Livelihood Sovereignty is ‘a holistic ethical alternative solution’ which consists of five inter-relative rights, including: 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’.

Tran thi Lanh (1989-1999-2009)