Dear leaders of the world,
We are young delegates to the Planet Under Pressure conference, and we ask you for concrete action based on the scientific knowledge of global challenges outlined in the State of the Planet declaration from the conference.
Problems of environment, economics, equity and social justice are intrinsically linked. Any action addressing one affects them all. Science (including social science) can help to identify solutions, but citizen engagement is vital for solutions to work. Where solutions exist that improve all of them, we ask you to implement them. If they have already been implemented, we ask you to enforce them. Where solutions exist that address one at the expense of the others, we ask you to rethink them.
Where solutions for environmental, economic, and societal problems conflict, we commit to finding better solutions. To start, we propose the following:
· Replace GDP with a metric that also incorporates environment and social equity
· Remove barriers for developing countries to have more voice and decision-making power in international dialogues
· Reform market mechanisms to allow participation in decision-making from stakeholders at all scales
· Offer financial incentives to young eco-social entrepreneurs and social and environmental researchers, especially in developing countries
· Regulate open access to knowledge in all arenas of business, policy, and science
· Transition from short-term projects to long-term programs for education and sustainability-oriented decision-making
· Make the sustainable development activities of business and government more accountable to citizens
We promise to:
· Make science more accessible and translatable across sectors and interests so that it can be used for policy making and long term business decisions that will ultimately drive a sustainable society
· Expand trans-discliplinary research and engage with user communities in efforts to develop integrative solutions for sustainability
These lists are incomplete, but they are a good place to start. You will have to take hard positions against vested interests standing in the way of such decisions. We, your constituents, support you in this. You the decision-makers and we the citizens must stand together to achieve a stable and sustainable future for our children and for future generations.
Looks great, thanks
ReplyDeleteThis is really great, thank you all for your hard work and intelligent thoughts. I really appreciate that you took the time and effort during a PACKED and PRESSURED conference to do this. And, I especially think it's great to have documented the process on this blog! I've re-printed on the Conference blog site - have a look! http://planetunderpressure.wordpress.com
ReplyDeleteI am a young delegate who would love to add somwhere, that bridging the gap between art and science would be a powerfull contribution to a better future for our planet and the respect and understanding of its shifting relationships.
ReplyDeleteMaria A. Villalobos H.
ENDLESS GROWTH: A TELLTALE SIGN OF MADNESS
ReplyDeleteIf scientists will choose to speak truth to the powerful, perhaps they will encourage other stonewalling leaders to do the right thing. At the moment many too many elders are remaining electively mute and appear unwilling to confront 'the powers that be' with the best science available regarding either the 'placement' of the human species within the order of living things on Earth or the most adequate understandings of the way the world we inhabit actually works. Such willful refusals by so many knowledgeable elders to assume their individual responsiblities to science and fulfill their well-established, collective duties to humanity are indefensible. Before it is too late for human action to change the perilous, human-induced course of unfolding and fulminating ecological events in our planetary home, perhaps enough people will speak out loudly and clearly in 'one voice' about what they believe to be real (according to the knowledge and the ‘lights’ they possess) regarding clear and imminent dangers to future human well being and environmental health that are visible on our watch. By so doing a global, internet-driven transformation of consciousness could literally spring up, as if out of nowhere, among human beings with feet of clay. Because the finite and frangible 'reality' of the natural world we inhabit has got to become more evident to people everywhere, day by day, and because the biological and physical limitations of the natural world will become obvious to people everywhere during the timeframe when humanity will face 'peak everything', humankind could sooner rather than later reach a point in space-time when a critical mass of people see and agree that ‘the endless growth’ paradigm that is so powerful and prominent in the human world in our time is, in fact, the telltale mark of insanity. Then the human (not the natural) world will have to change, the seemingly unassailable force of self-proclaimed masters of the universe, their global political/economic endless growth regime and mass media notwithstanding. Human overpopulation, overproduction and overconsumption activities would be reasonably, sensibly and humanely regulated worldwide. Human beings with feet of clay would not even be able to think in good faith of ourselves as Homo sapiens, much less behave as if there were no limits to growth on a planet with the size, composition and ecology of Earth. Such circumstances would compel all of us at least to try and change behavior that can be seen readily as distinctly human and patently unsustainable lunacy. With regard to the construction of an ‘economic colossus’ we call a global political economy, the outrageous per capita overconsumption of limited resources and skyrocketing increase of absolute global human population numbers, changes toward population regulation, sustainable lifestyles and right-sized corporate enterprises would begin to occur ubiquitously. After all, there have got to be limits to the insanity of constructing or engaging in anything evidently unsustainable by a species calling itself Homo sapiens sapiens. Somehow, somewhere, at some moment the leading elders in the human community must agree to limit something, some human activity. Any activity at all will work well. By so doing we change the endless growth paradigm and choose a new path, 'a road less traveled by', to the future. Until at least one human activity is meaningfully restrained, if not altogether halted from growing (at least momentarily), the unsustainable game of Ponzi we are recklessly and relentlessly playing will eventually lead to global destruction and degradation of a colossal, incalculable sort, I suppose.
Steve Salmony
Thank you all,Great.
ReplyDelete