Humanity seems to be in a free fall towards disaster. The ecological fabric of our existence is being torn apart, as the violence of corporate globalization combines with the violence of war.

Alternatives to war, non-sustainability and social and economic injustice are becoming a survival imperative. These alternatives need to combine our making peace with the planet and our making peace among people from diverse cultures. One is not possible without the other. The roots of terrorism, violence and war lie in environmental and economic exclusion and the insecurity it generates. People's security does not lie in larger military budgets, bigger bombs and stronger police states. It lies in ecological security, in economic security, in cultural and political security. Rebuilding these multiple securities is the only way to create peace, justice and sustainability.

Why are we as a species destroying the very basis of our survival and existence? Why has insecurity been the result of every attempt to build security? How can we as members of the Earth community reinvent security to ensure the survival of all species and the future of diverse cultures? How do we turn from the ruins of the culture of death and destruction, to the culture that sustains and celebrates life?

We can do it by breaking free of the mental prison of separation and exclusion and see the world in its interconnectedness and non-separability, allowing new alternatives to emerge. Despair turns to hope. Violence gives way to non-violence. Scarcity transforms into abundance, and insecurity to security. We need once more to feel at home on the Earth and with each other. We need a new paradigm that allows us to move from the pervasive culture of violence, to a culture of non-violence, creativity and peace: that is the Earth Democracy Paradigm.

Earth democracy is based on creating living economies that protect life on Earth and provide basic needs and economic security to all. It is based on living democracy, which is inclusive. The Earth Democracy Movement is a commitment to go beyond the crisis of economic injustice and inequality, ecological ' non-sustainability, the decay of democracy and the rise of terrorism. Earth Democracy provides an alternative world-view in which humans are embedded in the Earth family. We begin to see that we are connected to each other through love, compassion, ecological responsibility and economic justice, which replace greed, consumerism and competition as objectives of human life.

In Earth Democracy, economics, politics and society move from negative systemsthatbenefitafewintheshortrun,to positive systems that ensure the fundamental right to life of all species. The maintenance of life in its diversity and integrity is the basis of relationships in Earth Democracy.

As the basis of relationships, Earth Democracy transforms our minds and our actions, and liberates us from patterns of thought and paradigms that have pushed us to our contemporary predicament. It helps address the common roots of problems that are defined separately as economic, ecological and political. Earth Democracy enables us to make mind shifts that are conducive to meeting our needs without destroying other species and cultures, and to improving human welfare while ensuring the welfare of all beings. In India, we pray:'Letallbeings be happy.'

Earth Democracy embodies principles that enable us to transcend the polarization, divisions and exclusions that are pitting the economy against ecology, development against environment, people against the planet, and nations against one another in a new culture of fear and hate. It is symbolized in farms rejuvenating biodiversity, and species acting in mutuality to benefit one another. Earth Democracy re-contextualizes humans as one member of the Earth family and diverse cultures in the mosaic of cultural diversity.

Since other species do not vote, cannot lobby, and have no purchasing power in the marketplace, Earth democracy creates an obligation on us as humans to take their well-being into account. As His Holiness the Dalai Lama said on his sixtieth birthday, 'All beings have a right to well-being and happiness. We have a duty to ensure their well-being.' This creates human responsibility as trustees, instead of the dominant notion of mastery, control and ownership.

Earth Democracy privileges diversity in nature and society in form and in function. When the intrinsic worth and value of every life form is recognized, biological diversity and cultural diversity flourish. Monocultures result from exclusion and dominance of species: one variety, one race, one religion, one world-view. Monocultures are an indication of coercion and loss of freedom. Freedom implies diversity. Diversity signifies freedom.

Earth Democracy nourishes diversity by going beyond the logic of exclusion, of apartheid, of 'us' and 'them', of 'either/or'. It implies multi-functionality, the logic of 'and', of inclusion. It transcends the false polarization of wild versus cultivated, nature versus culture, or even the false clash of cultures. It allows for the forest farm and the farmed forest; it recognizes that biodiversity can be preserved and can also meet human needs. Through diversity replacing monocultures, and multi-dimensionality replacing one-dimensional systems, the negative economics of scarcity-creation can be replaced by the positive economics of mutually shared abundance and guaranteed provision of basic needs and access to vital resources. Diversity and creativity flourish in Nature and in culture.

Earth Democracy puts responsibility at the centre of our relationships, with rights flowing from responsibility, instead of the dominant paradigm where there are rights without responsibility and responsibilities without rights. The separation of rights and responsibility is at the root of ecological devastation and gender and class inequality. Corporations that earn profits from the chemical industry, or from genetic pollution resulting from genetically engineered crops, do not have to bear the burden of that pollution. The social and ecological costs are externalized and borne by others who are excluded from decisions and from benefits.

Earth Democracy is based on those who pay the price for having a say, and those who carry responsibility for having the rights. This creates direct or basic democracy. On the one hand this implies decisions movingdownwards, from global institutions and centralized governments to local communities. On the other hand it implies a shift in our interpretation of sovereignty. Therefore, Earth Democracy moves the constellation of power from corporations to the people, and in so doing, rebalances the role and functions of the State, which is becoming increasingly undemocratic.

Earth Democracy is about life. It is about natural rights to the conditions of staying alive. It is everyday life and decisions and freedoms related to everyday living — the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the water we drink. It is not just about elections and casting votes. It is a permanently vibrant democracy. It combines economic democracy with political democracy and ecological democracy. It creates positive economies, positive politics, positive identities. It creates security, and hence the conditions of peace.

Earth Democracy offers a potential for changing the way governments, intergovernmental organizations and corporations operate. It creates a new paradigm for global governance while empowering local communities. It creates the possibility of strengthening ecological security while improving economic security. And on the foundations of ecological and economic security it makes societies immune to the virus of hatred and fear. Earth Democracy offers a new way of seeing in which everything is not at war with everything else, but through which we can cooperate to create peace, sustainability and justice.

TEN PRINCIPLES OF EARTH DEMOCRACY

1. Democracy for all Life

We are all members of the Earth community. We all have the duty to protect the rights and welfare of all species and all people. No humans have the right to encroach on the ecological space of other species and other people, or treat them with cruelty or violence.

2. Intrinsic Worth of All Species

All species, humans, cultures and the planet have intrinsic worth. They are subjects, not objects to manipulate or own. No humans have the right to own other species, other people or the knowledge of other cultures through patents, other intellectual property rights, or any other means.

3. Diversity in Nature and Culture

Defending biological and cultural diversity is a duty of all people. Diversity is an end in itself, a value, a source of richness, both material and cultural.

4. Natural Rights to Sustenance

All members of the Earth Community, including all humans, have the right to sustenance — to food and water, to a safe and clean habitat, to security of ecological space. These rights are natural rights; they are birthrights, given by the fact of existence on Earth, and are best protected through community rights over the commons. They are not given by states or corporations, nor can they be extinguished by state or corporate action. No state or corporation has the right to erode or undermine these natural rights or enclose the commons that sustain all life, through privatization or monopoly control. These are inalienable rights.

5. Earth Economy

Earth Democracy is based on economic democracy. Economic systems in Earth Democracy protect ecosystems and their integrity; they protect people's livelihoods and provide basic needs to all. In the Earth economy there are no disposable or dispensable species or people. The Earth economy is a living economy. It is based on sustainable, diverse, pluralistic systems that protect Nature and people, are chosen by people, for the benefit of the common good.

6. Local Economies

Conservation of the Earth's resources and creation of sustainable and satisfying livelihoods is most caringly, creatively, efficiently and equ itably achieved at the local level. Localization of economics is a social and ecological imperative. Only goods and services that genuinely enrich livelihoods, and cannot be produced locally using local resources and local knowledge, should be traded over longer distances. Earth Democracy is based on vibrant, resilient local economies, which support national and global economies. The global economy does not crush and destroy local economies.

7. Living Democracy

Earth Democracy is based on local living democracy, with local communities organized on principles of inclusion, diversity and ecological and social responsibility having the highest authority on decisions related to the environment, natural resources and the sustenance and livelihoods of people. Authority is delegated to more distant levels of governance on the principle of subsidiarity. Earth Democracy is living democracy.

8. Living Knowledge

Earth Democracy is based on Earth-centred and community-centred knowledge systems. Living knowledge is knowledge that maintains and renews living processes and contributes to the health and well-being of the planet and the people. It is also living knowledge in that it is embedded in nature and society and is not abstract, reductionist and anti-life. Living knowledge is a commons: it belongs collectively to communities that create it and keep it alive, generation after generation. All humans have a duty to share knowledge. No person or corporation has a right to enclose, monopolize, patent or exclusively own (as intellectual property) living knowledge.

9. Balancing Rights with Responsibility

In Earth Democracy, rights are derived from and balanced with responsibility. Those who bear the consequences of decisions and actions are the decision makers.

10. Globalizing Care and Compassion

Earth Democracy connects people in circles of care, co-operation and compassion instead of dividing them through competition, control and conflict. Earth Democracy globalizes compassion, not greed, and peace, not war.

Courtesy: Resurgence, No. 214, Sep/Oct. 2002