| Sustainable Development and the Earth Charter Keynote Speech : Maximo Kalaw, Executive Director Earth Council 8th ICEA World Conference of Community Educators On this occasion I would like to share with you my vision of sustainable development and the Earth Charter and its relevance to "Community Education and Networking" the theme of this conference. In an increasingly more complex and interdependent world the dynamics of sustainable development becomes more multi-dimensional then most people realize. While the Bruntdland commission of 1987 has defined sustainable development as " addressing the needs of the present without jeopardizing the ability of future generations to meet their needs" this definition has the tendency to focus mostly on resource use, clean technology and environmental regulations. The experience todate has shown that such efforts are inadequate for the coming millennium. For that matter Intergovernmental agreements alone, even done at the highest level of government is not going to solve the problem of our unsustainable development path. THE PRACTICE OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT I see sustainable development as a system which has three inter-related dimensions and the Earth Charter process as a critical tool for clarifying the values necessary for assuring the wholeness of which they are parts. I. INTEGRITY OF PEOPLE’S IDENTITIES. Sustainable development needs to be anchored in the multi-level identity of people as agents of their own development. For development is not something that governments or NGOs or educators can give to people. It is something people do for themselves. It requires their empowerment through tapping their cultural, ethnic and spiritual resources and expanding their personal and communal life stories and identities, as sources of meaning, to the realms of local, national, and global citizenship. II.COHERENT RELATIONSHIP VALUES Sustainability needs a set of coherent relationship values manifesting multi-level and community based identities. It needs values that define the relationship between people and nature, individual and society, economics and ecology, local and global, sovereignty and interdependence, present and future. Our view of nature now includes the sub-atomic and genetic levels as in the issues of genetic engineering. The relationship between individuals and society includes the issues of private and public goods; The relationship between economics and environment, includes the issues of globalization of markets and the impoverishment of non-market players such as local ecosystems and communities. The relationship between sovereignty and interdependence includes the issues of individual self-determination of states and their cooperative unions such as the European Union and the UN. These relationships result in creative tensions of paradoxes, which require a higher level of response then the conventional"either or" solutions. They can no longer be understood through a "flatland" analysis or through deductive fundamentalism. These relationships all have personal and public, internal and external, as well as present and future dimensions. This is the reason why the Earth Charter needs to be more then just a restatement of first principles that have already been eloquently expressed by major indigenous and spiritual traditions. The Earth Charter needs to translate these principles to relationship values in the present context, for meaning, and be informed by personal and social interior experiences for authenticity. These require the integration of various value spheres of the social, economic, environmental, cultural and technological regimes as well as the levels of spiritual experiences. III. TRANSFORMATIVE PROCESS OF CHANGE Thirdly sustainability needs to be a process of transformative change. The orienting direction of this change should not be a regression to pre-rational inter-connectedness or the disassociating rationality of the modern but towards an integration at a higher level of evolutionary order or community were values of justice, peace, efficiency and equity are realized. We cannot revert to living in caves like our ancestors did, but need to preserve a sacred relationships with nature as we transform our habitat from caves to condominiums, a truly alchemical task.A process beyond reform or revolution to that of transformation. This requires the affirmation of differences that modernity has brought to our awareness and the realization of solidarity and interdependence. This transformative process speaks to us of participation, subsidiarity, peace and equity as principles of movement and creative change. THE CRAFTING OF AN EARTH CHARTER The idea of creating an earth charter as a basis for intergovernmental negotiation for agreements in sustainable development has a long history from the Stockholm conference of 1972, to the Brundtland commission of 1987 and the Earth Summit at Rio in 1992 that produced the RIO principles. A major part of the failure to have an Earth Charter adopted was the lack of a political constituency for it.But more important was a lack of appreciation and understanding of the real function that can be performed by an Earth Charter, and what is needed for such a charter to be relevant and effective. The problematic of sustainable development is not due to a lack of financial resources or technology or governmental will.It is due to, an identity gap, a relationship gap and a process gap in our apprehension and comprehension of ourselves and the times we are living in.Insufficient attending to the questions of who we are, how to relate to each other and the earth, and how to be co-participant in the evolutionary journey of creation.An Earth charter process that provides the learning and teaching spaces for people to address these gaps is therefore fundamental to the process of sustainable development. The Earth Charter Campaign has three processes.The valuing process, the drafting process, the inter-governmental process. It is more then the creation of a document. We have many beautiful documents from our great spiritual traditions, the United Nations, political and civil society movements. It hopes to creating a global people’s dialogue that affirm people’s identities, address the relationship between opposites and defines a process of transformation towards an ethical framework for sustainable living and development. Such a dialogue requires the recognition of and respect for differences of people’s, ethnicity, culture, gender, and even morality and a moving out into the larger human community and community of creation in terms of common responsibilities and accountabilities. The foundation for the value of common responsibilities is fundamentally different from the western value of rights. It means more then protection from others or even doing ones share in not polluting the planet. Common responsibilities includes taking responsibility for how we are sharing the planet. Taking responsibility for example for the following state of affairs.
Common responsibility entails the internalization of values and its translation into: personal behavior specially in consumption and production activities; living of Faith teachings; work ethics of professions such as medicine, law and business; ethics of organizations and associations; creation of educational curriculum; and an ethical framework for local and national development strategies. THE EARTH CHARTER CAMPAIGN AS AN EDUCATIONAL PROCESS. The Earth Charter draws from its ontological view of reality that more complete truth lay beyond the different locations of an ideology in a spectrum form "right to left". It lays in the ecological relationship between them, in their connectedness. A movement of authority from ideologies to an ecology.This view of reality is anchored not in the disengagement of pure rationality but in the contextual relationship of community of beings, not in the shallow relativism of intellectual tolerance for ambiguity but a way of empowering without losing one’s power. The great post- post- modern realization is the interconnectedness of differences, of all things. The epistemological task of present Earth Charter process is discovering these relationships at different levels and dimensions of reality The pedagogical task is learning and teaching norms for these relationship and processes. It proposes an educational ethic that makes people responsive to the claims of community upon their lives, not competing for scarce resources as isolated individuals but creating communities of abundance in their lives as multi-level citizens. The Earth Charter process is a deeply ethical educational process, one that requires a capacity for connectedness that is at the heart of an ethical and ecological life. It is a call to engagement, mutuality and accountability. This can only happen when the individual and the diverse members of a community are bond by compassion. And when compassion translates into operational terms such as protecting the earth’s carrying capacity to support our neighbors. A NETWORK OF EARTH SOCIETIES The concept of networks has undergone major evolution; from exchanges of information and sharing of resources and issue based advocacyto one of "systemswork" and a "connected intelligence". From looking at single issues to whole systems. Although there will always be a need for single issue advocacy at each critical point of the system (of parts and wholes) the negative and positive feedback loops of a system require a "whole-sight" of the larger system.This can only be apprehended and enriched through the diversity of experiences that can but linked as a connected intelligence. This linking requires the translation of " expert systems" knowledge to "people’s knowledge" the creation of a people’s intellectual, a major task of educators. The Earth Charter campaign envisions the linking of Earth Charter national committees as Earth Societies into a connected community of truth. Value circles that empower life in its diverse manifestation on Earth. It is the Earth Council’s hope that Community Educators find the Earth Charter Campaign a meaningful tool for creating learning and teaching spaces were the local and global community Soul that binds all in common life and responsibility is experienced. |