UN Summit of the Future 2024

The Ecologist has published a long essay by Professor Herbert Girardet, a co-founder of the World Future Council, a member of The Club of Rome, and a trustee at the Resurgence Trust, which owns and publishes The Ecologist. 

Introducing the essay, Ecologist editor Brendan Montague writes

At last: a UN Summit of the Future, to be held in September 2024. The summit promises a ‘global pact for the future’, but will it match the historic challenges that humanity is facing?. 
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Science tells us that we cannot continue on the current, suicidal path. We cannot allow decision makers to inflict the impacts of unrelenting economic growth on a finite planet, putting economic freedoms first, with ethical perspectives as an afterthought. The 2024 UN Summit is putting the need to safeguard the future of people and planet on the global agenda as never before.
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But is this agenda ambitious enough? It seems to me that the UN is seeking to mould the conference to fit its existing procedures and agreements rather than trying to answer the fundamental question: will governments and companies be prepared to limit their ambitions for unending economic growth and territorial expansion on a finite planet?

A key factor is that decision making is mostly focused on immediate concerns: politicians have their eyes on the next election, and business leaders are fixated by quarterly balance sheets. This kind of short-termism invariably leads to compromised values and ethics.

“We have not inherited the Earth from our parents. We have borrowed it from our children.”

This saying, attributed to Indigenous Americans, could be a useful motto for the summit of the future.  It is often quoted by politicians who want to establish their green credentials. But paying lip service to posterity is one thing: actually organising society with the needs of future generations firmly in mind is quite another.

Read the essay