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The Public Trust Doctrine; The Rights of & Responsibilities to Nature; Traditional Ecological Knowledge

This page consists of links to meeting agendas, minutes of those meetings. See below the Strategic Plan for this Cohort Action Team; it consists of the team mission, the goals to achieve in pursuit of that mission, and concrete/ measurable objective to complete for each goal. Note that we are always in pursuit of our mission, that we can repeatedly achieve our goals, and that our objectives are what we do everyday.

Click here for the Meeting Agendas

Click Here for the Meeting Minutes

Click here for the Strategic Plan for this Cohort Action Team [in draft]

Resources

Descriptions:

Rights of & Responsibilities to Nature: According to the “Rights of Nature” doctrine, an ecosystem is entitled to legal personhood status and as such, has the right to defend itself in a court of law against harms, including environmental degradation caused by a specific development project or even by climate change. But we know we have a responsibility to Nature when we ask “who are we to think we can give rights to trees, rivers, mountains, and all other elements that have long preexisted us and who give us our life?” We ourselves are Nature and we have a responsibility to stop harming ourselves by how we treat Nature. Self-compassion is realized in biospheric values where we see ourselves in and as a part of Nature. We identify natural systems and phenomena as having rights similar to those humans possess precisely because we derive our existence from natural systems.

The Public Trust Doctrine: The state is required to hold Water in trust for the public. The Public Trust Doctrine is a legal doctrine that requires the government to protect certain natural phenomena, such as rivers, lakes, land, and oceans for public use. How can we assist the state in its responsibility for managing, protecting, and regenerating public waters? No one owns the water because it belongs to everyone. The people of Oregon have standing and agency to demand that the state protect water from over-appropriation, waste, and non-beneficial use – all for the public interest in ways that do not impair or harm the public safety and welfare. The Public Trust Doctrine is the pathway to holding the world in which we live, in trust, the same way we do for loved ones. We focus on understanding the power of the PTD and seeking ways to use the PTD to achieve results.

Traditional Ecological Knowledge: We are the closest to Water that we will ever get; we are Water, and how we treat Water is how we treat ourselves and others. We should not “other” Water; as such, Water has the same rights to life and liberty as we have. Water is alive, an entity, and that our relationship to Water must be founded in honesty, humility, and spirituality: we don’t want to “use” Water anymore than we want to use our family, friends, and acquaintances, and we shall replace the term “resource” with another because we feel that regarding Water as a resource leads to thinking of it as a “thing” to extract, consume, use, and exploit. We understand we all must drink Water — all flora and fauna — and that we live in it and it lives in us, and that our relationship with Water must be based in justice, equity, and compassion. Water is a proper noun and is a verb: We’re All Being Water now!