WHAT IF NATURE DEMANDS ITS RIGHTS?

In this sense, it is no secret that humanity, in its eagerness to achieve great scientific, economic and social advances, has generated serious impacts on ecosystems and balances that nature and the planet have developed over time.

So it is these same actions that have made nature demand its rights, since as part of mother earth and as a vital and indivisible community we have used all the resources it offers us without the necessary respect for it, resources that have allowed us to improve our quality of life and are focused on different areas of our existence such as food, education, clothing, transportation, among other mechanisms or processes that allow us to improve our quality of life.

Therefore, thinking about development and a higher economic income has become the fundamental axis for human behavior and greed has led us to neglect the balance of our planet and today we can see reflected the consequences of our actions through effects such as climate change, environmental pollution, the greenhouse effect, acid rain, among other phenomena that cause serious consequences of pollution at the level of soil, air, water, not to mention the melting of the polar ice caps and the degradation of the ozone layer.

Consequently, as humanity we have become a powerful catalyst to diminish the diversity of life on our planet and based on the above I dare to raise the following question: What would happen if Mother Nature could demand her rights?

To answer this question we will address an adverse scenario that is currently being experienced in the southern region of Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela, where large tracts of land around 35,000 hectares of production have been devastated as a result of heavy rains that have caused severe flooding in this region, not to mention the overflowing of rivers that have concentrated large amounts of water on the different production units in the area, leaving people affected and leaving part of the region incommunicado due to landslides on the main roads of this producing region.

This represents a great threat to the agri-food distribution of the country, since more than 30% of the meat, fodder and dairy resources distributed in Venezuela come from this area of the country. From my perspective, these events are nothing more than a reaction of Mother Nature to the disrespect to her territory and dependence.

To exemplify this process, it is necessary to take into account that no population should settle their bases in territories near rivers, lakes or even seas, since we must respect the aquatic space of nature and foresee the consequences that disrespect to them can cause on the life and existence of humanity.

So my reflective vision about the event that we are living today as a region, is a direct incidence of the overexploitation of the resources of our planet because when we decide to establish bases near the aquatic regions we do it thinking about the economic possibilities provided by the river ports, so that this young society is suffering the consequences of decisions taken in the past and which should be assumed as an example for future generations.

Therefore, the objective behind this writing, is in first instance to make known the affections that are experienced in the southern region of Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela, but also to use these consequences as a way to warn society that nature has its rights, has its territory and therefore as humanity we must respect them.

As it is well expressed in the proposal of the universal declaration of the rights of mother earth in its article 1: "Mother earth is a unique, indivisible and self-regulating community of interrelated beings that sustains, contains and reproduces all the beings that compose it".

Based on the above, we must be aware that each being is defined as a relationship that exists with its environment and that the rights of nature are inalienable, since they derive from the same source of existence, so that just as humanity has human rights, the earth also has specific rights that we must fulfill and that respond to the following approaches.

1. The right to respect life and existence on earth.

2. The right to respect the carrying capacity of the earth, which contributes to respect the different cycles and vital processes that develop in the planetary ecosystems.

3. The right to water as a source of life, to air free of contamination and to soil as a source of healthy nutrients for plants.

4. The right not to be genetically altered, nor to modify its vital functioning.

There are other rights or processes that must be respected and that we will address in future publications, for now it is necessary to understand that these times of calamity from my point of view, are products of the demands that today our mother earth is requesting and consequently we must learn to listen to these demands, in order to preserve the life and existence of humanity on this planet.