Cliff Humphrey both drew upon and utterly revised the “Declaration of Independence” to create this crucial founding document of the environmental movement. With its calligraphy, the “Declaration of Interdependence” looked like Thomas Jefferson’s document, and with its syntax it sounded like it too. But Humphrey’s manifesto suggested that the world needed to break with the attractive illusion of “independence” and be governed by a new principle—”interdependence”—if it wished to be aligned with the laws of nature.

(Readers who prefer typed text to calligraphy should go to the end of this post for a transcription of the document.)

“The Declaration of Interdependence” had a dramatic unveiling: it was first performed at Ecology Action’s first press conference, in September 1969—an event held at the city of Berkeley’s garbage dump. That press conference was meant to protest the meeting, at San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel, of industrialists looking to develop the Pacific Basin. Demonstrating his flair for staging protest, Cliff Humphrey read Ecology Action’s founding Declaration while surrounded by supporters and by dead fish from the Aquatic Park fish kill. (See Ecology Action’s self-authored history for more on this moment.)

Though folksinger Pete Seeger complained about the Declaration’s long-windedness, the document has a certain grace and poetry. Framed as written not in Berkeley, but “on the Planet, Earth,” it broadcasts from the start its global aspirations. Its basic premise is to take the inalienable rights of man from Jefferson’s Declaration — Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness — and expand them so that they become the inalienable rights of all species. It displaces humankind from the center of rights discourse; human beings are simply “one species” among a great variety of species—and have been acting wrongly to upset nature’s equilibrium.

Just as the Declaration of Independence listed grievances against King George, so the Declaration of Interdependence lists grievances against those who have violated the principle of interdependence. It notes the threat of human overpopulation; the refusal to recognize the fact of interdependence; air and water pollution; the disruption of natural processes of interdependence; the use of chemicals in household products; the killing of species for their “feathers and fur,” “skins and tusks”; the targeting of creatures—coyote, lion, wolf and fox—who exemplify interdependence (though it might be noted that these creatures are themselves carnivorous); the pursuit of war-making; and the refusal to allow others to realize in full their capacities for interdependence.

Like the Declaration of Independence, “The Declaration of Interdependence” features a set of signatures at its bottom. These include the signatures of Ecology Action founders Clifford and Mary Humphrey (though, sadly, not Chuck Herrick because of his untimely death); the ecologically minded poet Gary Snyder; and Stewart Brand, who had in 1968 launched The Whole Earth Catalog and who became a prime mover in the back-to-the-land movement. The “Declaration of Interdependence” was, in fact, published in the September 1969 edition of Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog.

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[Text of “The Declaration of Interdependence”]

When in the course of evolution it becomes necessary for one species to denounce the notion of independence from all the rest, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the interdependent station to which the natural laws of the cosmos have placed them, a decent respect for the opinions of all mankind requires that they should declare the conditions which impel them to assert their interdependence.

We hold these truths to be self-evident that all species have evolved with equal and unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

——— That to insure these rights, nature has instituted certain principles for the sustenence of all species, deriving these principles from the capabilities of the planet’s life-support system.

——— That whenever any behavior by members of one species becomes destructive of these principles, it is the function of other members of that species to alter or abolish such irrelevant behavior and to reestablish the theme of interdependence with all life, in such a form and in accordance with those natural principles that will effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that cultural values long established should not be altered for light and transient causes, that mankind is more disposed to suffer from asserting a vain notion of independence than to right themselves by abolishing that culture to which they are now accustomed.

——— But when a long train of abuses and usurpations of these principles of interdependence, evinces a subtle design to reduce them, through absolute despolation of the planet’s fertility, to a state of ill will, bad health, and great anxiety, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such notions of independence from other species and from the life-support system and to provide new guards for the reestablishment of security, and maintenance of these principles. Such has been the quiet and patient sufferage of all species, and such is now the necessity which constrains the species homo sapiens to reassert the principles of interdependence.

——— The history of the present notion of independence is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations all having in direct effect the establishment of an absolute tyranny over life. To prove this let facts be submitted to a candid world.

——— 1. People are proliferating in such an irresponsible manner as to threaten the survival of all species.

——— 2. People have refused to recognize that they are interacting with other species in an evolutionary process.

——— 3. People have fouled the waters that all life drinks of and they have fouled the air that all life partakes of.

——— 4. People have transformed the face of the earth to enhance their notion of independence from it and in so doing have interrupted many natural processes that they are dependent upon.

——— 5. People have contaminated the common household with substances that are foreign to the life processes which are causing many organisms great difficulties.

——— 6.  People have massacred and extincted fellow species for their feathers and fur, for their skins and tusks.

——— 7.  People have persecuted most persistantly those known as coyote, lion, wolf, and fox because of their dramatic role in the expression of interdependence.

——— 8. People have warred upon one another which has brought great sorrow to themselves and vast destruction to the homes and the food supplies of many living things.

——— 9. People have denied others the right to live to completion their interdependencies to the full extent of their capabilities.

We therefore, among the mortal representatives of the eternal process of life and evolutionary principles, in mutual humbleness, explicitly stated, appealing to the ecological consciousness of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do solemly publish and declare that all species are interdependent, that they are all free to realize these relationships to the full extent of their capabilities; that each species is subservient to the requirements of the natural processes that sustain all life.

——— And for the support of this declaration with a firm reliance on all other members of our species who understand their consciousness as a capability, to assist all of us and our brothers to interact in order to realize a life process that manifests its maximum potential of diversity, vitality and planetary fertility to ensure the continuity of life on earth.

Ecology Action

[other signatures]