Peter Doran calls for ‘cosmo-local’ action and rights for nature in Constitution

The Derry-born academic, a law lecturer at Queen’s, also praised local activists Maeve O’Neill and Rose Kelly, for standing up for the natural world in their native Derry and Donegal.

Dr. Doran was briefing the Joint Committee on Environment and Climate Action. He was providing evidence on the Citizens Assembly Report on Biodiversity Loss.

"I begin by inviting members to let their minds wander to their favourite piece of wilderness, the place where their soul is most at home on our island - a field, a lakeside, a beach or a coastal walk, a wood or a piece of farmland, perhaps tended by generations of their family.

"Today, citizens across the island and across the world are watching the committee's deliberations following up on the recommendations from the citizens’ assembly.

"I am thinking of rights of nature campaigners across the island who have brought motions to local authorities seeking recognition of the rights of nature or their local ecosystems. I am thinking of Maeve O'Neill or Rose Kelly in the borderlands of Derry and Donegal,” he said.

Dr. Doran said these campaigners were part of a global movement that believes ‘our island is alive, nature is our relative, and nature's integrity and intrinsic rights to flourish are inseparable from our own human right to freedom and dignity’.

“An amendment to the Constitution incorporating the human right to a healthy environment, together with the rights of nature, can bring a new dignity to the Constitution and a new visibility to the fact that we are constituted as a nation by citizens and the ‘more than human’,” he said.

He suggested colonisation had led to the abandonment of sustainable ways of life.

“In Brian Friel’s immortal words, in his play Translations, colonialism led to ‘a kind of exile’ that not only resulted from the imposition of an alien language but from the partition that severed communities from their ancient ties to their landscapes and their local knowledge.

"The recommendations from the citizens' assembly present us with an opportunity to listen carefully to our own story of imposed narratives that would have us reduce our Irish mytho-poetic traditions to mere superstition, devoid of meaning.

"Our insatiable appetite for the writings and broadcasts of the celebrated Manchán Magan suggest that we are emerging as a people from a spell of disenchantment that accompanied our experience of colonialism and the closure of our collective imaginations,” he remarked.

He said the concept of ‘cosmo-localism’ is gaining traction.

“We can see that this is what we might call a cosmo-local initiative. It is intensely local, but it is taking into account the planetary conversation, the new language and the new paradigms,” he said.

Dr. Doran referred to a document on the Irish language and ecology.

"According to it, the Irish language inhabits an Earth-based cosmology that puts humans in their proper place while respecting the feminine; everything is connected in this inherently systemic understanding of the world; this inner knowing is where the treasure resides and it is time to reconnect and protect it; and language, tradition, music, biodiversity and the environment are all inextricably intertwined and share a common experience of loss,” he told members.

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