Earth Governance
Maurice Strong | IONS Noetic Sciences Review | IONS Review #63 |(1 rating)Last autumn, Maurice strong a senior adviser to the united nations and chairman of the earth council visited the institute of noetic sciences in Petaluma, California. He came, he said, because he shared ions vision for a "global wisdom society, "a society that recognizes the paramount importance of sustainable ways of living, and that honors the earth as our home and provider. While at IONs, strong gave a talk to board and circle members. The following article is adapted from his presentation.
As a youngster, I used to get bored, and I'd go out to nature for a week at a time and just study it. I'd wonder about its rhythms, wonder why the animals turned white in the winter, and wonder what was behind it all. I'd look up at the stars at night, and out into the cosmos, and realize we're looking not just into space but also back in time. That gave me the incentive to study a little more.
My interest in the state of the world both socially and naturally stems from those early experiences. I determined back then that I would like to use my life to do whatever I could to make even a little bit of difference. However, not having the necessary qualifications, I became very frustrated at one stage in my life. I wanted to join the foreign-aid program, or to join the church or the YMCA, or one of those organizations that was trying to help people--not just materially but morally and spiritually--and none of them would have me. So I had to go into business by default, because it was the only place I could make a living. I decided intuitively that business is a power in our society, and if that's the only place I might be able to make a living, I would use business as a means. And that's what I've done.
The Larger Context
As a businessman and government consultant, I have always tried to see the larger context: the environment, the Earth--even the cosmos. I've always believed that the damage we have done to the environment is simply a manifestation of the way in which we are mismanaging our relationships with the Earth, its natural resources, and with each other. These are part of the larger system of relationships by which human activities are shaping our own destiny. The population of the Earth has almost quadrupled in the last century. However, the impact of human population on the Earth has increased something like sixty times. In other words, it isn't just population growth. It's the growth in the impact of our economic life on the life system and resource base of the Earth that has grown many more times than the population.
This does not mean that population is not a problem-- of course it is. It's particularly a problem for the developing world that has to feed and look after their growing communities. Population growth is concentrated in the countries that can least afford to support it, and, of course, that is creating immense pressures for migration. And yet the borders of the world are closing to all but a few: the rich, the privileged, or the highly skilled. In previous eras, economic difficulties and often religious persecution pressured people to move out--but there were places to go: North America, South America, Australia, New Zealand, Southern Africa. Those places are no longer available.
Highest Aspirations
Where are we going globally in this next twenty-five years? I have expressed some of my own ideas on this in my book Where on Earth Are We Going?, and I've reached a conclusion: In the wealthiest civilization ever, we have the means to deal with the issues of poverty and environmental sustainability. At the first global conference on the environment in Stockholm in 1972 (which I helped convene), we didn't fully understand what our civilization had been doing in pursuit of economic goals. Now we do. We've lost our innocence.
The evidence is clear that our planet's life-support systems are in worse condition than they have been in recorded history, and the prospects are grim indeed. Biodiversity-- the Earth's plant and animal life, and, yes, even its insect life, which is sometimes a bit bothersome to us--has deteriorated immensely. This indicates a deterioration in the planet's life process itself, and we are part of it. We are actually continuing to do the wrong things. Why is it that, in the wealthiest civilization ever, where we know what our problems are and have the means to deal with them, we're not doing it?
I believe implementation of our highest aspirations depends on a quality of consciousness--motivation. And that's why in recent years I've been concentrating on what I call a "motivational system." Lack of motivation is causing the problem--not a lack of knowledge or resources. What is the motivational system? At the economic level, it's a system of fiscal measures, taxes, regulations, and policies by which governments motivate and influence the behavior of corporations and individuals. Studies we've done in the Earth Council make it clear that governments have been subsidizing, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, activities that don't need subsidies--contributing to unsustainability, and to deterioration of the Earth's life systems. We called the report Subsidizing the Earth's Destruction with People's Money. Since the report's publication, newer estimates point to well above a trillion dollars in subsidy. In short, we simply are not doing what we have the capacity to do.
Masters Of Our Own Fate
We have now reached the level of population and economic development where the scale and intensity of human activity literally makes us the prime agents of our own future. That's never happened before on a global scale. It's always happened in discrete places. For example, the Greek islands supported flourishing civilizations several thousand years ago. Today, they can support only a meager peasant agriculture because the soil and the forests are largely gone. Economically, all that's left is tourism around the edges where the beaches are. That was a catastrophe for the people concerned, but at least they had somewhere else to move, and they moved on.
If you look at the history of the Middle East, some of the civilizations that have given birth to modern life are long buried in the sands, largely because of ecological mismanagement, because they didn't have the knowledge then. We do now. But the scale is much greater today-- we are now impinging on the parameters that make life on Earth possible. The main one we're aware of is climate change, which is undermining the biological resources essential to our health and well-being. People often say in response to this, "There's always been climate change. Such change occurs naturally." I reply, "Of course it does. But remember that in past periods of natural climate change, the Earth wasn't habitable--it wasn't favorable for human life." The period in which Earth has been an auspicious place for human life spans only a minute portion of its total geological history. For most of its geological history, the Earth has not been capable of supporting human life, and certainly not on the scale on which it exists now. Therefore, it is arrogant and, frankly, somewhat ignorant, to say just "Oh well, life has always gone on, so somehow or other it will always go on." That's simply not the case.
Indeed, we are impinging on the conditions that make life possible. Four or five years ago, at Stanford University, I convened a meeting of some of the world's leading scientists. I asked: "From a scientist's point of view, what do you think is the most important question facing humanity?" Although they weren't all medical scientists by any means, they said that the resurgence of communicable diseases was the most critical issue. Disease is going to outdistance the capacity of the remedies-- another consequence of the imbalances and mismanagement of our relationships with the Earth.
We are now, literally, the masters of our fate. We have to manage the processes by which we impact the Earth's life-support systems. What an awesome responsibility it is for God (or whatever you may call the ultimate source of all life) to have given us the knowledge and the capacity to determine our own future. It is a responsibility for which we are not yet ready. And I'm afraid, too, that we haven't yet even fully realized the implications of the fact that if we want a good future for our children, we're not going to get it just by putting some annuities aside; we have to leave them an Earth that's viable. Currently, we are moving in the opposite direction. We are going to ensure they will not have the kind of life we've been able to enjoy, even one generation from now. Yes, the rich will be able to insulate themselves to some degree, more than the poor, but not for long. The rich don't want to live behind heavily guarded fences and security systems forever. That's not the kind of life, surely, that we would aspire to.
A System Of World Governance
I've never lost my sense of awe at the rhythms of nature, at how things work with each other, at how the life of one depends on taking the life of the other. But now we're the ones in control. We have the intelligence and knowledge, and the capacity, to bring a good life to all generations that follow us. It is possible to eliminate poverty, to make at least the basic benefits of a decent life available to people everywhere. And this is not just a charitable thing to do so. Somehow or other, if we don't do it, we will not be immune to the results of the frustrations, hatreds, and prejudices that arise from gross inequities or disparities in the human condition. We're all vulnerable to that. But even if we weren't, those of us who try to run our lives by a moral compass would want to do what we could to bring about the conditions of life that will make Earth not only habitable on a continuing basis but also more equitably habitable for all its inhabitants.
I think this is the most awesome challenge that humanity has ever faced--a challenge never before faced by the world as a whole. The processes that we describe as "globalization" are simply making it clearer that we live in a world of systems. We live in a world in which cause and effect are separated from each other by dimensions of space and time that transcend national boundaries and the boundaries of corporations. Yes, we live in a world of systems, but we do not manage it systematically, and now we have to learn how to manage it.
That does not mean world government, per se. I've been accused of promoting this, but I don't think world government would work. The United Nations certainly isn't ready to govern the world. And I don't think world government will ever be necessary. But we do need a world system of governance, and a world system of institutions and cooperative arrangements through which we can attempt to manage systemic forces that cannot be managed within the confines of a single nation.
We don't have to manage everything. I've come up with a concept that I call "boundary conditions," and it's very simple: It is based on the premise that every issue should be managed effectively at the level closest to the people concerned, the level at which it can be managed effectively. By that standard, most issues should be addressed closest to the community level where the people concerned can manage them. That still leaves many issues requiring management in a global context, but it doesn't mean that all the activities have to be global--only a few of them have to be. The context and the framework in which they are carried out has to be global and cooperative so that people know how their particular interventions are going to affect the system, positively or negatively. Our understanding of this process is just beginning to emerge, and it has yet to influence most governments to any significant degree.
We cannot have sustainable development, or respect for human rights, or good national development and stability, if we're being robbed of the best of our life and our economy through conflict. Our primary focus needs to be on developing ways of preventing conflict, dealing with its causes, helping to develop the attitudes and cultures that permit people to understand why differences can often to lead to conflict, and learning how to mitigate or manage differences before they erupt into conflict. Then if they do erupt into conflict, we know how to resolve them peacefully. The tragedies of September 11, 2001, should have driven this point home.
The world of 2025 will result from what we do or fail to do in the next two-and-a-half generations. I think the future of humanity for many generations--perhaps forever--will be settled within that time. That does not mean it will all come to an end or all the problems will go away. We won't arrive at a perfect situation, nor will we collapse into tragedy in a few more decades. I'm saying that psychological and social inertia is as powerful an influence in human affairs as gravitational inertia is in the physical world. If we're serious about change, we will have to make a fundamental shift in the inertia propelling us toward an unsustainable future. We are capable of that. We have the capacity. And we have the minds and spirit do it.
At Home in the Cosmos
I used to lie on the ground out in the prairies at night under beautiful, clear skies. I'd look up and wonder about it all. I've always believed that we don't live just on the Earth, we live in the cosmos. And it seems to me that we have to have a cosmic perspective.
Life on Earth has been here only for a very small portion of our geological history. From this perspective, you might think life is just an incidental thing. It doesn't matter much because, after all, the Earth itself is just a pinprick in the vast universe. You might think life doesn't really matter in cosmic terms, and yet you could look at it differently: We now have a tremendously enhanced capacity to look out into the cosmos, and perhaps even deduce mathematically that there must be life elsewhere--even though we haven't yet found any evidence for it.
If life on Earth is not unique in the cosmos, it is at least a rare and precious thing. And, in some sense, we are its custodians. We have an awesome responsibility to ensure that life on Earth continues. It is dependent on so many finely-tuned and interdependent factors that it's taken billions of years to evolve to sustain the human family. If life on Earth were to disappear--as it very well can--then this would be an event of cosmic significance because it is indeed such a precious and rare event.
Can you think of a greater responsibility? Can you think of a greater reason to establish and deepen the moral, ethical, and spiritual roots of our existence? Because, ultimately, this is what sets our priorities--it determines our behavior and our conduct.
Our living system is being dishonored and endangered by those who put their own personal riches ahead of everything else. Many of us who are part of the corporate world are just as unhappy and frustrated about that as "ordinary" people because when you have privileges--whether you are born with high intelligence or skills or whether you've accumulated a lot of wealth--surely that bears with it greater responsibility. And, in global terms, it gives the United States a greater responsibility, one to which the US has been true for most of its history.
Every year, in fact every hour, in which we fail to change our course, the chances of doing so are less, the costs of doing so are more, and the difficulties of doing so continue to grow. Yes, life may well continue, but it will deteriorate. It won't all just disappear but, if we don't change, by the latter part of this century the conditions of life on this planet could be much less hospitable. It won't support as many people, there will be a greater degree of conflict and anarchy, the systems we use to prevent and deal with these problems will have broken down, and people will take refuge in their own little systems.
In my book Where on Earth Are We Going?, I postulate that security will become one of the biggest businesses, and then it will become a "reverse security." The people who provide the security will end up controlling and exploiting those for whom they provide the service and systems, and this way of life will continue for some time. But the conditions of life will continue to deteriorate and will lead to a kind of conflict that will be extremely difficult to resolve. That's why I believe we are setting the course for the human future by the actions or inactions we take right now. And the longer we delay, the less chance we have of moving on toward a sustainable future.
--MS
MAURICE STRONG, a senior adviser to the secretary-general of the United Nations and former senior adviser to the president of the World Bank, is one of the world’s most influential political and environmental activists.
