52 min.
Key to Decolonization. Rights of Nature and the Commons in Ireland Radio Utopistan
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- Maatschappij en cultuur
Ireland is the only place in Europe that was once a colony. Because of this experience the Irish people have a very special connection to their land and to decolonial struggles around the world, says Peter Doran.
Peter is a senior lecturer at the school of law at Queens University in Belfast and has been involved in the struggle for justice on the island of Ireland since many years. Within the peace process after a long violent conflict and within the environmental movement. He is one of the authors and activists behind the proposal that wants Ireland to recognize Rights of Nature on a constitutional level.
Ireland is very close to becoming the first country in Europe to implement this legal revolution on a constitutional level. The citizen assembly (a highly respected democratic instrument in Ireland) proposed to the government to make a constitutional referendum on RoN. A real breakthrough, says Peter.
We talk about his background story growing up in Derry, a center of the “the troubles”, the violent conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted almost 30 years and killed 3.500 people.
“I am a born radical. I inherited a radical perspective. I am being true and faithful to my heritage. As an Irish man who grew up on the streets of Derry where we have a long history of asking difficult questions of the status quo and confronting injustice on our doorstep and across the world.”
He sees the local struggles, the local attempts to transform the world in front of your doorstep, connected to the struggles in the world. “We are always acting in solidarity with other peoples and with the earth as well.”
“The Irish identify with Europe, they see EU as a peace process. But they are also a people who have been colonized. For hundreds of years the colonial process subjugated our land, our people and our language. There is an intuitive sense that in reaching for the Rights of Nature discourse and the underlying world views that we challenge this notion that the world is simply an object there for the taking.”
“The RoN project is a process of recalling a deep memory, deep practices, recalling that there are others ways of being in the world, outside of the European modern experience.”
About the Commons:
“A notion that the real value that we generate today comes not from competition, not from private claims on things but from our ability to bring and support and cultivate the genius that arises from connection, from sharing, from caring. And from understanding that all that we value, that all things come from our relationships. That everything is preceded by relationship and the quality of our relationships.”
About Palestine:
“In the Gaza scenario, what we are seeing there is an acceleration of the deep settler colonial violence that has been part of our history as a Western privileged people. What we are seeing there is a microcosm, an acceleration of a feature of the world that has been experienced by many people through the times of empires and colonialism.”
Ireland is the only place in Europe that was once a colony. Because of this experience the Irish people have a very special connection to their land and to decolonial struggles around the world, says Peter Doran.
Peter is a senior lecturer at the school of law at Queens University in Belfast and has been involved in the struggle for justice on the island of Ireland since many years. Within the peace process after a long violent conflict and within the environmental movement. He is one of the authors and activists behind the proposal that wants Ireland to recognize Rights of Nature on a constitutional level.
Ireland is very close to becoming the first country in Europe to implement this legal revolution on a constitutional level. The citizen assembly (a highly respected democratic instrument in Ireland) proposed to the government to make a constitutional referendum on RoN. A real breakthrough, says Peter.
We talk about his background story growing up in Derry, a center of the “the troubles”, the violent conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted almost 30 years and killed 3.500 people.
“I am a born radical. I inherited a radical perspective. I am being true and faithful to my heritage. As an Irish man who grew up on the streets of Derry where we have a long history of asking difficult questions of the status quo and confronting injustice on our doorstep and across the world.”
He sees the local struggles, the local attempts to transform the world in front of your doorstep, connected to the struggles in the world. “We are always acting in solidarity with other peoples and with the earth as well.”
“The Irish identify with Europe, they see EU as a peace process. But they are also a people who have been colonized. For hundreds of years the colonial process subjugated our land, our people and our language. There is an intuitive sense that in reaching for the Rights of Nature discourse and the underlying world views that we challenge this notion that the world is simply an object there for the taking.”
“The RoN project is a process of recalling a deep memory, deep practices, recalling that there are others ways of being in the world, outside of the European modern experience.”
About the Commons:
“A notion that the real value that we generate today comes not from competition, not from private claims on things but from our ability to bring and support and cultivate the genius that arises from connection, from sharing, from caring. And from understanding that all that we value, that all things come from our relationships. That everything is preceded by relationship and the quality of our relationships.”
About Palestine:
“In the Gaza scenario, what we are seeing there is an acceleration of the deep settler colonial violence that has been part of our history as a Western privileged people. What we are seeing there is a microcosm, an acceleration of a feature of the world that has been experienced by many people through the times of empires and colonialism.”
52 min.