Livelihood Sovereignty Definition
Livelihood Sovereignty is ‘a holistic ethical alternative solution’ which consists of five inter-relative rights: 1) The right to land, forest and water, clean air and natural landscape
(basic); 2) The right to maintain one’s own religion
(unique); 3) The right to live according to one’s own way of life and values of happiness and wellbeing within one’s own natural environment
(practice); 4)The right to operate according to one’s own knowledge and decide what to plant, initiate, create and invent on one’s own land;
(holistic); and 5) The right to co-manage or co-govern natural resources with neighboring communities and local authorities
(strategic). It needs to be daily exercised, voluntarily and legally, at individual, communal, national and international levels in order to consolidate the sharing of the responsibility towards all living things, for today as well as for the generations of tomorrow. With the achievement of Livelihood Sovereignty, all organisms, human and non-human, will be living in harmony with each other, enjoying happiness and wellbeing, in interdependent self-determination’.
‘Every ‘Livelihood’ has its own identity. ‘
Livelihood Identity’ defines a holistic system of social identity which reflects an interaction of living things within a relationship between human and nature for maintaining its own characteristics culturally, socio-civilly, ecologically and economically’.
Livelihood and Identity are interrelated interactively. To achieve the five rights of Livelihood Sovereignty for holistic, sustainable, inter-generation development means that a group can sustain their own livelihood, and also preserve their own identity – that which distinguished them from others. In the other word, Ethnic Identity very much depends on the five inter-related rights of Livelihood Sovereignty and Livelihood Identity. The achievement of Wellbeing and Happiness can only be real if one is handling independently both their own Livelihood Sovereignty and Livelihood Identity
We believe:
‘Well-being is your own gift to yourself, from your own values and behavior. If you consciously nurture this gift, at any moment in your life, it will return to you the happiness that is yours. Thereafter, your sovereignty of freedom and creativeness will not desert you’.