be governed, in what kinds and how much development is allowed to happen. I think this idea appeals to the people of this County and in this country. This is an American thing. It is a very American idea that people have and should have rights, the right to self government, the right to protest peacefully, the right to free speech, the right to enforce laws that we decide upon as a community. Do we have a right to clean air, clean water, does the Salish Sea? Does the cedar tree?

The idea that nature has rights absolutely pushes the envelope, striking right at the core of the environmental crisis. Yet this is also what democracy looks like. Democracy is about people and communities like ours pushing at the edges. Presently there are over 100 municipalities in the United States moving forward with Bills of Rights recognizing the rights of nature. There is something happening here. Let us be a part of it.

Many ask, ” Well what about the comprehensive plan, doesn’t that provide enough environmental protection?” The Comprehensive plan articulates a vision for our county but it is dependent upon the interpretation of the County Counsel to turn that vision into law. Environmental laws that are based on regulation often prove to be inadequate to sufficiently address the destruction of water and soil, the mass extinction of species, and the climate crisis. This failure is, in great part, due to the treatment of nature as property and the legal barriers to natural ecosystems defending their rights in court.

A paradigm shift is needed, is happening, that moves us from thinking about nature as property to the realization that we are a ‘part’ of the ‘whole’, we are not separate from nature.

When we empower a Home Rule Charter with a ‘universal’ Bill of Rights that includes Rights of Nature it changes the status of nature as property, providing protections that have a much greater potential to stop and prevent the destruction of and support the restoration of ecosystems. Imagine it, imagine if the earth and sea were understood as the living beings they are. Imagine if humans understood, respected and acted responsibly from this truth. Recognizing in our Home Rule Charter, in San Juan County, that nature, the Salish Sea, the orca, the salmon, the eelgrass, the marble butterfly, the hummingbird, the great cedar tree, that each have a right to breathe clean air, to absorb clean water, to have its life cycles continue onward into the future, I feel this just screams of the truth.

We live in such a beautiful place here in the San Juan Islands. What a gift we enjoy, to be surrounded by this magnificent Sea, this abundant land. But our neighbors, like the salmon, the Southern Resident Orca, and the forests, they need our help. They are on the brink of extinction, and they need us to respond.

Many ask, “What about the enforcement of these rights?” Our Federal Bill of Rights has very few details about the enforcement of those rights, but this did not deter our forefathers from stating those rights, and allowing the enforcement of those rights to play out through legislation and judgements.

Many of the Home Rule Charter review commissions are very intrigued and very interested in this idea. Community Rights San Juan Island (CRSJIM) has been asked to present, and a special sub-committee has been created just to explore this idea. This is a very exciting time. Please join us by using your voice. Tell the Home Rule Charter review commissioners that you want a ‘universal’ Bill of Rights amendment in the San Juan County Home Rule Charter.