Category: Voices from the ground

Introduction¹⁾

Discourses on practices of grassroots democracy often focus on modes of popular participation centered on institutional avenues such as elections and local governance issues dealing with decentralization, devolution, and local autonomy (Mohanty 2007, 15–32). At the local level, consequent interests are on “restraining arbitrary and corrupt official behaviour and enhancing the accountability of grassroots authorities” (Perry and Goldman 2007, 1).

In the political arena where countervailing forces operate, grassroots democracy is often related to social movements and peoples’ organizations intervening in the political process through advocacies and campaigns on regime and systems change and/or devising strategies and practices that engage with the state. For instance, farmers and rural poor in Northeast Thailand “assert their rights and demand state compensations” and engage in “direct actions towards the state (and) press their demands for corrective action” (Prasartset 2004, 140).

Even when a less state-dependent perspective is raised in terms of “participatory governance through the empowerment of communities and grassroots, the process is ultimately depicted in terms of achieving “an increased ability of the poor to effect or influence state policy” and bring about “institutional reforms” (Angeles 2004, 184). Among “civil society” groups advocating “social transformation” in the Philippines, Franco (2004, 100–1) points to “a still unrealized institutional setting where effective access to democratic governance is available to the entire citizenry . . . (and) . . . aiming to promote change by exercising citizenship power in state policy-making and implementation.”

The exercise of grassroots democracy, however, need not focus on the state and its formal institutions. The role of the state is not intrinsic to the practice of grassroots democracy. Kaufman (1997, 1) describes grassroots democracy as that which “allow people in their communities and workplaces to control their lives and livelihoods (entailing) . . . grassroots mobilization and the development of community forms of popular democracy.” In its generic sense, grassroots democracy is often equated with “popular participation” and is seen as both a goal and a method of change.

Popular participation, moreover, has an economic character. Parameswaran (2008, 127), notes that participation can be strengthened by “(a) giving primacy to the primary sector and, fragmentation of ownership, and collectivization of operations; (b) relying on small-scale, but efficient industries, rather than on mega enterprises; (c) making small not only beautiful but also powerful and thus (d) making local economies strong enough to withstand the onslaught of global economies.” This dimension of grassroots democracy where the state and state-related matters recede in importance and focus remains relatively unexplored and have not been given the proper attention they deserve.

This alternative framework looks at how the poor and their communities have (through the ages) been able to manage their own lives through mechanisms that lie outside the formal systems of governance and economics. This sector encompasses political, economic, social, and cultural aspects. The list of alternative practices could be enormous and include, among others, (1) age-old but tried and tested production and distribution systems, (2) local decision-making processes, (3) informal land market mechanisms, (4) local credit systems (not usury), (5) concepts of common and individual property rights, (6) notions of justice and entitlement, (7) non-formal and folk education, (8) indigenous health care systems, (9) local cultural norms and belief systems, (10) everyday forms of resistance, etc. In contemporary times, there are efforts by poor and marginalized peoples sidestepping and even violating established legal processes and institutions, e.g., unilaterally taking control of land and other resources to create self-sustaining and viable socio-political and economic communities.

The Program on Alternative Development of the University of the Philippines Center for Integrative and Development Studies (UP CIDS AltDev) recognizes the value of grassroots democracy as depicted in the alternative practices on the ground. For the past three years, UP CIDS AltDev has been researching case studies of practices in Southeast Asia and have documented and published around sixty of such cases.²⁾

More than simple documentation and publication, UP CIDS AltDev has brought practitioners together in three annual Southeast Asian regional conferences where experiences from the ground are shared, exchanges undertaken, challenges identified and lessons learned. The ultimate goal is to establish a new network based on regionalism and transnationalism from below that would challenge the dominant elite-centered and oligarchical-controlled regionalism as exemplified by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Southeast Asian Alternative Practices³⁾

The following three cases of alternative practices illustrate grassroots democracy at work in Thailand, Indonesia, and Timor Leste. They represent efforts by rural communities to practice grassroots democracy in all its dimensions and iterations while asserting their autonomy in building sustainable lives for the peoples.

Southern Peasants’ Federation of Thailand (SPFT).

Inequitable land distribution in Thailand has endured over the years because of the concentrated land management of the Thai state. In addition, capitalist development has commodified land to serve a market economy. The Thai state facilitated the private sector cultivation of cash crops such as oil palm on state-owned lands to respond to the global demand for industrial crops. In Surat Thani Province, Southern Thailand, landless and small-scale peasants have employed alternative economic, political, social, and cultural practices to counter state-centric land management.

In 2003, Thai farmers discovered that around 11,200 hectares of land concessions for oil palm plantations had already expired. Established in 2008, the SPFT has led landless peasants and workers in Surat Thani province, southern Thailand, to unilaterally occupy portions of these lands, establish new community settlements, and to demand equitable land distribution. Their community members, however, have been subjected to intimidation, illegal detention, eviction, death threats, and killings believed to be perpetrated by a real estate mafia and agribusiness interests.

Despite these challenges, they continue to apply their idea of a community land title deed underpinned by the concept of community rights to land and natural resources management. Alternative practices of land management including diversified farming employed by SPFT community members call for participatory development and governance. In alliance with the People’s Movement for a Just Society (P-Move), the SPFT continues to struggle for land rights and advocate redistributing land equitably among landless peasants in Thailand.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic tested SPFT’s self-reliance even as they were deprived of sufficient government relief measures and protective equipment due to the lack of household registration records. Their grassroots-level practices of alternative land management and sustainable food production consisting of collective farming of food crops, goat raising, dairy production, and establishing a rice bank enabled them to build a social safety net and remain food sufficient and resilient against the pandemic.

Serikat Petani Pasundan (Pasundan Peasant Union, SPP), Indonesia.

Officially established in 2000, the history of agrarian struggles by SPP actually goes back to the 1980s, when student movements in Garut, Indonesia were at the forefront of promoting the rights of the farmers on agrarian reform and environmental conservation. This eventually led to the formation of SPP, whose membership spread to Pangandaran, Tasikmalaya, and Ciamis in West Java (Pasundan is the historical name). The Union’s expansion enabled it to take on other issues, such as democratization and the promotion of people’s well-being in the community.

SPP’s vision is to “develop or build structures of economic social politics based on values and principles of humanity, infinity, and justice” (Kartini 2019). To attain this vision, SPP has adopted goals, strategies, and activities that promote grassroots democracy in the community and in the whole of society and, in particular, support the control and management by local communities over their common resources.

SPP staged land occupations and reclamation of publicly-owned rubber plantations in West Java and managed to undertake various economic and social projects including diversified farming, managing alternative schools (primary and secondary levels) that offer learning sessions on agriculture and on agrarian law, fair trade exchanges, a community-managed eco-tourism in Pasundan, as well as a local coffee shop in Jakarta that sources its coffee from its many coffee farming communities across the country.

During the COVID 19 pandemic, SPP co-organized the food solidarity movement called Gerakan Solidaritas Lumbung Agraria (Gesla) or Agrarian Food Barn Solidarity Movement. They distributed free food to members of fraternal organizations in Bandung and Jakarta and other parts of Indonesia. This is amplifying their local wisdom of cooperation based on the most common system called beras perelek, in which a farmer saves a cup of rice a week in a bamboo tube that is later collected by the community to help others or sell the accumulated rice savings to purchase communal facilities.

Uniaun Agrikultores Munisipiu Ermera (UNAER), Ermera District, Timor Leste

Under both Portuguese colonialism from the 16th century to November 1975 and Indonesian occupation from 1975 to 1999, the Timorese local communities were prevented from performing their own conservation management efforts and maintaining social cohesion. The Indonesian occupation not only depleted resources but also weakened traditional social structures that prioritize the communities’ capacity to manage and protect their land and natural resources. Bombings and forced resettlement also contributed to adverse environmental and social changes.

UNAER is an agricultural organization based in the Ermera municipality of Timor Leste. Founded in 2010, UNAER organizes farmers in the district for mobilizations and dialogues with government officials to defend their rights over the land as mixed-race (mestizo) families continue their claims over huge coffee farms in the area. They justify their unilateral land occupations due to the absence of a national agrarian reform policy and the fact that the occupied areas are part of their ancestral domain. The occupied lands were distributed among the community members.

In post-conflict Timor Leste, the customary practice known as the tara bandu, achieved strong resurgence for local decision making, collective action, enforcement system, and agrarian reform implementation. It was observed that community-based actions using the tara bandu were more effective in undertaking alternative development. The practice consists of organized rituals, building of altars, and the use of natural objects in implementing agroecology principles and enforcing local laws such as prohibition of harvesting of natural resources in protected areas. Ermera, the country’s largest area for coffee production, has become a model for tara bandu implementation at the district level.

Conclusion

The Thai, Indonesian and Timor Leste cases presented here are but a fraction of countless grassroots initiatives in Southeast Asia that demonstrate the capacities of empowered and organized communities to assert their rights to land, livelihood, and political decision-making that are exercised outside of the state framework. Utilizing principles of solidarity, sharing, cooperation, the commons, collectivity, and the judicious use of traditional customs, the communities are able to remain resilient even in pandemic times. Challenges from the state, rural elite, and corporate interests continually hound them but they have remained steadfast in their advocacies and campaigns.

References

Angeles, L.C. 2004. Grassroots democracy and community empowerment. In Democracy and civil society in Asia, Vol. 1, Globalization, democracy and civil society in Asia. F. Quadir, and J. Lele (eds). New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 182–212.

Franco, J.C. 2004. “The Philippines: Fractious civil society and competing visions of democracy.” In Civil society and political change in Asia: Expanding and contracting democratic space, M. Alagappa (ed). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 97–137.

Kaufman, M. 1997. Community power, grassroots democracy, and the transformation of social life. In Community power and grassroots democracy: The transformation of social life. M. Kaufman, and H.D. Alfonso (eds) London & New Jersey: Zed Books, 1–26.

Kartini, Erni. 2019. “Serikat Petani for Humanity, Infinity, and Justice.” Presentation at the 2nd International Conference on Alternatives: Building Peoples’ Movements in Southeast Asia, Quezon City, Philippines, October 22–24, 2019.

Mohanty, M. 2007. Introduction: Local governance, local democracy and the right to participate. In Grassroots democracy in India and China: The right to participate, ed. M. Mohanty, R. Baum, M. Rong, and G. Mathew. New Delhi: Sage, 15–32.

Parameswaran, M.P. 2008. Democracy by the people: The elusive Kerala experience. Bhopal: Alternatives Asia.

Perry, E.J., and M. Goldman, eds. 2007. Grassroots political reform in contemporary China. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press.

Prasartset, S. 2004. “From victimized communities to movement powers and grassroots democracy: The case of the Assembly of the Poor.” In Democracy and civil society in Asia. Vol. 1, Globalization, democracy and civil society in Asia, ed. F. Quadir, and J. Lele. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 140–181.

Tadem, Eduardo C. 2012. “Grassroots Democracy, Non-State Approaches, and Popular Empowerment in Rural Philippines.” Philippine Political Science Journal. (Vol 33 No 2)

Tadem, Eduardo C., Karl Arvin F. Hapal, Venarica B. Papa, Ananeza P. Aban, Nathaniel P. Candelaria, Honey B. Tabiola, Jose Monfred C. Sy, and Angeli Fleur G. Nuque. 2020a. “Deepening Solidarities beyond Borders among Southeast Asian Peoples: A Vision for a Peoples’ Alternative Regional Integration.” UP CIDS Discussion Paper 2020-04. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Center for Integrative and Development Studies.

Tadem, Eduardo C., Ananeza P. Aban, Karl Arvin F. Hapal, Venarica B. Papa, Nathaniel P. Candelaria, Honey B. Tabiola, and Jose Monfred C. Sy. May 2020b. “A Preliminary Report on Southeast Asian Community and Grassroots Responses in Covid-19 Times.” Quezon City: University of the Philippines Center for Integrative and Development Studies.

UP Center for Integrative and Development Studies Program on Alternative Development (UP CIDS AltDev). 2020. “Alternative Practices of Peoples in Southeast Asia Towards Alternative Regionalism.” UP CIDS Workshop Proceedings. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Center for Integrative and Development Studies.

Tadem, Eduardo C., Benjamin B. Velasco, Ananeza P. Aban, Rafael Vicente V. Dimalanta, Jose Monfred C. Sy, Micah Hanah S. Orlino, Ryan Joseph C. Martinez, and Honey B. Tabiola. 2022. “Southeast Asian Peoples in Pandemic Times: Challenges and Responses COVID-19 Grassroots Report Volume 2.” Public Policy Monograph Series 2022-03. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Center for Integrative and Development Studies. Quezon City.

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The article was first published by Global Taperstry of Alternatives at https://globaltapestryofalternatives.org/newsletters:09:rivers

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About Author(s)

Eduardo C. Tadem, Ph.D. is the convenor of the University of the Philippines Center for Integrative and Development Studies, Program on Alternative Development (UP CIDS AltDev), and Professorial Lecturer at the UP Asian Center.

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¹⁾ Excerpted with revisions from Tadem 2012.

²⁾ The cases are published in UP CIDS AltDev’s Monographs on Alternatives (https://cids.up.edu.ph/program-on-alternative-development/).

³⁾ Excerpted with revisions and updates from Tadem et al 2020a, Tadem et al 2020b, UP CIDS AltDev 2020, and Tadem et al 2022.

From the border regions of South Asia to the Amazon rainforest, people are seeking new ways to organise societies that respect humans and nature

By Shrishtee Bajpai, Juan Manuel Crespo & Ashish Kothari

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Panchi nadiya pawan ke jhonke

Koi sarhad na inhe roke

Sarhadein insaano ke liye hai

Socho tumne aur maine kya paaya insaan hoke”

(Translation)

“Birds, rivers and the gusts of wind

No borders can stop them

The borders are for humans

Just think, what have we got by being human?Javed Akhtar, Indian lyricist

It is becoming increasingly obvious that we need to think about the problems of the climate crisis and borders together. Environmental breakdown displaces millions of people every year, while states respond by militarising their borders, causing further suffering and death.

It is no accident that climate breakdown and state borders are linked. Historically, the nation-state was born out of a logic that also saw nature – and colonised peoples – as things to be conquered and dominated. Now, from the war-torn border regions of South Asia to the Amazon rainforest, people are questioning whether sustainability can ever be achieved through the framework of nation-states. They are turning to other ways of organising society based on Indigenous worldviews and practices that respect all humans and the rest of nature.

Colonialism, capitalism and the nation-state

In the last 500 years, colonial conquests of vast regions of the earth by European and North American powers, based on the capitalist profit drive and rapid technological development, resulted in the decimation of countless cultures and communities. This includes the death of over 50 million natives in what subsequently came to be known as Latin America, devastating famines in Asia and Africa caused by policies imposed by colonisers, and the conversion of millions of hectares of natural ecosystems into commercial plantations, logging estates, or livestock ranches to feed the consumer demands of Europe and North America.

In the same period, there emerged the idea and practice of the nation-state. Though its origins and nature are diverse and complex, the centralisation of power in the hands of the nation-state was one of the bases of capitalism: in practice, capitalism is carried out through the political, legal and military institutions of nation-states. Nation-state building was supported by an ideology asserting that capitalist modernity is the only way to organise lives, and that this justifies taking over territories of Indigenous peoples and local communities for national goals like development and security. Nation-state symbols such as one flag, one language and a single identity submerge and often disrespect diverse biocultures – combined biological and cultural human environments. We must see the nation-state, capitalism and colonialism as going hand in hand.

The ideology of the colonial-industrial age stated, deludedly, that humans were separate from nature and that human progress was contingent on conquering it. After the Second World War, old forms of colonialism were defeated in most parts of the world. In their place a new ideology was needed to continue the domination of the West. This was the ideology of development, or ‘developmentality’. We might assume that the idea of ‘development’ is progressive, but we would be mistaken. Developmentality convinced the world that human progress was linked to ever-expanding material and energy growth. The ecological crises the world is facing today are largely a result of these five centuries of colonialism and developmentality.

It is in this context that there is now an intense search for radical alternatives which can meet the needs and aspirations of all peoples while living in harmony with the rest of nature.

Bioregionalism and radical democracy

In central India, 90 villages formed a mahagram sabha (federation of village assemblies) in 2017 and are asserting their decision-making over the entire region, brought together by a traditional sense of biocultural identity rather than current administrative or political boundaries. In 1999, 65 villages that were part of a river basin in the Indian state of Rajasthan, formed a people’s parliament that governed it for a decade, ignoring the administrative division of the basin. These and other examples are pointers to a radically different approach to governance: bioregionalism.

Bioregionalism is based on the understanding that the geographic, climatic, hydrological and ecological attributes of nature support all life, and their flows need to be respected. Bioregions, also known as biocultural regions, are areas with their own ecologies and cultures, in which humans and other species are rooted, actively participating at various scales beyond the immediate locale. While many current human-made boundaries disregard nature’s flows and territories – such as a mountain range or a river – many local communities and Indigenous peoples have long lived with deep understanding and respect for these. They understand the interdependence of all living beings across a landscape or seascape.

There are many examples of bioregional governance, both old and new. For thousands of years Nomadic pastoralists in Iran used large territories encompassing a diversity of ecosystems, their practices tuned to an acute understanding of which ecosystems could take how much and what kind of use. In more recent times, the Indigenous nation of Monkox of Lomerio, Bolivia, won territorial self-determination rights in 2006, and is attempting transformations in its economic, political, social and cultural life based on a life plan for the whole region. The Great Eastern Ranges project aims to protect, connect and restore habitats across a 3,600 km swathe of eastern Australia, by creating regional coordination channels among various actors. In many other parts of the world, Indigenous Peoples or other local communities are sustaining traditional landscape governance mechanisms, or creating new ones, as part of a global phenomenon now known as Territories of Life. Many of these projects cross political and administrative borders, respecting instead ecological and cultural flows and boundaries.

At their best, these bioregional projects are based in radical, direct democracy. Decision-making power is ultimately held at a local level, by which everyone is able to participate. For decisions affecting larger territories, delegates are sent to decision-making assemblies appropriate to that scale. There are close affinities between these movements and what Mahatma Gandhi called swaraj, a worldview that asserts autonomy, freedom and sovereignty, but in nonviolent ways that are responsible to the autonomy and well-being of all others.

Reimagining South Asia from a bioregional perspective

For various historical reasons including colonisation, South Asia is currently divided into several nation-states, with political borders that cut through ecosystems and cultures. For instance, the world’s largest mangrove forest, the Sundarbans, is divided by the India-Bangladesh border. The high mountains of the Himalaya and the vast desert areas in the west are divided between India and Pakistan. The great high-altitude plateau north of the Himalaya is fenced off with Ladakh on one side and Tibet (governed by China) on the other. The waters of the Indian Ocean are partly partitioned amongst India, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives.

Here is a vision for South Asia that is very different from the current reality, adapted from an essay one of us co-authored. It is part of an imaginary address to inhabitants of South Asia by one Meera Gond-Vankar, in the year 2100:

“While India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and China still retain their ‘national’ identities, boundaries have become porous, needing no visas to cross. Local communities have taken over most of the governance in these boundary areas, having declared peace in previous conflict zones like Siachen, the Kachchh and Thar deserts, and the Sundarbans. The same applies to the Palk Strait, with fishing communities from both India and Sri Lanka empowered to ensure sustainable, peaceful use of marine areas. Greater Tibet has become a reality, self-governed, with both India and China relinquishing their political and economic domination over it. Both nomadic communities and wildlife are now able to move freely back and forth.

In all these initiatives, narrow nationalism is being replaced by civilisational identities, pride, and exchange, a kind of self-fashioned ethnicity that encourages respect and mutual learning between different civilisations and cultures. South Asia learnt from the mistakes of blocks like the European Union, with its strange mix of centralisation and decentralisation and continued reliance on the nation-state, and worked out its own recipe for respecting diversity within a unity of purpose.”

While this is a futuristic vision, some tentative pathways towards this are already being forged. In addition to the examples given above of villages coming together to democratically govern bioregions, peace-centred people-to-people dialogues are underway, such as the Pakistan-India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy. The idea of a Siachen Peace Park in the intense conflict area between India and Pakistan has been proposed for many years, and even endorsed by former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Transboundary conservation cooperation exists between Manas Tiger Reserve in India and Royal Manas in Bhutan, aligning with several dozen such initiatives already established around the world. But of course, given the continuing atmosphere of distrust and conflict in the region, accompanied by periodically rising hypernationalistic discourses (currently, promoted by the party in power in New Delhi), there is a long way to go for these pathways to be trod.

Shaping a bioregional approach to the Amazon Sacred Headwaters

The Sacred Headwaters region in the Upper Amazon is one of the birthplaces of the Amazon river. It spans 35 million hectares (86 million acres) in Ecuador and Peru, and is home to nearly 600,000 indigenous people from 30 nationalities, including peoples living in voluntary isolation. It is the most biodiverse terrestrial ecosystem on the planet, and represents both the hope and the peril of our times. Indigenous peoples’ struggles have kept this region largely free of industrial extraction. Studies by international organisations such as the UN, Rainforest Alliance and Hivos have demonstrated how Indigenous peoples are the best guardians of nature, especially in the Amazon bioregion.

In response to new threats from the Ecuadorian and Peruvian states to expand oil, mining and intensive agro-industrial projects, Indigenous confederations from both countries banded together to form the Amazon Sacred Headwaters Initiative (ASHI). In 2019, Sacred Headwaters made a public declaration:

“We call for the global recognition of the Amazon Rainforest as a vital organ of the Biosphere. We call on the governments of Ecuador and Peru, on the corporations and financial institutions to respect indigenous rights and territories and stop the expansion of new oil, gas, mining, industrial agriculture, cattle ranching, mega-infrastructure projects and roads in the Sacred Headwaters. The destructive legacy of this model of “development” has been major deforestation, forest degradation, contamination, and biodiversity loss, decimating Indigenous populations and causing human rights abuses. We challenge the mistaken worldview that sees the Amazon as a resource-rich region where raw materials are extracted in pursuit of economic growth and industrial development…”

Instead of a view of development that sees human progress as the conquest of nature, Sacred Headwaters understands the interdependence of all life across national borders. ASHI’s Bioregional Plan proposes Indigenous self-determination with effective participation of women; a highly diverse economy combining new with ancestral farming methods and food and energy sovereignty; intercultural health systems that respect gender and generational diversity; educational systems that combine formal with non-formal learning; and a thorough conservation and restoration program for the Amazon.

Making bioregionalism a reality

Bioregional approaches, encompassing radical democracy, offer communities the chance to rebuild and enhance their lives and livelihoods, free of the constant fear of conflict and violent extractive industries. In the Amazon they could help secure the ecological, economic and cultural sustenance of Indigenous nations and other local communities, at the same time providing all the local-to-global ecological benefits of the world’s largest rainforest. In South Asia, the withdrawal of armed forces and other police and paramilitary forces from land and sea would mean that the suffering such personnel go through could be eliminated, especially in the treacherous and freezing conditions of the Himalayan border areas between India, Pakistan and China. It would also mean that a substantial part of India’s US$72 billion defence expenditure could be reallocated.

This approach would also entail undoing past damages to bioregions, as far as feasible. The impacts of climate change in forms of droughts and floods are going to become worse. It is crucial to re-imagine how we govern wetlands, and entire bioregions. Some existing dams on trans-boundary rivers may need to be decommissioned, to re-establish water, ecological and biological flows. Any further damning and major diversions must be avoided. A healthy river is often a first line of defence against climate crises for communities, including its functions as it merges into the sea. A bioregional approach may also help cope with some of the worst impacts of climate change, such as the displacement of coastal communities – including a likely attempt by Bangladeshi climate refugees to enter India, which could become a huge humanitarian crisis without adequate foreplanning – or the movement of wildlife to higher altitudes.

Bioregional approaches face significant challenges, not least of which are nationalist notions that continue to support hard nation-state boundaries. And yet, the peace dialogues, transboundary conservation projects and Indigenous bioregional initiatives discussed above are sources of hope.

Another important stepping stone is the recognition of the rights of nature. In 2017, the New Zealand Parliament passed into law the Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Act, which gives the Whanganui river and ecosystem legal personhood and standing in its own right, guaranteeing its “health and wellbeing”, recognising the Iwi cosmology “we are the river and the river is us”, and acknowledging that rights extend to the entire bioregion, from mountain to sea.

Close on its heels, the Uttarakhand high court in India ruled in 2017 that the north Indian rivers Ganga and Yamuna, their tributaries, and the glaciers and catchment feeding these rivers in the state of Uttarakhand, have rights as a “juristic/legal person/living entity”.

Recognising such rights could enable management and governance based on the ecological realities of the region. This also opens up the opportunity for us to alter currently dominant anthropocentric and colonial law, towards a new legal framework that respects the ‘pluriverse’ – the beautiful diversity of the world. Taken beyond the law, recognising the rights of nature opens up the possibility of articulating Indigenous worldviews of nature as a living being, even within formal institutions; and of creating a mutually flourishing future for humans and more-than-humans, where people’s lives are rooted in territories that do not have arbitrary militarised borders but are ecologically and culturally defined, open and connected.

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The article was first published by Open Democracy: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/nation-states-are-destroying-the-world-could-bioregions-be-the-answer/