Crises and opportunities in changing times
If people are to overcome the systemic challenges that threaten the future of life on planet earth, we need to overhaul the way in which we manage society, argue Carlos Lopes, Ignacy Sachs, Ladislau Dowbor. In a paper prepared for the World Social Forum in Bahia, Brazil in January, Lopes, Sachs and Dowbor attempt to set out the ‘minimum necessary measures to avoid catastrophes and to guarantee a sustainable and dignified life’.
We all have our favourite crises. There are crises of values, pandemics, population growth, economic chaos, energy paradigm change, financial speculation, gaps in education, cultural pasteurisation, poverty prevalent in the world, hunger, and lack of access to such prosaic a luxury as clean water. The issue is not to chose which crisis seems to be more threatening. The real threat comes from an impressive convergence of critical tendencies, the synergy of behaviours that may be understandable, but are certainly irresponsible, and frequently criminal, and which are destroying our fragile spaceship.
In recent decades we have closed the statistical horizon of the planet. Despite never-ending interpretations in detail, we know overall what is happening. And the image that emerges is simply tragic. Initially it was seen in fragments. In Rio de Janeiro, in 1992, we realised what was happening with the environment; in Vienna, with human rights; in Cairo, with population growth; in Beijing, with families; in Istanbul, with urbanisation; in Copenhagen 1996, the social situation of the planet, and now we have seen, again in Copenhagen, the challenges of global warming. Today, even without planetary gatherings, we realise, from reports that cover areas from extinction of species to acidification of the oceans and the disappearance of rare metals, that we now face systemic challenges, where simple arrangements in the way we organise what we can call the overall management of society are not up to the task. Another world is possible, but most of all another management is necessary. The challenges are simply vital, in the most direct meaning of the word.
We are all adverse to catastrophism. We do not want to look like prophets of doom who only paint a bleak future. The Club of Rome went some way toward turning us against alerts that seemed premature. Today we are starting to evaluate the realism of these predictions in a more rational way. With information easily exchanged, the generalisation and improvement of models, online accessibility to the most varied scientific data, allowing for the comparison of results from innumerous research centres, the future is no longer a vague threat, a wavering outline. In a way, and in our consciousness, the future has already arrived. In the strong stance adopted for the title of the Salvador Forum, it is a crisis of civilisation.
We do also worry about keeping our feet on the ground, maybe not in our social dreams which may be infinite, but at least in our proposals. This realism has to be qualified. In most cases, as we see how difficult it is to obtain some tiny progress in pollution reduction or some protection for children in critical situations, we tend to think that setting high objectives is good for dreams but does not ensure good policies. Today, with the intensity of the threats to the planet, this view tends to change. We have to place on our realistic horizon actions which ensure the survival of species on land and in the oceans, the sustainability of our own civilisation. What is the minimum that ensures survival? A politician can afford the luxury of thinking how to reduce his aspirations to obtain a favourable vote. He is being realistic. We, as visionaries, or concerned scientists, have to make clear what are the minimum necessary measures to avoid catastrophes and to guarantee a sustainable and dignified life.
Our task, in this sense, is to define the horizons of systemic results we have to achieve, not any longer as a dream for the ‘possible world’, but as an imperative for what is absolutely necessary. Armed with these systemic results, we will contribute to define strategies, proposals and agendas.
There is no doubt that we are all tired of having to do this. And tired of seeing proposals rejected or postponed, analyses being diluted due to supposed (and often well funded) scientific doubts, and the planet rocked in the cover-up so well qualified as business as usual. What is taking us away from business as usual, and transforming the crises into opportunities, is the fact that the crises affects a multitude of people and are becoming clearly evident. As the good human race we are, we are reacting in a realistic way; in other words, we are reacting, not when the water was around our ankles, but now that it is reaching our necks.
The intended exercise in ‘this text, as we present arguments to stimulate discussion and trigger proposals, is to pinpoint the main areas of change and possible convergence of action plans. What we have ahead of us is an immense planetary task of drawing our efforts together, improving our knowledge of the challenges, and organising an effective wide ranging scientific communication network, with the aim of generating a critical mass of knowledge for a variety of stakeholders. Paulo Freire defined our task well: We are peddlers of the obvious (andarilhos do óbvio). He used to say this in a humorous way, because good humour is part of the process. We want to stop killing ourselves from overwork in building useless things and destroying the planet. We want the prosaic quality of life, the pleasure of daily challenges, in peace, for everyone, and in a sustainable manner.
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* This extract comprises the introduction to ‘Crises and Opportunities in Changing Times’, the reference document for the activities of the crises and opportunities group at the Global Social Forum/Bahia (January 2010).
* Carlos Lopes is UN assistant secretary-general in charge of UNITAR, based in Geneva, and the UN Staff College, based in Turin. Ignacy Sachs is an eco-socioeconomist. Ladislau Dowbor is a professor in economics at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo.
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