‘World Future Council’ seeks global change

New international body to bring together sustainability advocates and experts

Who’ll give the necessary weight to the long-term and ethical perspective on global issues? It’s precisely because our existing political structures can’t, or won’t, that sustainability veterans Herbert Girardet and Jakob von Uexkull are producing a blueprint for a World Future Council (WFC). Holding an Earth Summit every 10 years just isn’t enough to tackle urgent problems like climate change, they argue.

“I feel an intense frustration about the fact that we’re running down the world’s resources,” says Girardet, “and I know others do, too.” Nor are existing international initiatives holistic enough. “At the Johannesburg summit, they ignored how social and poverty issues depend on the environment,” despairs von Uexkull.

The WFC doesn’t expect to come up with a whole new agenda, or duplicate the work that scientists, civil society and world institutions are doing to formulate solutions. Its role will be to lobby, inspire and hold leaders to account. And the people best placed to do this, von Uexkull argues, are those we know and trust: heroes, whistle-blowers and elders like the Dalai Lama or Nelson Mandela.

The WFC Initiative (as it’s known in its embryonic state) is gathering together a list of ‘eminent’ individuals who could give the Council greater popular legitimacy than faceless institutions. Behind the scenes, they envisage experts researching specific subjects, ranging from sustainable use of the oceans to monetary and tax reform. The WFC’s luminaries would be kept in touch with the grassroots by association with MPs and NGOs from across the world, whose multitude of agendas would make up the bigger picture.

Among those already on the co-ordinating committee are the Schumacher Society from the UK, and international organisation EarthAction. The usual suspects, cynics might say - we’ve been here before. But others are keen to judge it on its merits - and sufficiently impressed to put some real money behind it. Girardet calls these funders “wealthy people with a conscience” - and if enough of them sign the cheques they’ve promised, the London-based Council will soon be pressing hard for a brave new world.- Hannah Bullock

Creating the World Future Council has just been published by Green Books.

10 November 2004

Hannah Bullock