The tomatoes are in

I confidently planted out my first tomatoes in late September. A firmly-worded sign alongside the punnets at the nursery told me to hold off until Melbourne Cup day, the traditional marker for the end of frosts, but I just don't believe we'll have another frost. I can't feel any bite in the bounce backs of cold that we get as we come out of winter. 

In the same week, the court of appeal for the Queensland State Land Court ruled that Gina Reinhardt's Alpha coal mine in the Galilee basin was not constrained by the law as it stands. The proponent had argued that if the coal wasn't sold out of Australia, it would be sold by some other country, greenhouse emissions would not be reduced, and so possible impacts on the Great Barrier Reef from global warming were not relevant when considering "potential detrimental impacts" from the mine. The Land Court had agreed with this reasoning, and the Appeal Court found it had no power to change that finding.

It's not the law that's at fault here, but the legislature, and behind the politicians and the lobbyists, us, who think that the world is here to be used by humans as we see fit. The other life that's been here for much longer than us is a secondary consideration. We may look after small pockets of the natural world and limit the damage to specific places we love, but we can't do more than this.

The defining legal assumption of this human-centric view of life is that land is property, and nothing more. From this point on, the rights of the owner to do what they want with their land have primacy and  Crown Land is just land waiting to be used by someone. We are locked in here, the Appeal Court in Queensland, the Barrier Reef and vegetable growers in Riddells Creek, all duct-taped to the very large machines that roll out of Gina's business plans. 

But let's imagine a different system of law, Earth Law, law that assumes "wholeness, and a complex and deeply interdependent life-support network that rejects the logic that gives priority to the 'part' as distinct from the whole, whether it is the individual versus the community or the State versus the world." (Harmony with Nature, United Nations, 2016). Earth Law views human rights as contingent on our respecting the rights of nature. That's where we came from, that's what has nurtured us as we've become what we are. Nature means that wetland, that creek, that grassland. 

In 2008, the Ecuadorian people put the rights of nature in their constitution! Article 71 of the constitution of Ecuador states that "Nature, or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain itself and regenerate its own vital cycles, structure, functions and its evolutionary processes, and that any person, people, community or nationality may demand the observance of the rights of the natural environment before public bodies." 

Thanks to the New Ecological Discourses reading group for finding this report. Our monthly discussions, like this one on Earth Law, often leave me perplexed by how difficult it is to shift the ways we live. The Environmental Defenders Office in Queensland will appeal the Alpha coal mine decision. I will see how the tomato seedlings are faring. And on the frosts: was I right or was I right?!

Ross Colliver, Riddells Creek Landcare