“We have to save the ‘Living Planet’ which gave us life, before we decide how we are going to live on it”. The objective: Create a ‘Charter’ addressing the degraded state of Earth’s ecosystems and climate. This Charter to be endorsed by everyone, adopted by governments and the UN as a foundation document for our future relationship with the living planet Earth. The Charter is intended to inspire us to recognise that we urgently need to protect as much as possible of the collapsing ecosystems and climatic conditions which have supported life successfully in the past. It does not address how we shall organise ourselves, whether by democracy, tyranny or otherwise. It seeks to only to raise our awareness and refocus our aspirations to promote an evolution of our emotions which will result in wiser and more responsible behaviour towards our environment, these transitions of mindset are explored here. If you prefer video the first 10 minutes of this 26 minute video covers the science and the remainder covers the mindset shift that will be required, note that the Charter has been renamed since this video was recorded.
The Eco-justice Charter will compensate for the fact that our Declaration of Human Rights combines with the prevailing pursuit of economic growth to result in escalating ecological overshoot. The prevailing global growth culture makes it impossible for us to protect the biodiversity on which all life depends. To commence this process a petition has been raised to ask the UN to ratify a ‘Charter for Ecological Justice’ to address the global ecological overshoot which humanity continues to exacerbate all the while we persist with the culture of growth. The scientific justification which underpins the initial wording that has been suggested for the Eco-justice Charter is available here
Pandemics, resource wars and monetary inflation are all symptoms of escalating ecological collapse. The proposed wording of the ‘UN Charter for Ecological Jutice’ which appears in the petition is designed to inspire humanity to collaborate collectively to restore ecological balance by embracing the Degrowth ideology which has been evolving for several decades. Different aspects of Degrowth have recently been popularised and explored in books like ‘Less is More’ by Jason Hickel, ‘Post Growth’ by Tim Jackson and ‘Doughnut Economics’ by Kate Raworth. There is also my own book ‘Saving Us from Ourselves‘ which is free to download from here. The Charter for ecological justice will focus our endeavours on shrinking our combined ecological footprint until we no longer exceed the capacity for Earth to absorb the impact of our behaviour.
Unfortunately both men and women have lost their way emotionally in recent decades, wanting bigger and better and seeking unattainable concepts like perfection and excellence. We have lost sight of the simple joys of being in Nature and the importance of ecological balance. We have sought to dominate the natural world rather than living in balance with it. The emotional transitions that are required to acquire the Degrowth mindset are explored here
Imagination is essential to achieve the paradigm shift of the magnitude required to embrace a concept as far reaching as the UN Charter for Ecological Justice, many ideas to stretch your imagination are provided in my book which is free to download from here.