THE DEJE WATER DECLARATI0N
THE MOTHER EARTHS DECLARATI0N
GRASS-ROOTS WATER- AND MOTHER EARTH DECLARATION LAUNCHED
Deje, Sweden August 9th 2007
At the first water and crystal festival in Deje, Sweden, the Deje-Forshaga Community Water and Earth declarations were signed by local people and their guests from ten nations. The declarations urge a more far-reaching, holistic approach to the pressing challenges of water-scarcity and global warming.
From August 1st to 5th, the organization Life and Joy with the support of Forshaga Commune held a Water and Crystal festival in Deje, a village in Sweden´s Varmland region. The intention of the festival was to create better public awareness concerning the situation of water, climate change and global warming.
Full text
What is the crucial information we need, in what ways are we able to participate actively in the many urgent changes for a more sustainable future? How can we avoid the tempting mistake of not taking our responsibility, leaving politicians and business “alone in the dark”? The first water and crystal festival in Deje was a unique attempt to face these questions, to set a platform of understanding for concrete approaches available to anyone.
To make this possible, the local organizers did an impressive job in bringing together renowned scientists, native people, shamans and spiritual leaders, who interacted with local people, including some of the 70 different nationalities present in Forshaga and Deje communities, as well as many guests from several European countries.
Both presenters and participants went well beyond the usual technology-centered approach. After short review of the facts and effects of our present way of doing (local fish, Greenland warming, beyond climate change), they placed the relationship-quality with our two basic elements at the center of debate:
Water, Mother Earth and the crystals as links between them (Deje happens to be rich in crystals!).
Our relationship with them are presently based almost exclusively on efficiency and material profit, with little responsibility for the negative effects this choice has. To concentrate only on improving the effects will not do the job for our survival. Already in the preparation of the festival it became clear that the real challenge is to change the quality of our relationship with these “basics of life”. What native and spiritual leaders remind us of is the quality of loving care, of spiritual connectedness, also with our water and our earth - as a mother. At the Deje festival, this guiding principle was included for the first time in the water and earth declarations. The scientists present endorsed and signed these declarations: a courageous and hopeful breakthrough, also for science…