Organic Law and the Universal Declaration of Organic Rights

Everyone has the right to food grown without synthetic pesticides, herbicides, chemical fertilisers or GMOs, with organic food systems to become the universal standard by 2030.

Soil is a living community with the right to be free from compaction, chemical poisoning and desertification; topsoil loss may not exceed two millimetres per year.

Freshwater is a sacred commons protected from agricultural chemicals, pharmaceuticals, microplastics and industrial effluent; ecological survival takes precedence over commercial water rights.

Every species has the right to exist; states are to protect half their territory by 2040 and move from monoculture to polyculture and agroforestry over ten years.

Industrial hemp (under 0.3% THC) is recognised as a fundamental agricultural, medicinal and industrial resource, with a right to cultivate it.

Everyone has the right to a home built from natural, non-toxic or recycled organic materials such as hempcrete, mycelium, timber, bamboo, clay and stone.

Seeds are humanity’s commons: no patents on the genome of any plant species, and publicly funded open-source seed libraries.

Farmers have the right to a living income from organic production, with transition payments so no farmer loses income while converting.

Policies are to be judged against a 100-year standard of intergenerational justice, with a Global Ombudsperson for Future Generations.

Every child has the right to ecological literacy, with organic gardens in every school and agriculture as a core subject.

Sentient animals have the right to live free from unnecessary suffering and confinement; factory farming is to be phased out within five years of ratification.

Every living organism has the right to breathe clean air and live in unpolluted ecosystems, regulated to the standard of health rather than convenience.

Communities have the right to shape their own food systems, save seeds, grow their own food and access organic and plant-based options.

Communities may refuse polluting infrastructure; hazardous facilities require free, prior and informed consent, and harm may not be pushed onto the marginalised.

Everyone has the right to protection of personal data and freedom from state and corporate mass surveillance.

AI and automated decisions must be transparent, ethical and under meaningful human oversight; the digital commons stays open.

Diverse gender identities and relationships are recognised and protected, including access to gender-affirming care.

Equality at work and protection from discrimination for all, including marginalised communities and sex workers.

Legal personhood for cetaceans, great apes, elephants, corvids, cephalopods and other species with complex cognition, and public funding for interspecies communication research.

Nations may declare Organic Sovereignty Zones exempt from trade obligations to accept chemically farmed imports or GMOs.

Proposes an International Organic Rights Tribunal at the United Nations, with personal liability for executives and officials responsible for systemic ecological destruction.

Proposes a ten-trillion-dollar Global Organic Transition Fund over ten years, financed by a 0.1% financial-transaction tax and prioritising the Global South and Indigenous communities.

Proclaimed at the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and presented to the United Nations. Like the UDOR, it is a civil-society declaration that has not been adopted by the UN General Assembly; it is the closest established precedent for rights of nature.

In Canada, “organic” on food is legally defined by Part 13 of the Safe Food for Canadians Regulations and the Canadian Organic Standards CAN/CGSB-32.310 and 32.311, enforced by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. These standards allow a list of permitted substances; the UDOR proposes a stricter definition with no synthetic inputs at all.

The four voluntary principles of the global organic movement: Health, Ecology, Fairness and Care. They share much with the UDOR’s Laws of Cycles, Precaution and Intergenerational Equity, and guide organic standards worldwide.

In conventional legal language, an “organic law” is the fundamental law or constitution of a state. Marie-Soleil Seshat Landry uses the term in a new, ecological sense: the laws of living systems that human law must respect.