Every human being is a part of the community of life, made up of all living creatures. This community links all human societies, present and future generations, and humanity and the rest of nature. It embraces both cultural and natural diversity.

Every human being has the same fundamental and equal rights, including: the right to life, liberty and security of person; to the freedoms of thought, conscience, and religion; to enquiry and expression; to peaceful assembly and association; to participation in government; to education; and, within the limits of the Earth, to the resources needed for a decent standard of living. No individual, community or nation has the right to deprive another of its means of subsistence.

Each person and each society is entitled to respect of these rights; and is responsible for the protection of these rights for all others.

Every life form warrants respect independently of its worth to people. Human development should not threaten the integrity of nature or the survival of other species. People should treat all creatures decently, and protect them from cruelty, avoidable sufferingand unnecessary killing.

Everyone should take responsibility for his or her impacts on nature. People should conserve ecological processes and the diversity of nature, and use any resource frugally and efficiently, ensuring that their uses of renewable resources are sustainable.

Everyone should aim to share fairly the benefits and costs of resource use, among different communities and interest groups, among regions that are poor and those that are affluent, and between present and future generations. Each generation should leave to the future a world that is at least as diverse and productive as the one it inherited. Development of one society or generation should not limit the opportunities of other societies or generations.

The protection of human rights and those of the rest of nature is a worldwide responsibility that transcends all cultural, ideological and geographical boundaries. The responsibility is both individual and collective.

back to top...

The obligation to respect every species independently of its worth to people may conflict with human interests, if a species endangers human health or survival. Many people feel that it is morally justified to eradicate a human pathogen that is not present in any other host and is responsible for considerable loss of human lives, poor health and disability. Such species include human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV-I, HIV-II), smallpox virus, poliomyelitis virus, Plasmodium falciparum (the cause of malignant malaria), and guineaworm.

Many people also feel that it is ethically justified to eradicate other harmful species - such as carriers of an animal disease communicable to people - if this is the only way to save human lives. Some would go further and extend this proposition to pathogens that attack livestock.

But it can also be argued that while control of harmful species may be justified, in no case is it right to seek the extinction of a species. Perhaps we should keep the last surviving pathogens in internationally controlled laboratories, as happened with the smallpox virus.

The obligation to protect all creatures from cruelty, avoidable suffering and unnecessary killing can also conflict with the requirement that no people should be deprived of its means of subsistence. The campaign against the fur trade has deprived indigenous peoples in Greenland and northern Canada of a major source (and for some communities, the only source) of income, even though they were harvesting those resources sustainably. Elephant conservation may have been made more difficult in several southern African countries because they can no longer obtain a financial return from the animals they have to cull. The ban under CITES of trade in elephant products could thus reduce the perceived value of elephants to communities that are well aware of the damage that this species can cause.

Perhaps there is no other issue over which human rights and animal rights have collided with such emotional force. Such conflicts reveal radically different cultural interpretations of the ethic for living sustainably.Ethical principles need to be developed to resolve these dilemmas.

Back...