Dear GNHRE members,
Allow me to pass on to you exciting news of a new book by two of our
members, Burns Weston and David Bollier. I would really like to encourage
as many of you as possible to engage with this important new text - and
more importantly, with the agenda it represents. Indeed, *The Journal of
Human Rights and the Environment* will be the formal international launch
pad for scholarly engagement with a Draft Universal Covenant Affirming a
Human Rights to Commons and Rights-based Governance of Earth's Natural
Wealth, drafted by Burns and Bollier - to be launched in Edition 5.1 'Human
Bodies in Material Space'. The idea is to introduce this document for
discussion, critical engagement and further development and for the GNHRE
to play a key role in engagement with the implications of the proposed
Draft Covenant and its development - as well as with any relevant actions
and campaigns emerging from this new consciousness-raising initiative. The
GNHRE and the JHRE are fully committed to the creation of a vigorous
discursive space for precisely such agendas.
Here is the personal message from Burns - and please note the attached
flyer for the book,
Warm regards, Anna
Message from Burns Weston:
**
** **
I'm eager to share with you my good news. As evidenced by the attached
promotional flyer, my new book (with commons scholar David Bollier) has
been just recently published/released from Cambridge University Press: *Green
Governance: Ecological Survival, Human Rights, and the Law of the Commons*.
It also has been posted on Amazon.com, complete with seven early "reviews":
http://www.amazon.com/Green-Governance-Ecological-Survival-Commons/dp/1107034361/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1358267294&sr=1-8&keywords=burns+weston--including
an endorsement from James Hansen, Director of NASA's Goddard Institute for
Space Studies in New York City who, as you know, early sounded the alarm
about global warming and climate change some 30 years ago. Judging from
these early "reviews," we like to think that we may have produced a policy
game-changer of sorts. At least we hope so.****
** **
That's the good news. The unhappy news is that, because the book is
published as an academic treatise whose primary purchasers are college and
university libraries, the price is distressingly steep. However, we were
able to persuade Cambridge to release a less costly Kindle edition via
Amazon.com, now online, and they are now discounting the cost of the book
itself by 20%. Also they will publish an even less expensive paperback
edition next year. Perhaps you can use your organizational affiliations to
acquire a copy for yourselves; but in any case we hope you will be able to
spread the word about our book to relevant policy-makers, colleagues,
libraries, bookstores, and friends. In our humble opinion, we think it
worthy of widespread responsible attention. ****
** **
Allow me, please, to explain this blunt talk: David Bollier's and my book
is not your ordinary academic book. Scholarly though it be, it is also,
even fundamentally, a call to (peaceful) arms to get serious--humanly, in
contrast to technologically--about the environmental degradation that is all
around us from local to global and including, of course, global warming and
climate change which, as you well know, is the greatest threat facing
humankind today excepting perhaps nuclear proliferation. Embedded in our
book's Appendix, indeed, is a *Universal Covenant Affirming A Human Right
to Commons- and Rights-based Governance of Earth's Natural Wealth and
Resources* that we prepared which calls upon "all citizens, organizations,
and governments of the world to commit themselves to recovering the Earth
and humanity's shared inheritance and future creations"--and to do so with a
keen sense of urgency about "taking decisive, collective action to
transform existing systems and structures of ecological governance so as to
reduce climate change, loss of biodiversity, and other severe threats to
Earth's life-giving and life-sustaining capacity." Our Covenant, based on
and built from our book, will soon be going viral over the Internet, and
will be launched, internationally, as the basis for an extended engagement
and campaign in a forthcoming edition of the *Journal of Human Rights and
the Environment, *specifically to excite scholarly engagement with the
Covenant as the basis for future reflection, action and hopefully,
transformation.* W*e hope, thus to make waves as well as news worldwide.
** **
Kind and hopeful greetings,****
** **
Burns Weston (and David Bollier) ****
** **
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