Mankind’s triumph is unequivocal. By standing on
the shoulders of the aviation pioneers, Orville and Wilbur Wright, we have put
time and distance in chains. Louise Pasteur gave as the germ theory, supplanting
primordial explanations of disease such as poisonous air. Fritz Haber and Carl
Bosch made possible the nourishment of our soils and detonated the human
population time bomb.
In less than two centuries: we have concentrated
unprecedented wealth in the hands of a few and produced a dangerously unequal
world; we have fouled, gravely, our atmospheric commons; we have triggered unparalleled
mass extinction of invaluable plants and animals; we have poisoned our soils
water and atmosphere in order to feed and cloth ourselves; our ignorance stoke
the fires of religious, racial, ethnic and gender intolerance; our greed and
governance failure on global scale threaten the world’s economic stability.
There is no bigger and more urgent challenge facing
our civilization than attaining a sustainable future. Essentially,
sustainability is about bequeathing posterity the same or even better
livelihood opportunities than we enjoy today. That sustainability entails
trade-offs presents a veritable obstacle for action. Individuals and societies
often discount the needs of future generations, savoring the pleasures of
consumption in the present moment. Discounting is largely a testament of how
uncertain we are about the future.
The United Nations Conference on sustainable development
held in June 2012 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil did not go far enough in advancing
ideas that recognize and match the scale of the sustainability challenge. A
fundamental obstacle to attaining the “Future We Want”, a vision advanced at
the Rio+20, is the fact that we are unclear about an agreeable discount
formulae for the wellbeing of the future generations; our children. We are unable
to contain our present consumption, chart a path toward sustainability and
secure the interest of future generations.
Overburdened by the enduring failure of global
collective action to achieve a sustainable future, a band of scholars, policy
and decision makers, business leaders and politicians have begun to frame a new
a broader vision for a sustainable future. In January 2013, the King of Bhutan
convened an international expert group to frame a New Development Paradigm.
At the core of this paradigm are equitable and
sustainable wellbeing of human beings and the rest of nature. This radically
challenges mankind’s pre-ordained supremacy and power over all creation. The
philosophy of the New Development Paradigm is inhered in Bhutan’s Gross
National Happiness idea, which maintains that faced with ecological and social
devastation wrought by the world view of the last century, we can re-embed
economic life in the social community and within the integrity of nature.
Writing in Solutions,
a new hybrid academic online journal, a group of global thoughtful individuals led
by Robert Costanza – a leading ecological economist and professor of public
policy – have proposed five ideas upon which to build a new paradigm for the future
we really want. These ideas include:
1. Achieving well-being and happiness by strengthening social support
networks through family, community, and workplace, hence promoting holistic
life-long learning to enhance civic, cultural, ecological, health, and financial
literacy;
2. Attaining ecological sustainability through investing in
sustainable infrastructure, such as renewable clean energy, energy efficiency, support
for green businesses, public transit, and transition to sustainable agriculture
to feed the earth’s population without destroying soil, water and biodiversity resource
and hasten progress toward low carbon growth pathway;
3. Building a sustainable economy through implementing
integrated bottom line reporting for private sector companies and governments
to enable them to identify and manage the business benefits of more sustainable
practices; reforming national
accounting systems, and ensure that prices reflect actual social and
environmental costs goods and services;
4. Creating an equitable society by recognizing that greater equality enriches
our pursuit for happiness, strengthens social cohesion and reduces status
competition and reduces differences in living conditions an other well-being
outcomes;
5. Fostering dynamic and inclusive communities in which the
values of inclusion, thoughtful reflection, mutual and distributed accountability
infuse every sphere of public life as well as strengthening the voice of citizens
in decision making by augmenting formal representation in governance with
enlightened participation.
As always, the devil is in implementation. What is
needed now is to galvanize national accountability and local action at the
community level to secure our children’s future. It begins with you.
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