Remembering Nature on Human Rights Day, December 10, 2025

Remembering Nature on Human Rights Day, December 10, 2025

I am Nature Crucified

"Sooner or later, we will have to recognize that the Earth has rights, too, to live without pollution. What mankind must know is that human beings cannot live without Mother Earth, but the planet can live without humans." - Evo Morales

I am Nature crucified by the unending pursuit of progress, 

the goal and measure of the Good Life.

 Dr Abe V Rotor

                                                               Silhouette of a tree skeleton, QC

I am Nature crucified, Paradise lost to my own guardian

whom my Creator assigned custodian of the living earth;

I am Nature crucified by loggers, my kin and neighbors 

annihilated, forever removed from their place of birth;

I am Nature crucified by slash-and-burn farming dreaded

- once lush forests now bare, desertification their fate;

I am Nature crucified, greedy men with giant machines

take hours to destroy what I built for thousands of years;

I am Nature crucified in the name of progress, countries 

vying for wealth and power, fighting among themselves; 

I am Nature crucified, rivers are dammed, lakes dried up,

swamps drained, estuaries blocked, waterways silted;

I am Nature crucified, the landscape littered with wastes,

gases into the air form acid rain, and thin the ozone layer;

I am Nature crucified, flora and fauna losing their natural

gene pools by selective breeding and genetic engineering;

I am Nature crucified, the earth is in fever steadily rising,

ice caps and glaciers melting, raising the level of the sea; 

I am Nature crucified, privacy and rest becoming a luxury

in a runaway population living on fast lanes, and rat race. 

I am Nature crucified, inequitable distribution of wealth

the source of conflict, greed and poverty, unhappiness;

I am Nature crucified by the promise of heaven in afterlife,

the faithful restrained to regain Paradise while on earth.

I am Nature crucified by scholars of never ending debates,

on the goodness of the human race in fraternal praises;

I am Nature crucified by the many denominations of faith,

pitting God against one another in endless proselytizing;

I am Nature crucified by licenses of freedom in extremism,

human rights and democracy - tools of inaction and abuse;

I am Nature crucified by mad scientists splitting the atom,

building cities, tearing the earth, probing ocean and space;

I am Nature crucified by capitalism, consumerism its tool

to stir economy worldwide, wastefulness its consequence;

I am Nature crucified by the unending pursuit of progress,

the goal and measure of superiority, nation against nation;

I am Nature crucified by man’s folly to become immortal:

cryonics, cloning, robotics - triumvirates for singularity.

I am Nature crucified, hungry, thirsty, imprisoned, naked,

abandoned – wishing some souls to stop, look and listen. ~

                 Published Lagro Gazette Jan-Mar 2017

ANNEX

The Rights of Nature in Today's Environmental Revolution

Let us stop making Nature as property but a living entity.

Rights of Nature is the recognition and honoring that Nature has rights. It is the recognition that our ecosystems – including trees, oceans, animals, mountains – have rights just as human beings have rights.  - Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature

Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (GARN)

Members are a diverse network of scientists, attorneys, economists, indigenous leaders, authors, spiritual leaders, business leaders, politicians, actors, homemakers, students, activists: people from all walks of life who are looking to transform our human relationship with our planet. (Internet)
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What are the Rights of Nature?

Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (GARN)

Rights of Nature is the recognition and honoring that Nature has rights.

Rights of Nature is about balancing what is good for human beings against what is good for other species, what is good for the planet as a world. It is the holistic recognition that all life, all ecosystems on our planet are deeply intertwined.

Rather than treating nature as property under the law, rights of nature acknowledges that nature in all its life forms has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles.

And we – the people – have the legal authority and responsibility to enforce these rights on behalf of ecosystems. The ecosystem itself can be named as the injured party, with its own legal standing rights, in cases alleging rights violations.

For indigenous cultures around the world, recognizing rights of nature is consistent with their traditions of living in harmony with nature. All life, including human life, are deeply connected. Decisions and values are based on what is good for the whole.

Nonetheless, for millennia, legal systems around the world have treated land and nature as “property”. Laws and contracts are written to protect the property rights of individuals, corporations, and other legal entities. As such, environmental protection laws legalize environmental harm by regulating how much pollution or destruction of nature can occur within the law. Under such law, nature and all of its non-human elements have no standing.

By recognizing rights of nature in its constitution, Ecuador – and a growing number of communities in the United States – are basing their environmental protection systems on the premise that nature has inalienable rights, just as humans do. This premise is a radical but natural departure from the assumption that nature is property under the law.

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

Acknowledgement witth gratitude: Internet for Annex The Rights of Nature with photo; Lagro Gazette for reprint of I am Nature Crucified. 

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