Earth Charter at the Tällberg Forum 2007
Report from Alan AtKisson, Executive Director, ECI
The Tällberg Forum, an annual June gathering in the Swedish region of Dalarna, has emerged as a premier global conference event in the field of sustainability. Increasingly, it seems to be playing a role similar to the World Economic Forum, though on a much smaller scale and with a focus on sustainability, peace, climate change, energy futures, global development challenges, and related issues.
The Earth Charter received significant and increasing attention at the Tällberg Forum 2007. Ruud Lubbers -- a member of both the Earth Charter Commission and a founding member of the Earth Charter International Council -- was a prominent plenary speaker, and his mention of the Earth Charter was picked up by a number of others, including Tällberg Founder Bo Ekman. The Charter was also the subject of a number of interventions during plenary sessions and workshops.
Thanks to the informality of the Tällberg environment, and the many conversations the conference makes possible, the Earth Charter is likely to be advanced via a number of new partnerships and initiatives in the coming year.
Continues with photos ...
Background on the Tällberg Forum
The Tällberg Forum, founded as a small network 26 years ago, is in its third year of being an expanded global conference of around 450 leaders ranging from academics to ambassadors, multinational business people to local NGO leaders, indigenous peoples to royalty. Founder Bo Ekman, a Swedish businessman and philanthropist, remains the central organizer, and he and his colleagues in the Tällberg Foundation have improved upon the Forum in programmatic terms over the last three years.
Because of the prominence and diversity of those gathered to the Forum, Tällberg is framed as a neutral meeting ground. But the Forum is not, of course, truly neutral: the crisis of environment, poverty and global sustainability is very much at the heart of the gathering.
Tällberg Forum's program moves back and forth between very full plenary sessions (mixing prominent speakers, music, and interactive dialogue sessions under Europe's largest circus tent) to nine workshops or "Tracks" held in various hotels and village buildings. This year, the Tracks were designed to produce more concrete results in the form of agreements about key questions, necessary actions, and some level of consensus on where to go from here. In this, the design succeeded well.
Photo: UNEP Director Achim Steiner talking with Chief Oren Lyons of the Onandaga Iroquois Tribe. Conversations like this are typical of the Tällberg Forum.
Of the nine topical Tracks, ranging from issues of health to investment, Track 1 was a "big picture" session entitled: "If the present path is not sustainable, what is?" This was the track both Ruud and I participated in. It was organized by the Tällberg Foundation and Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI); and it was hosted by Tällberg Forum founder Bo Ekman, with Johan Rockström of SEI facilitating. (ECI has a strategic partnership with SEI.)
Photo: Small group discussion, Track 1, Tällberg Forum.
More Details on the Presence of the Earth Charter
Overall, the Earth Charter ended up having a much larger presence in the Tällberg Forum in 2007 than it did the year before. This year, Ruud Lubbers was asked to close the first plenary, and his optimistic message was very well received.
Ruud referenced the Earth Charter very early in his remarks, which he focused on the call to celebrate life. He also introduced the Charter the next morning, in his opening remarks to the "Track 1" workshop, which was focused on the overall concept of sustainability.
Ruud framed the Earth Charter as an historical extension of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights -- that is, a "new chapter" added to the set of fundamental ethical principles that humanity developed during the 20th century, when we realized a need for ethical principles to guide development at a global scale.
The Earth Charter was then referenced several times by others over the course of two days. Towards the end of the Track, Bo Ekman made, and several others echoed, a call for the "fusion" of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights with the Earth Charter.
What this "fusion" would mean in reality is still an open, and theoretical, question; but this is the second time I have heard Bo Ekman make this suggestion publicly.
The Charter was also mentioned several times in the plenary sessions (including the closing session, which I missed). Most encouragingly, these mentions of the Earth Charter came entirely at the initiative of the speakers, and were not a result of any active lobbying by me.
More on Track 1 (on Sustainability Overall)
This Track included, as participants, representatives from Microsoft, Ericsson, the World Future Council, the Iroquois nation, Vattenfall (European energy company), the Conference Board (meeting point for US corporate CEOs), an indigenous tribe from the far north-eastern corner of India, and an Anglican bishop from South Africa, to give a flavor of the diversity.
Speakers included:
James Hansen, NASA (eminent climate scientist)
Ruud Lubbers, Netherlands Energy Research Center (former prime minister)
Achim Steiner, Director, UNEP
Ray Andersen, Chairman, Interface (global flooring company)
Tariq Banuri, Stockholm Environment Institute
John Elkington, Founder, SustainAbility, UK
Alan AtKisson, Executive Director, Earth Charter International
Graham Barnes, Author & Psychoanalyst, Sweden
Peter Senge, Society for Organizational Learning, USA
Nayan Chanda, Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, USA
Jaqueline McGlade, Director, European Environment Agency
Mattia Romani, Economist, Shell
Kjell Aleklett, President, Association for the Study of Peak Oil
Ola Alterå, State Secretary, Ministry for Enterprise, Energy, and Communication, Sweden
Sverker Sörlin, environmental historian, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm
Manfred Max-Neef, Eminent Economist, Chile
Jonathan Porritt, Forum for the Future & UK Commission on Sust. Dev.
C.S. Kiang, Beijing University Environmental Fund, China
Half the session was spent in small group dialogues, and the final small group dialogue was focused on taking forward thoughts about "big questions, "necessary actions" and elements of a "Tällberg Consensus."
Three of the four small groups mentioned the Earth Charter in the final report to the whole workshop. Two of the small groups echoed Bo Ekman's call for a fusion of the Earth Charter with the Declaration on Human Rights, as part of the emerging consensus.
From Conversation to Action
Thanks to Tällberg, I had a number of excellent conversations. I discovered, just to note a prominent example, that the Swedish Crown Princess Victoria was very familiar with the Earth Charter; and I had wonderful offers of new commitments to help promote the Charter in the Netherlands, from a number of Dutch Tällberg attendees. The list of important conversations and possible new projects I came home with was long indeed.
In the months ahead I will be following up on at least a couple of dozen important follow-up initiatives that were kicked off or strengthened at Tällberg. Let me take this opportunity to thank, publicly, the Tällberg Forum organizers and board for including representatives from Earth Charter International in this exceptionally useful and important gathering.
- Alan AtKisson