Putting Nature in the Constitution

I ran across this article a friend had sent me a few weeks ago. It was published in the LA times. Here is an excerpt:

"This month, Ecuador will hold the world's first constitutional referendum in which voters will decide, among many other reforms, whether to endow nature with certain unalienable rights. Not only would the new constitution give nature the right to "exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution," but if it is approved, communities, elected officials and even individuals would have legal standing to defend the rights of nature. "

This was interesting to me on many levels. Having been to Ecuador several times, I have witnessed how (as the article also mentions) the physical geography of the country is very interwoven with the culture and history of its people- the mountains, the rainforest, the coast, the Galapagos! The country is about the size of Colorado and is extremely biologically diverse.

Working for Leave No Trace, we are constantly in dialogue about how we communicate our organizational mission, our programs, who we are, what we do and how it fits into the bigger [environmental] picture. I think everyone here would agree that we feel it's important to protect our open spaces for future generations, to share these bits of our cultural and history with our children and so forth, but, could it be so simple as we have an ethical [legal?] responsibility to?

Here is a link to the full article: http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/scimedemail/la-ed-nature2-2008sep02,0,4624476.story