| A Time of Urgency, A Time of Hope: Building a Blueprint for a Sustainable World Speech by Earth Council Chairman, Maurice Strong, to the 14th World Council of YMCAs Frechen, Germany - July 13-19, 1998 First, let me congratulate World Alliance President David Suh, Secretary-General John Casey, and your colleagues for welcoming me so graciously to this 14th World Council and for providing me this opportunity of addressing you as you begin your program. For me it is a moment that combines nostalgia, pride and a great sense of excitement as I experience the fellowship inspired by the spirit which has always made me feel so much at home in the YMCA. One of the primary areas in which the YMCA has made such a decisive contribution to my own career is in the international field. It was through my early international travels principally in Africa and Asia that I first encountered the YMCA and was so impressed with the many practical ways in which it manifested its own Christian values while reaching out to work with those of other faiths in a spirit of true partnership and friendship, helping them to develop their own capacities and to meet their own needs. This led me to walk into the YMCA in Calgary, Canada upon my return from my early travels and volunteer my services. No single event has changed my life more. My service on Calgary's World Service Committee, then on the World Service Committee of the National Council, the International Committee and the World Alliance nourished and developed my international interests and opened up for me the subsequent opportunities to serve internationally through my own government and then the United Nations as well as a number of other international non-governmental organizations. It is from that perspective that I will draw in sharing with you today some of my thoughts and feelings concerning the state of our global society and the prospects for its future. Predicting the future is at best an uncertain and speculative art; and experience tells us that basing our plans for the future on the predictions of even the most credible experts could be the height of folly. In 1895, Lord Kelvin of Britain's Royal Society stated that "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible," and in 1899, Charles Duell, Commissioner of the US Office of Patents, stated authoritatively that "Everything that can be invented has been invented." In 1943, Thomas Watson, Founder and Chairman of IBM pronounced that "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." And as recently as 1957, the editor in charge of business books for the Prentice Hall publishing company states that "I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year". These and many other examples tell us that in the rapidly changing world in which we now live we must prepare for a future which we cannot predict but which will nevertheless be of our own making. So prepare we must. To prepare effectively for the future, we need to have a clear knowledge of the principal risks we need to avoid, the principal opportunities to which we aspire, the most important values we seek to maintain and promulgate and the system of cause and effect through which our own actions, individually and collectively, interact to mold the future. For it is an awesome reality that for the first time since human life first emerged on this planet, human numbers and the scale and intensity of human activity have made us the principal actors in shaping our own future. We are literally in command of our own evolution. And we cannot avoid the responsibilities that this imposes on us. As we move into the 21st Century, human ingenuity and the miracles wrought by our accomplishments in science and technology have produced a civilization beyond the wildest dreams of earlier generations and given us the tools with which to shape an even more exciting and promising future. But these same forces have also given rise to some serious and deepening imbalances, which must be seen as ominous threats to our common future. These threats stein primarily from the concentration during this century of economic growth, and its benefits, in the industrialized countries, and population growth, with its attendant costs and pressures, in the developing countries. This is accentuating rich-poor differences both within and amongst nations and is compounding the problems of managing cooperatively the risks to our common future arising from the growing pressures on the Earth's resource and life-support systems. The more rapidly developing countries of Asia and Latin America have been leading the revitalization of the global economy, challenging its domination by the traditional industrialized countries and re-shaping the geo-political landscape. Despite recent setbacks, they are likely to resume their growth pathways. At the same time, developing countries continue to be home to most of the world's poverty and much of its conflict. It is also the scene of an increasing amount of the world's environmental devastation. But the developing world has never been homogenous. The rapid changes occurring there are deepening the processes of differentiation, particularly between those who are growing and those who continue in the grip of economic stagnation and poverty. These changes have immense implications for all of us. In environmental terms alone they could be decisive for the human future. Some of the world's worst environmental conditions afflict the countries of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. In rebuilding their shattered economies, they have a great opportunity to make the transition to sustainable development. Unfortunately, most are not doing this although it is not too late for them to do so. And we in the West have a compelling interest in helping to ensure that they reconstruct their economies on an environmentally sound and sustainable basis. We will undoubtedly share in the heavy costs they will bear in both economic and human terms if they fail to grasp this opportunity. The fact is that whether or not these follow the same growth pathway taken by the more mature industrialized countries, their impacts will undoubtedly move us beyond the thresholds of safety and sustainability. Our environmental future will be largely determined by what happens in the developing world. Yet we who have largely created these risks, and benefited most from the processes of industrialization that have given rise to them, can scarcely deny the right of developing countries to grow. Nor would it be fair or reasonable for us to seek to Impose unilaterally constraints on their growth in the name of environment. A series of paradoxes is developing which will soon confront both industrialized and developing countries with some very painful tensions and challenges. While efficient and competitive economies produce more gross national product, the benefits accrue disproportionately to the minority who have capita} and knowledge to deploy. This class is highly mobile and those in it can move their assets and activities across national borders. Divergent demographic trends are also deepening disparities between more developed and developing countries, and while there are signs that the rate of world population growth is slowing in absolute terms, it is still at levels without precedence in human experience, and most of it is concentrated in the developing countries. Meanwhile, the more maturer, developed countries are experiencing lower birth rates, which portend significant declines in their populations. This is bound to lead to increased pressures for migration of both people and capital to these countries. Meanwhile, the continued existence of extreme poverty with its attendant deprivation and suffering affecting some 1.3 billion of the world's people is an affront to the moral basis of our civilization. All the more so in that the means to eradicate it clearly exists. What is needed is the assertion of a new political and moral will which would in turn produce the social and economic innovation required to devise the means to deal effectively with it. The gaps between rich and poor, privileged and underprivileged are deepening, both within and amongst societies. This process, if it is not reversed, will inevitably lead to greater social tensions and potential for conflict. Democratic, market capitalism must find ways of dealing with these emerging dilemmas or risk becoming the victim of its own success. It must become just as effective at meeting society's social and environmental needs as it is in generating economic growth. A recent article in "The Economist", hardly a radical publication, stated that "if the Marxist prediction of a proletariat plunged into abject misery under capitalism has so far been unfulfilled, the widening gap between haves and have-nots is causing some to think that Marx might yet be proved right on this point after all". And George Soros, one of the capitalist system's most successful practitioners, has warned that capitalism is replacing communism as the main threat to the future of our societies. A countryman of mine, Professor Thomas Homer-Dixon, cites the growing potential for eco-conflicts as a result of competition for land and other resources that become locally scarce, and competition for shared resources like river systems and common areas like the oceans. The recent confrontation between Canada and the European Union over depleting fish stocks is a portent of this. The globalization of capitalism is producing a new and universalizing culture symbolized by CNN, brand name consumer products like Coca-Cola, McDonald's and Levi's, pop music, shopping malls, international airports, hotel chains and conferences. To the privileged minority who participates fully in this culture it provides an exciting and expanding range of new opportunities and experiences. But for the majority, particularly in the non-western world who live on its margins and feed on its crumbs, it is often seen as alien and intimidating. Caught in the dynamics of modernization of which they are more victims than beneficiaries, it is no wonder that many react with anxiety and rejection, seeking refuge and identity in their own traditional values and cultures. The clash between modernism and fundamentalism has deeply rooted secular as well as religious dimensions and is producing a new generation of conflict and turbulence. What, then, is the answer to this bewildering complex of forces that are shaping our future? The sobering fact is that the answer lies with us. After a long period of evolution, human beings have emerged as the dominant species on our planet. But we are a species out of control. Human numbers and the scale and intensity of human activities have reached the point at which we are now affecting, perhaps decisively, the basic conditions and balances on which our life and well being depend. We have become the architects of our own evolution and we have no option but to manage the forces that are shaping our future, or we will surely be engulfed by them. This premise has provided the basis for an ambitious initiative by the World Economic Forum to engage its global constituency of leaders of business, government, academia and other civil society leaders in a process of analysis and dialogue on the main challenges that will face the world community in the transition from the 20th to the 21st century. This project, TRUSTEES "21", is designed to help leaders and people develop the new insights and knowledge required to help illuminate the principal factors that are shaping our future and point out the policies, structure and processes through which we can manage these most effectively to improve the state of the world in the 21st century. As Chairman of the Council that is guiding TRUSTEES "21", I would very much welcome the participation and contribution of the YMCA. Today, the dominant ethos is that of individual self-interest. And I am sure that everyone here would share my deep belief that individual rights and freedoms constitute the fundamental foundations of our society. But in order to be exercise these rights and freedoms, they must be accompanied by a high sense of responsibility to each other and to future generations. It is this sense of responsibility that must be re-furbished as many of the actions to ensure a secure and sustainable future for those who follow us on this planet require new dimensions of cooperation with others, both at home and internationally. This is particularly true of relationships with developing countries. We, in the so-called "North" must leave "space" for developing countries to grow and to set for them an example that enables them to avoid the abuses and the costs of our own growth experience. For they will be much more influenced by our example, and by evidence that sustainable development is in their own interest, than by our exhortations. It is clearly in our own interest to ensure that developing countries have both the incentives and the means to make the transition to sustainability. This means facilitating their access to the latest state-of-the-art technologies and to the additional capital they will need to employ them. It would be unrealistic to expect that this would come through increases in foreign aid in traditional terms. But as pointed out in a recent Earth Council study, governments everywhere continue to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on direct and indirect subsidies for activities which run counter to sustainable development - as for example, subsidies to chemically-intensive agriculture, to water and fossil fuels. These impose costly burdens on people as taxpayers and consumers, as well as encourage environmentally unsound and unsustainable practices. A reorientation and redeployment of these resources would provide all the resources required to effect the transition to sustainable development, at home and abroad, while improving economic efficiency. Foreign aid is in decline and private investment now accounts for the principal flows of financial resources to the rapidly developing countries. Accordingly, we must develop the incentives and innovative financial mechanisms to ensure that private capital will support development that is sustainable. Such new financial mechanisms as tradable greenhouse gas emission permits can utilize market forces to channel funds available for environmental improvement to the 'places where they can be employed on the most cost-effective basis. Only by the "greening" of private capital can we make the transition to sustainability provided for in Rio's Agenda 21. The care and management of our relationship with each other and with the Earth requires a degree of cooperative stewardship beyond anything we have yet realized. The multi-lateral institutions, particularly those established since World War II provide the institutional framework for the system of governance by states required to exercise such stewardship. But they are the newest, least developed, least appreciated and least supported o? all the levels in our hierarchy of governance. At the global level, the United Nations and its specialized agencies and organizations, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, constitute the principal elements of this multi-lateral system. There are also many other regional and specialized organizations which perform important functions within the extended family of the community of international institutions. Over the years, there has been a plethora of reports, studies and proposals for Reforming and strengthening these organizations and some progress has been made in this direction. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has led the most extensive program of reform of the United Nations that the organization has experienced since its inception. And World Bank President Jim Wolfensohn has revitalized the development leadership of that powerful and influential institution while bringing to it a new social vision and humanitarian sensitivity. Other multi-lateral organizations have also undertaken significant reforms. While these reforms will certainly improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the organizations, they fall far short of the fundamental restructuring of the multilateral system that will be needed to enable it to deal effectively with the services the world community will require of this system in the much more complex, systemic world of the 21st century. Yet it has to be said that despite recognition of the need for such changes by a number of world leaders, there is an almost total absence of political will for change on the part of governments except for the kind of changes that will cut back the activities of these organizations and reduce the cost to the governments that provide most of their financial support. This is an ominous portend for the future of these organizations. Particularly disappointing is the fact that even as there has been a renewal in the -confidence in and public support for the United Nations under the dynamic and enlightened leadership of Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the organization languishes on the verge of bankruptcy because its largest supporter, the United States, has still not paid its arrears. All of this points to the member states of the United Nations to act on the recommendation of Secretary-General Annan to hold a special Millennium session of the General Assembly to focus on the role of the United Nations in the 21st century and the changes required to equip it to undertake the new and expanded tasks it will be called upon to perform for the world community. The Secretary-General has also challenged civil society to hold a "Peoples' Millennium Forum" to help generate the public support and political will for change and establish the foundations for a new and more effective partnership between the United Nations and the various elements of civil society which will be the key to its effectiveness in the new era. There are some issues about which it is important to be clear. The United Nations is not a world government; it was established by governments, with the leadership of the United States, as a servant of governments to help them to do cooperatively those things that they cannot do, or do as effectively, on their own. Its decisions and the revenues required to carry them out remain entirely the prerogative of member governments. It has no taxing or enforcement power of its own and it does not aspire to level its own taxes or to usurp the sovereignty of governments. In those areas in which governments decide that they wish to use the UN as an instrument for collaborative action, they do this through a willful exercise of their sovereignty, not an abdication of sovereignty. However well they are structured, or however effectively managed, international organizations like the United Nations can only act to the extent that their member governments permit them to do so and provide the means to enable them to carry out their actions. And governments, in turn, respond to the values, interests, and priorities of the people to whom they are accountable and in the final analysis, the behaviour of people and the signals they send to their governments will be based not only on their own interests, but on their deepest moral and ethical values. The UN Charter itself enshrines fundamental values which provide the moral underpinnings -of the organization. And the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has provided a strong impetus to the growing movement for respect of human rights throughout the world. A major new campaign is now underway to develop a people's Earth Charter defining a set of moral and ethical principles for the conduct of people towards each other and the Earth as the basis for achieving a sustainable way of life on earth. These efforts began at the UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in 1972, which produced an historic declaration of environmental principles. In 1987, the Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, "Our Common Future", pointed to the need for a new charter. I had very much hoped that agreement on an Earth Charter could be reached at the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 1992. But, at the Conference, it became evident that there was not the level of political will necessary to achieve agreement on such a far reaching charter, although it made progress in this direction by adopting the "Rio Declaration of Principles". Parallel and complementary to these efforts, a number of civil society groups proposed various forms of charters. But none of these efforts gave rise to an Earth Charter that would have the same universal support and value as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The failure to reach agreement on an Earth Charter is one of the things I regret most about the Earth Summit. Political leaders were sympathetic but were just not ready for it. Thanks to the superb efforts of the Chairman of the Main Committee at Rio, Ambassador Tommy Koh, we did succeed in obtaining agreement on the "Rio Declaration of Principles on Environment and Development". These -declarations and a number of others, particularly the "Draft International Covenant -on Environment and Development" adopted by the World Conservation Union (IUCN), provide important ingredients for an Earth Charter and represent a significant movement towards the kind of widespread consensus required to achieve agreement on it. The Earth Council, in cooperation with Mikhail Gorbachev's Green Cross International, and many other organizations and citizen groups throughout the world, have launched a global campaign to stimulate dialogue and elicit the contributions of people everywhere to the formulation of an Earth Charter. The process itself is already evoking an encouraging response. It is intended to be a "People's Earth Charter" which will derive its authority from the broad support of people in developing and endorsing it, and will be submitted for consideration by the United Nations in the year 2000. To follow up on progress made in the five years since the Earth Summit, the Earth Council convened the Rio+5 Forum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in March 1997. At the Forum, the Earth Charter Commission met for the first time, producing a benchmark draft of a People's Earth Charter. The Benchmark Draft summarizes 18 principles that have already received some degree of consensus within existing documents of -governments and civil society. This is providing the focal point for an extensive dialogue under the auspices of civil society organizations in all parts of the world. The present phase of the campaign is focusing on local and national levels with special focus on the national levels, and the Earth Council has encouraged the involvement of a significant number of sectors to generate general public and media awareness about the Earth Charter initiative. Although so far in Europe, there is only one formal, national Earth Charter campaign underway, in Ireland, there are another 35 or so national consultations underway around the world. The Earth Charter process is also being complemented by the development of a global Ombudsman mediation function that will respond to the need to: resolve peacefully and creatively the impacts of unsustainable practices on public health and the environment; the interfaces between ecological and human security as it affects local and national development, particularly in the most vulnerable and marginalized communities; and the demands for equity and justice in resource use and allocation.To pursue these goals, the Earth Council has initiated a research and consultative phase of this project, with financial support from the Danish Government. The institutional framework provided by the World Alliance of YMCAs provides an excellent forum in which to pursue initiatives like the Earth Charter. Throughout its century and a half of existence, the Y has concerned itself with moral issues, with value issues, and with practical programs connecting human life and human endeavour with nature. The Y has been one of the main pathfinders of the environmental movement, long before the environment emerged as a distinctive issue. In fact, one of the main principles enunciated in the Rio Declaration is but a precis of the YMCA' 5 historic guiding ethos B the harmony of body, mind and spirit in global as in individual human affairs. I am convinced that the evidence we now have as to the state of the physical world supports the basic values that have come to us from the world's great spiritual and moral traditions. Some YMCAs are already participating in the Earth Charter campaign. And I would now like to invite, and indeed challenge, the World Alliance and its member associations throughout the world to take a lead in this process and make it a centrepiece of the Y's global agenda as we move into the 21st century. Some YMCAs have already taken up this challenge which I submit is not only fully consistent with the Y's own basic purposes and mission, but will also invoke its unique experience and capacities. I know of no other organization which is better able to contribute to the articulation and acceptance of the Earth Charter as a primary moral and ethical cornerstone of the efforts of the world community to establish a secure, equitable and sustainable future. But the Y cannot do it alone; it must use its influence in the communities and constituencies it serves to increase our awareness of these issues and in particular the ways in which our individual values and actions can affect them. Virtually every major global issue has its roots in individual value and behaviour. Caring, sharing, love and respect for our fellow human beings can no longer be seen as pious ideals divorced from the real world, but indispensable prerequisites for a secure and sustainable future for the entire human community. One of the things I have always admired most in the YMCA is that individual YMCAs are deeply rooted in their own communities, but are linked together through the World Alliance in what is one of the world's oldest and most durable international organizations. I suggest that Rio's Agenda 21 offers the best available global framework to guide community and individual actions and their relationship to global issues. Many YMCAs are already involved in the development of Local Agendas 21 in their own communities, based on Rio's Agenda 21. Over 2000 communities around the world have already developed their own local Agenda 21. -In terms of process, involvement and commitment, there is no organization whose experience and capacity is better suited to mobilizing the diverse constituencies that exist in each community around the kind of common purposes and programs required to give effect to local Agendas 21 and to provide a local forum for dialogue on the Earth Charter. I would hope that YMCAs from communities that have not yet developed there own Agendas 21 take the lead in initiating this process which has an immense potential to unite the community in cooperative programs that will shape the kind of future we want. The fact that the most exciting and promising post-Rio developments are occurring outside of governments, through civil-society organizations like the YMCA, is one in which I take great pride. Just as the real leadership at Rio came from people, from non-governmental organizations and citizen groups, it is these people today who are taking the lead in the follow-up to Rio. While such universal instruments as the Earth Charter and Agenda 21 do not in themselves represent total solutions to the kind of global problems we face, they provide a framework and impetus for practical action. And they have a significant influence over people's thinking and therefore ultimately their behaviour. And the process itself is an extremely important one in terms of educating people regarding their common interest and concerns, and the potential for uniting them in common action to meet these concerns. The participation by individuals in such collective exercises as formulating an Earth Charter needs also to be reflected in their own personal lives. People need to be more aware and better informed of how their own behaviour contributes to global problems and how it can contribute to solutions. Overall, humanity's consumption continues to be greater than what nature can regenerate on a continuos basis. In a recent report, the Earth Council determined that if every nation consumed resources at the same level as Canada, we would need three more planets like Earth to provide the necessary resources and waste assimilation. There is no shortage of ideas and experiences as to how we can reduce our own "ecological footprint". These include:
The structures through which people seek to manage their relationships with other are the product of their history, their values, their aspirations and, yes, their fears and their prejudices. I place heavy emphasis on the need for a greater degree of cooperation amongst people and nations if we are to avoid the risks and realize the new opportunities which will confront us in the complex world of the 21st century. But this is not, I repeat, not, to make a case for homogeneity. Diversity and variety is the most precious characteristic of human society. Our challenge is to protect enhance this variety and diversity while cooperating in those areas essential to the sustainability, security and well-being of all human life - present and future. First amongst these are those issues which prescribe the boundary conditions which we must all respect in order to ensure our common survival and well-being. The other areas in which cooperation can be in everyone's interest are those which protect and expand the opportunities for individual self-expression and realization. The essence of freedom is after all to have the maximum number of options and for each individual to have access to them on the basis of their own free choice. The technological civilization which is rapidly encompassing the entire world community offers the prospect of an unprecedented range and variety of options for individual choice. But as we have seen, to ensure access to these options requires that we accept certain common constraints and disciplines. Commonly accepted values and behaviour systems provide the best assurance of adherence to these constraints and disciplines. Governments will continue to have principal responsibility for ensuring the enactment and implementation of the policies and regulations required to give practical effect to these options and disciplines. And multi-lateral organizations will provide the fora for negotiation and implementation of the international legal regimes and agreed standards and programs required to enable governments to deal with these issues fairly and effectively in their own domestic jurisdictions. I am not one who believes that governments are about to go out of business and that the nation-state is on the way out. Nevertheless, it is clear that after a long period in this century in which people have looked to their governments as the primary guarantor of their security and well-being, we are now confronting the limits of government. Experience has demonstrated that governments are not well-equipped to provide directly many of the services which people need and are imposing severe limits on the extent to which governments can tax them or go further into debt. This is not, in most cases, because the resources are unavailable. Indeed, we live in an era of unprecedented wealth, concentrated particularly in the more developed countries. But people in these countries no longer trust their governments to use their resources effectively. The result is budgetary austerity in these countries which in turn, through reducing their assistance to developing countries, impose severe austerity and hardship on developing countries. The result of this paradox is the emergence of civil society as the main source of many of the programs and services formerly provided by governments. Indeed, the social philosopher Leslie Salmon has compared the surging importance of the non- governmental sector in the later part of this century with the emergence of strong nation-states in the 19th century. This clearly opens up immense new opportunities - and responsibilities - for organizations like the YMCA. In the final analysis, people are understandably concerned about how major global changes may affect them and their immediate families. There are portends of this in the examples of our recent turbulent weather patterns that have affected people - the ice storm this past winter in eastern Canada, the severe drought and resulting famine in East Asia, climatic turbulence in Europe and the severe spring flooding which afflicted the Canadian and American mid-West in 1997. Whether or not such events result from climate change, they clearly demonstrate how such changes can impact on individuals and the need for individuals to be better prepared for them. I am persuaded that the 21st Century will be decisive for the human species. For all the evidence to date of environmental degradation, social tension and inter-communal conflict have occurred at levels of population and human activity that are a great deal less than they will be in the 21st Century. Theoretically one can make a case that these problems will be manageable. But in practice it will require that we extend to the global level the kind of social discipline and cooperative management. that some of the more successful modern and traditional societies have developed. Prospects for this are not promising without major changes in current attitudes and practices. The risks we face in common from the mounting dangers to the environment, resource base and life support systems on which all life on earth depends, are far greater as we move into the 21st century than the risks we face or have faced in our conflicts with each other. All people and nations have in 'he past been willing to accord highest priority to -the measures required for their own security. We must give the same kind of priority to the security of our planet Earth. This will take a major shift in the current political mind-set. Necessity will compel such a shift eventually; the question is can we really afford the costs and risks of waiting. As the environmental movement has evolved from Stockholm through the Brundtland Commission to the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, we have enlarged the context in which we must view and deal with the challenge of protecting and improving the environment to embrace the complex system of relationships through which our economic aspirations and behaviour must be reconciled with our environmental and social goals. What we have come to call sustainable development provides the larger framework for achieving a positive synthesis between these three dimensions of the development process. This is no mere passing phase, but a fundamental process of civilizational change which is essential if we are to move onto the pathway to a secure and sustainable future in the new millennium. In the final analysis, the behaviour of individuals as well as the priorities of society respond to the deepest moral, ethical and spiritual values of people. I am convinced that the radical changes now occurring in our society are producing a historic convergence between our traditional perceptions of relationships, between the practical aspects of human life and its moral and spiritual dimensions. It often been assumed in the past that there is an essential dichotomy between the "real world" of practical affairs and the more ethereal, ideal world of morals and spirit. The sum total of the behaviour of individuals is the principal source of human impact on the global environment of which the risks of climate change are a principal manifestation. People's behaviour is driven ultimately by their own principal values and priorities. The changes called for at the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992 were fundamental in nature and will not come quickly or easily. Individuals often believe that they can make little difference in the larger scheme of things. But they can. Indeed, without individual change there cannot be societal change. The YMCA has been on the leading edge of social change for well over a century. It has helped people at the level of their own communities to develop the moral, ethical and spiritual dimensions of their own lives and translate them into the kind of practical actions that make them better citizens and link them through common bonds of fellowship and cooperation with people of other nations and cultures around the world. It is, in my view, this linkage between the individual and local levels and the larger global community which is the key to a sustainable future for all of us. As we make the transition to a new century and a new millennium, the YMCA's goal, its values, and its experience have never been more relevant or more needed. I welcome the evidence I see in this Council of the vitality of this great world movement, of the vision and commitment of its leadership, and of its worldwide membership. It is a great privilege to be with you as you articulate your vision for the new century and commit yourselves anew to the values and ideals which will continue to place the YMCA at the leading edge of the changes through which we will all participate in shaping the human future. |