ECI welcomes comments and suggestions on the new site, and invites you to "stay tuned" and watch as new developments come on line.

Mirian Vilela has been appointed by the ECI Council as the new executive director of ECI. Ms. Vilela has worked with the Earth Charter Initiative since 1995. Over the past two years she has served as the director of the Earth Charter Center for Education for Sustainable Development at the University for Peace in Costa Rica. Ms. Vilela will continue to direct the Earth Charter Center for Education, and the office of executive director of ECI has been moved from Stockholm to UPEACE in Costa Rica.

Mirian Vilela ha sido nombrada por el Consejo de la CTI como la nueva directora ejecutiva de la CTI. La Sra. Vilela ha trabajado con la Iniciativa de la Carta de la Tierra desde 1995. Durante los últimos dos años ha fungido como directora del Centro Carta de la Tierra de Educación para el Desarrollo Sostenible en la Universidad para la Paz en Costa Rica. La Sra. Vilela continuará dirigiendo el Centro Carta de la Tierra de Educación, y la oficina de la dirección ejecutiva ha sido trasladada de Estocolmo a la UPAZ en Costa Rica.

Like with the Earth Charter, principles play a large role in this study and in the WildCountry project, as it is called. WildCountry emphasizes the value of voluntary partnerships between a wide range of stakeholders, and particularly highlights the value of NGOs. Where governments are constrained by inertia, vested interests, or prior policy decisions, NGOs have flexibility. Through this multi-party approach to conservation, agricultural and pastoral systems can come closer to sustainability. But success will depend on having strong engagement with local communities and education, and especially on having strong scientific components of a strategy. (Photo1: 'Brendan Mackey and a giant termite mound on a recent field trip to Arnhem Land Northern Australia' by Charles Tambiah & the ANU WildCountry Research & Policy Hub)

This volume underscores the meaningfulness of the Earth Charter principles for protecting ecological integrity and achieving sustainable development. It is both practical and uplifting—and it shows how much each of us can achieve.

Detailed topics include how to get your issue into the news, how to organize, how to lobby, how to mount a successful campaign, how to get an appointment with a cabinet minister, and how to appear on TV, among others. May says that too many people feel powerless. And as the reader progresses through this book, all such feelings disappear.

Dear Earth Charter friends,

I am writing to inform you that two vacancies have arisen on the Earth Charter International Council, which is the body responsible for guiding the international dimensions of the Earth Charter Initiative and for governing Earth Charter International, the coordinating secretariat. In accordance with the agreed process for appointing new Council members, I am inviting members of the Earth Charter community to recommend replacement candidates to the Nomination Committee.

Dear ECI Executive Committee and Staff,

It seems good time to share an update with you on what is happening here in the Stockholm office, where we have started back to work after our July vacation season.

1. Michael Slaby to rejoin ECI Team full time, based in Heidelberg, Germany
With the approval of the grant ffor the creation of our new Program on Religion and Sustainability, Michael will now start to work implementing the strategy developed over the past year. Michael will focus first on further development of a general "Earth Charter Guide to Religion and Sustainable Development," but more specifically on an Earth Charter-focused briefing and teaching guide for religious leaders on the ethical issues surrounding climate change.

Congratulations to Michael and to all of us for having successfully navigated from initial Council approval to a well-researched and grant-funded program, in just nine months.

2. Dominic Stucker and Family to Move to Costa Rica and ECI Center at UPEACE
Dominic, the Earth Charter Youth Initiative's International Coordinator, will move to our Costa Rica center as of 1 October 2007. Dominic will ...

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 ...

The Autonomous University of San Luis Potosi (UASLP), in partnership with Luneburg University, and the Mexican and German Commissions of UNESCO, organized this conference, which followed up the debate that started on the first conference organized by these institutions in 2005, regarding the role of higher education institutions in bringing about changes towards sustainability. The event took place in the beautiful campus of UASLP, and there were approximately 200 participants coming mostly from universities of Mexico and Germany, also from Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Venezuela, Peru, Colombia, Cuba, United States, Canada, Russia, Sweden, Greece, Spain, and Netherlands among others. Outside the Americas and Europe, there was only the participation of representatives from University Sains Malaysia, and from Cameroon Gender and Development Foundation. Besides this Foundation from Cameroon, and myself, I did not find anyone else coming from NGOs; all participants were representing higher education institutions.

The organizers invited us, as Earth Charter Center of ESD, to participate with a full article for the event proceedings, and with a poster exhibition.

Marina Bakhnova, project officer, Earth Charter Center for Education for Sustainable Development at UPEACE

The UN Decade for Education for Sustainable Development is involving a steadily increasing number of eductators and curriculum developers in Europe.
The 5th International Conference on Teacher’s Education, hosted by Debrecen University (Hungary), brought together more than 150 professional, dynamic, energetic, and committed educators from 16 countries, including the Czech Republic, Baltic countries, Italy, USA, Canada, Turkey, Finland and Costa Rica. Led by Prof. Ilga Salite, director of the Institute for Sustainable Education of the Daugavpils University, Latvia, the meeting has grown from a regional conference of educators from the Baltic states into an international forum. This evolution has been largely guided by these educators’ vision, vibrant energy and strong sense of responsibility for teaching a new generation of change agents in sustainable education.

The conference organizing committee gave special attention to the Earth Charter as a framework for education for sustainable development (ESD). As one of the invited key-note speakers, I was grateful for the opportunity to present the Earth Charter role in sustainable education processes, elaborate on the key ideas of the Earth Charter educational philosophy and methodology and, based on case-studies from Michigan University, Costa Rican schools, and the Paulo Freire Institute, offer concrete ways to use the Earth Charter as an ethical framework and useful educational tool for ESD.

I was happily surprised when, as a representative of the Earth Charter Center for ESD, I was officially presented with a membership card of the Baltic and Black Sea Circle Consortium, a fast growing international network of educators.

The Conference turned out to be a great opportunity to meet with old champions and allies of the Earth Charter. One of these, Charles Hopkins of York University, Canada, now actively works with the United Nations University to establish Regional Centres for Expertise (RCE), a global network of existing formal, non-formal, and informal education organizations aiming to deliver education for sustainable development to a regional/local community. RCEs aspire to achieve the goals of the UNDESD by translating its global objectives into the context of the local/regional community in which it operates. Dr. Hopkins expressed his keen interest in forging a strong partnership with our Centre in creating one such RCE in Costa Rica with the Earth Charter as a strong ethical background.

I am happy to report that the Eastern European network of universities is no stranger to the Earth Charter. At the conference, I learned about several places and projects where the Earth Charter is already being employed. It was a very inspiring experience, and one that further broadened horizons for the Earth Charter. Indeed, the Earth Charter is paving its way as an indispensable educational tool for ESD!

The ECI Council was formed in March, 2006, as the successor to the Steering Committee of the Earth Charter Commission. The Commission entrusted the Council to carry on the work of leading and guiding the Earth Charter Initiative. The Commission retains authority over the text of the Earth Charter itself.

ECI Council members are recommended by the broader Earth Charter community, and nominated by the Council's Nominating Committee. The Council selects its members to serve three-year terms. Members may be renewed for a second three-year term, but there is a limit of two consecutive terms before a Member must stand down from the Council.

Council members serve as volunteers. If they require it, their travel expenses for meeting attendance will be reimbursed by ECI; but otherwise Council Members do not receive financial compensation for their service.

To recommend someone to be considered by the Nominating Committee, please send an email to Lisa Öberg, loberg [AT] earthcharter [DOT] org, in our Stockholm office. The letter should include:

- A brief statement (1 page or less) of why the person should be selected
- A brief biography or CV (2 pages or less)
- Full contact information for the person you are recommending

Below, you will find the full text of the Council's "Guidelines for Organization and Operation" as well as the official statement of Council responsibilities.

Browse the Transition Blog.

Those who followed the 2006 "Transition Blog" will remember that I periodically attempted to write, from the director's perspective, about the enormous changes we were moving through. You will find plenty of news about our work in 2007 on the main Earth Charter in Action blog - we are happy indeed to see that the Transition process has born such lovely fruit.

That Transition blog has been archived and will soon be available here for those who have historical interest. But meanwhile, here is a short, current update ...

- We continue to work in two main offices, Stockholm and Costa Rica. Stockholm is where we center our work on Strategy and Communications generally; Costa Rica is home to our Center for Education for Sustainable Development, hosted by the UN-mandated University for Peace. (This tells you how important education is to our work. See their site for more detailed information about this very central area of activity.) These centers also, of course, have special additional responsibilities in terms of outreach to their respective regions.

- We also have a network of nearly 100 ECI Affiliates the world over. These are organizations and individuals who formally agree to promote the Earth Charter and run programming in their respective countries and regions. The Affiliate network is still in the process of being restructured, but we are so pleased by the amazing dedication and quality of the work being at the national and regional level with the Earth Charter. (Truth be told, some of these national-level efforts are bigger, in scale terms, than our international secretariat.) (Also, we will soon have a more developed Affiliate page for easier access to information; for now, you can connect to Affiliates by clicking here.)

- And finally, to keep this extremely brief, we continue to roll out the new programs and initiatives that have been in development over the past year or so. These include initiatives in the areas of business, climate, religion, and of course youth, which is an additional area of special priority for us.

We are, as the title notes, dancing as fast as we can. With the whole world as our area of responsibility, and small team around a dozen full-time folks on staff or working with us part-time, there are many more dance-partners we should connect with than there are dancers-on-staff at present. We find ourselves continually asking for other people's patience when we can't immediately respond to requests etc. But we're growing, and we are working especially on developing the resources and materials that will allow folks around the world to empower their own leadership and action to promote the Earth Charter vision, values, and ethical principles.

Questions about our work? Send them to (and now we have to be very careful about putting email addresses on line for spam reasons, hence the funny characters) info [[at]] earthcharter.org. We'll try to address them here.

Thanks for your interest (in reading about us!) and support, and we will do our best to keep you up to date about what is happening at Earth Charter International.

- Alan AtKisson
Executive Director

Photo: Some of the ECI Team at the April 2007 Council meeting in Sao Paulo, Brazil