The Rights of Mother Earth

National Geographic, November 30, 2010

As delegates from 192 governments gather at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP16) in Cancun, Mexico, over the next ten days, expectations are low to zero that the deliberations will yield any meaningful progress to a substantive international agreement to slow and prepare the world for warmer global temperatures.

In April this year a heartfelt appeal was made at a different gathering, in Cochabamba, Bolivia: the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth. (Nat Geo News Watch: Bolivian Conference Chooses Mother Earth Over Father Time.)

"The Rights of Mother Earth" or "Los Derechos de la Pachamama" is a film that was created by Indigenous communities in Peru that wished to share their message about the Rights of Mother Earth. The nine-minute film was facilitated by filmmaker Maja Tillmann as a part of the Conversations with the Earth project, and was screened at the Cochabamba meeting.

The five communities that took part in making the film were: Perccapampa in the region of Huancavelica (Balvino Zavallos); Perka in Puno (Sabino Cutipa); Karhui and Queromarca in Cusco (Rosio Achahui); Chaka in Ayacucho (Pelayo Carrillo); and Cochas Grande in Junin (Irma Poma).

Conversations with the Earth (CWE) is an attempt to build a global movement for an indigenous-controlled community media network. CWE works with a network of indigenous groups and communities living in critical ecosystems around the world. Through CWE, these indigenous communities are able to share their story of climate change.

"Through the creation of sustainable autonomous indigenous media hubs in these regions, CWE fosters a long-term relationship with these communities, based on principles of local control and supporting indigenous media capacity,"according to InsightShare, a blog about participatory video.

"Since the film was produced, CWE's Peru hub has expanded its network of communities in Peru and across the border in Bolivia. "Seeing the film also inspired the participatory video team in the Philippines to start interviewing elders in their own communities to create a similar film about their visions on the rights of Mother Earth," InsightShare says.

To see more films and learn more about participatory video and the CWE Network, visit www.conversationsearth.org and www.insightshare.org

You may also want to read the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth.