History of Ecocide

History of Ecocide

 “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear,”  George Orwell wrote as a preface to his novel, Animal Farm.

This is particularly true of the idea to make ecocide a crime which has been around since the 1950s. Ecocide was almost included as one of the international Crimes Against Peace alongside Genocide but dropped at the eleventh hour – probably due to the opposition of some governments. The only reference which remained inside the Crimes Against Peace is the mentioning of “widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment” as a War Crime (Rome Statute, Art 8, 2 b, iv) – creating the absurd situation that ecocide is nowadays a crime in war time but not during peace. We believe this must change and the below history illustrates that ecocide has been discussed by the academia as well as the relevant UN committees – all it needs is political will and a citizens movement to make it happen.

The first person to openly discuss ecocide was Professor Arthur Galston, the scientist whose research led to the invention of Agent Orange, the toxic which was to devastate Vietnam during its war. Speaking in Washington, D.C. in 1970 before the Conference on War and National Responsibility, he called for a new international agreement to ban ecocide which he defined as: “… devastation and destruction which aim at damaging or destroying the ecology of geographic areas to the detriment of all life, whether human, animal or plant.”

His voice found a kindred spirit in 1972, when Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme – addressing the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm (which established the UN Environment Programme, or UNEP) – cited the ongoing war in Vietnam as an “outrage sometimes described as ecocide”. Interestingly, Vietnam also introduced ecocide as domestic crime in 1990.

Only one year later, Richard Falk, Princeton University’s professor emeritus of international law, established that intent was basically irrelevant when it came to framing responsibility for environmental damage because most cases stemmed from another objective, be it profit or military advantage. This framework lent Falk’s 1973 Ecocide Convention draft policy even more authority and made it more effective internationally than the Genocide Convention would ever be.

By 1978, an official UN study proposed to add Ecocide to the Genocide Convention. The 1985 Whitaker Report came to the same conclusion, recommending that special attention should be given to ecocide, ethnocide, and cultural genocide when revising the Genocide Convention.

Research undertaken in 1988 by Canadian-Australian lawyer Mark Gray and published in 1996 established the legal basis for the proposed crime of ecocide by delivering the proof that the established principles of international environmental and human rights law support such a crime.

The 1993 draft of the Code of Crimes Against the Peace and Security of Mankind (precursor to the 1998 Rome Statute establishing the Crimes Against Peace) included a crime of ecocide. However, by the time the Rome Statute was adopted, ecocide had disappeared from the draft. Only three countries are on record as having opposed its inclusion; namely the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Reasons for this are unknown but there is a suspicion that nuclear arms were in the minds of those opposing the inclusion of the crime of ecocide.

So the four adopted Crimes Against Peace are: Crimes Against Humanity, Genocide, War Crimes, and Crimes of Aggression. The only remaining reference to ecocide is Article 8, 2, b, iv of the Rome Statute which refers to the “widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment” as war crime – however, given the AND (in contrary to our proposed OR definition) it has so far not been possible to prosecute anyone for this crime which is extremely difficult to prove.

In 2010, lawyer Polly Higgins took up the challenge and submitted her proposal to the UN Law Commission to include ecocide, the Missing 5th Crime Against Peace, into the Rome Statute.

In 2012, we, a group of EU citizens, took up the challenge to mobilise one million Europeans around the issue and to propose an ecocide law in Europe and beyond.

The law of ecocide is a law whose time has come. We can make it happen today, All it needs is political will. But politicians need to be pushed. And that’s why we need a citizens’ movement. Join us today by voting here, share this with your networks and get in touch if you want to get involved.

Dracha Arendee says:

    David Jakupca is an American Philosopher, Ambassador, Artist, Activist and Author. He serves both as an American Cultural Ambassador and Universal Peace Ambassador in International capacities. He is extremely influential through his works, especially as a philosophical advocate and practitioner of the environmental arts methods developing the Sustainable Age revolution.

    Jakupca with his wife, Renate, are the co-creators of the ‘Theory of Iceality on Environmental Arts’, aligning the vision with real-world social conditions and logistics. This work established and popularized inductive formulas for scientific inquiry, sometimes called the Iceality Method. His demand for a planned procedure of investigating all things natural marked a new turn in the rhetorical and theoretical framework for the science of aesthetics, much of which surrounds conceptions of proper Environmental Art Methodology today.

    Jakupca has been recognized as the ‘Spiritual Father of the Environmental Arts Movement’ and in that capacity, several disciples of his work went on to spread the word on Iceality. His ideas were influential in the 1990′s among scholars like Jane Alexander, Chairwoman of the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA), who in the ‘AMERICAN CANVAS’ Project frequently adheres to the Method of Iceality approach in its idealistic visions and entrepreneurial inquiries. Major organizations, in particular, the United Nations, featured his Theory on Iceality in many of their World Conferences. The result of this major global public promotion at the United Nations level is that the Theory of Iceality on Environmental Arts is now considered as the cornerstone of the modern sustainable global Environmental Art Movement, and this concept is now replicated by artists, architects, urban planners and sustainable organizations throughout the World, reflecting a still growing global audience. However, it must be noted that not all of Jakupca’s contemporaries did accept the new theory at once.

    David Jakupca is also considered to be the philosophical influence behind the dawning of the millenniums Sustainable Age. In his works, David Jakupca called for a development of avant-garde trilateral symmetry of social systems to align his vision with real-world social conditions and logistics that contend with the problems facing earth’s future. He always proposed that these environment/humanitarian/cultural systems should be done in conjunction with charitable purposes as a matter of healing this planet. Recalling Einstein’s admonition, paraphrased here, that a problem cannot be solved by the same thinking that created the problem in the first place, Jakupca, being ever mindful of the ecospheric integrity, advocated that the Environmental Arts should be practical and have as a holistic purpose the improvement of all living things.

    This changed the course of art in history, from a merely contemplative state, as it was found in ancient times, to a practical, inventive modern state that will, it time, continue to lead to the new Methods of Iceality that will help prevent Ecocide and make possible a Sustainable Age, a Culture of Peace for all Living Things in the following centuries.

    Although much of these Methods of Iceality proposals will not be established in his lifetime, his legacy was already considered by TIME Magazine, in their 2000 Millennium Edition, as one of their Heroes of the Planet.

endecocide.eu

A New Worldview

A New Worldview is Emerging in Society

By Paul Lenda

Humanity is at a crossroads where it will decide whether to move forward towards a bright future or follow the old worldview and plunge into a dystopian darkness. Whichever path we choose at this ever-so-critical moment in human history, it will surely determine the fate of our species for a long time to come.

We only have to look to the so-called Dark Ages to see how such a decision steered humanity down a path that was unfavorable to progress and positive social transformation. Since our beliefs shape our reality, the world we see is heavily influenced by the current judgements, assumptions, and conclusions of the cultures and societies into which each of us was born in. The old assumptions concerning life, existence, reality, and everything in between are being questioned and invalidated with such high frequency, that it seems as if humanity is ready for a quantum leap into a brighter future, where unity, compassion, and reason overcome individualism, selfishness, and greed.

There is a shift in the perception as to what is important in life. This shift will be affecting out collective perceptions, beliefs, and actions relating to all aspects of life, some of which include health, spirituality, the environment, economics, science, and our sense of self. We only need to look to the rise in the popularity of eastern spirituality, environmentalism, quantum physics, respect for indigenous cultures, holistic medicine, the feminine archetype, non-profit organizations, and globalization to see that there indeed is a tremendous shift occurring.

Perception is reality, and with the shift in our perception of reality humanity moves further and further away from materialism, reductionism, hierarchies, and an ego-dominated lifestyle, towards spirituality, oneness, integration and the interconnectedness of not only ourselves with each other, but with everything to everything else.

To further illustrate the defining aspects of the emerging worldview, which is occurring thanks to the progressive shift in human consciousness, I will put forward a few of the dominant themes within this new domain, as listed in the book Global Shift: How a New Worldview is Transforming Humanity (printed by a great organization looking forward into the future called the Institute of Noetic Sciences).

Living in a Conscious Universe

Humanity is perceiving the universe/multiverse as a conscious, creative, and evolving process rather than a purely static, mechanistic object. Every whole system in the universe, all the way from tiny atoms to immense galaxies, exhibits attributes of consciousness such as self-organization, coherence, and intentionality.

Existing in a Multidimensional Reality

Reality, the sum of All that Is, exceeds the bounds and restraints of the physical universe. It contains subtle, transcendent dimensions not well understood by present-day science. These more subtle dimensions form the matrix of the physical universe that we see and interact with on a daily basis.

Interconnection of All Minds

Though our minds appear to be separated by our individual bodies, they are, at depth, unified in a common, collective and transpersonal consciousness. This consciousness is not only shared by all humans, it is part of a larger matrix that includes the consciousness of the universe as a whole.

A Synthesis of Science and Spirituality

Though their methods and ultimate concerns differ, both science and religious belief systems seek, in their own ways, to reveal the “truth” about the life, existence, and the Universe. Science, relying on sensory experience, examines the objective, spatial universe. Spirituality, utilizing intuition and revelation, searches and dives into the depths of Reality’s interior, symbolic face.

Radical Empiricism

Both sensory observation and intuitive modes of knowing have equal validity in humanity’s quest to understand Reality, though the sensory forms lend themselves more easily to replication and consensus.

Consciousness Has a Causal Influence

Consciousness has inherent properties, such as a capacity for self-organization, intentionality, and meaning, which cannot be explained in terms of the material laws and processes of the natural sciences. However, it has a causal influence on physical processes.

Natural Ethics

Ought reduces to is. Ethical behavior (what we ought to do) arises naturally from the acting out of personal authenticity and integrity, rather than from conformance to culturally imposed norms.

This list may seem progressive and emerging now but given the incredibly high degree of novelty occurring with each passing year, month, week, and day, it will see quite primitive and ancient in a generation or two. This is why any predictions occurring in the future of our timeline can only be approximate at best, given the current trends.

Although the more reductionist individuals in the world may see this list as unscientific at times, dismissing them as such generates a grave error in the understanding of it all. In its meaningful, symbolic, and creative aspects, Reality has a much grander scope than the current scientific understanding realizes.

With the positive shift in consciousness underway, there is a rise of an emerging worldview. This new perception of Reality will accommodate both the physical and the nonphysical aspects of All that Is. We will be that much closer to understanding what the Ultimate Reality exactly is. Something that only sages every now and then realized and experienced will be something everyone will become enlightened about. The Ultimate Reality is all-inclusive, ineffable, unimaginable, and beyond any and all dualities and distinctions that we can conjure up.

With the new emerging worldview, science and spirituality are both utilized together in order to come about with a complete understanding of Reality. It is of little surprise that there is a heightened interest in psychedelics, meditation, astral projection, and other technologies that assist in the nonphysical exploration and understand of Reality, since science has lacked in satisfying the desire for human beings to take “inner paths into outer space.”

The sooner we embrace the new unity-oriented worldview, the sooner we leave the current path of destruction we are on and stride down the path which ensures that not only do we as a species survive, but that we experience and realize the macrocosmic and transcendental aspects of existence.

Editor’s note: the Creation of a Consciousness Shift

Want to know more? Regular Wake Up World contributor Paul Lenda explores this and many other aspects of our collective evolution in his book “The Creation of a Consciousness Shift“, available now on Amazon.com

Humanity is at a crossroads. It is deciding whether it wishes to live in a bright future or a dystopian dark age. It is choosing its reality. And through the power of consciousness, humanity can create a global and transpersonal shift in consciousness that will elevate it to a much higher level.

The Creation of a Consciousness Shift demonstrates that such a massive shift is possible… through the realization that everything and everyone is interconnected.

Paul’s words will stir up a spirit of action and change, make you question the way you think, and challenge your perception of reality. It is also one of the first books of its kind to offer scientific evidence in support of its message transcendental self-growth, as well as several tools and methods you can use to help facilitate the biggest, most positive change humanity has ever seen - a global shift in consciousness.

wakeup-world.com

Our Consumptive Madness

Our Consumptive Madness

xraymike79

Capitalism has, throughout its history, built itself off the backs of the weak through dispossession, slavery, colonialism, technology and military power. Protecting the capitalist system into the 21st century, U.S. military served as the all-powerful proxy force of the global corporate elite. In the waning days of modern-day civilization, transnational corporations found even more ways to amass power and squeeze out every last penny from the Earth to the gods of capital. In the name of ‘free trade’, secretive agreements with alphabet soup-acronyms like TTP and TPIP were concocted to protect and expand profits as well as investor returns at the expense of all else, including the sovereignty of nations

and the very habitability of the planet. Corporations became the new kings and queens, tsars and tsaritsas, bishops and popes. The last grab for what was left could now be done more swiftly while circumventing the laws of nations.

 “…Capitalism has an inbuilt wondrous capacity of resurrection and regeneration; though this is capacity of a kind shared with parasites – organisms that feed on other organisms, belonging to other species. After a complete or near-complete exhaustion of one host organism, a parasite tends and manages to find another, that would supply it with life juices for a successive, albeit also limited, stretch of time.

A hundred years ago Rosa Luxemburg grasped that secret of the eerie, phoenix-like ability of capitalism to rise, repeatedly, from the ashes; an ability that leaves behind a track of devastation – the history of capitalism is marked by the graves of living organisms sucked of their life juices to exhaustion…” ~ Zygmunt Bauman

In a world of finite resources controlled by a tiny capitalist class, there would eventually only be two classes remaining – the über-wealthy or global elite and the vast underclass of disposable workers who eked out a subsistence existence. The wealth of society continued to be funneled upwards to the corporate overlords by way of deregulation, privatization, low or nonexistent tax rates, control of the legal system, and the cutting away of any last scraps of a social safety net.

Preoccupied by their digital screen devices and satiated on mass-produced junk food, the plebs never really noticed they were living in an open-air prison. In the meantime, the walls of a police state rose up to protect the sociopathic elite. As long as the ‘consumers’ were kept in a continual state of ‘amusement madness’ and on the treadmill of work exhaustion, there would be no time for contemplating the reality of climate change, the ever-widening wealth gap, the rise of a corporate fascist state, or the disappearance of the natural world.

 “Living in an age of advertisement, we are perpetually disillusioned. The perfect life is spread before us every day, but it changes and withers at a touch.“ ~ J. B. Priestley

This Ponzi scheme economy was so

entrenched in the psyche of the general populace that essentially none questioned its validity, even in the face of increasingly chaotic weather and rising seas, mountains of toxic waste, lifeless oceans, epidemic industrial disease, and grotesque wealth maldistribution. The right to seek profit trumped the health and safety of humans, the stability of the environment, and the legal recourse of governments on behalf of their citizens. National borders were effectively erased and a global corporatocracy now ruled the planet. Ironically, the one world government feared by so many right-wing conspiracists had become reality without any protest from them.

Acid rain and erratic weather, the unintended consequences of half-baked geoengineering fixes, forced most food production into industrial greenhouses. Due to the chemical pollution levels in the environment, all water had to be treated before it was used for anything, and gas masks became ‘everyday outdoor wear’ like hats and umbrellas. Most stayed indoors to escape such hazards, immersing themselves in the artificial environments of virtual reality software. Zoos became the only sanctuaries for wildlife, their sperm safely kept frozen for the day humans might want to de-extinctify them. National parks were privatized and plastered with corporate logos. The ranks of the homeless and destitute swelled, but most soon found themselves living inside the cell of a private, for-profit prison where they toiled away as cheap labor contracted by the corporations. Such crises were always looked upon as business opportunities, a niche to fill in the profit-seeking mind of homo economicus. Commodification and commercialization of everything became completely normalized.

Taken to the extreme and turned into a rigid belief system, all ideologies can become dangerous. When the ethics of a society bow to laissez-faire capitalism, life in the U$A becomes a cruel joke:

    War for profit (the world’s largest war machine eating up half of every tax dollar)

    Healthcare for profit (the most expensive and least effective healthcare in the industrialized world)

    Imprisonment for profit (most incarcerated individuals per capita in the world)

    Higher education for profit ($1.2 trillion student debt and counting)

    Corporate welfare (one of the lowest effective corporate tax rates in the developed world and subsidies for the giant transnational corporations costing the average American family $6,000 or more per year)

    U.S. Now leading the world into climate chaos with unconventional oil & gas production (expensive extraction of dirty, low EROEI sources)

    Corporate-controlled media (just 6 corporations own 90% of the media)

    Corporate-controlled government (lobbying dollars just keep increasing)

    Permanent quantitative easing (endless money printing did not work)

    Gross wealth disparity (highest income gap of any developed country)

Need I go further? The day that the movie ‘Idiocracy’ is looked upon as genius and prophetic, civilization will have become a parody of itself. I think that day has arrived.

collapseofindustrialcivilization

Indigenous Wisdom

Learning from indigenous wisdom and knowledge 
– To change society a cultural revolution in activism is needed.
by R. Teichmann

About 30 years ago I met a young woman during a train ride and we began talking. During the conversation I asked her what she was doing and she replied that she was studying indigenous civilisations within her anthropology course. When I asked her why she was interested in this subject she replied (the exact words I do not remember after such a long time but I remember the essence): “We will need their knowledge to sort out the problems we’re faced with.”  I did not understand then what she was saying; or better I dismissed it, because what could it possibly be that these cultures (now barely existing and  still under threat from genocide) could contribute to the solving of modern day problems?
I recently attended a workshop with an Elder of the Wampanoag Nation, Manitonquat (Medicine Story). This article is my personal “digestion” of that weekend. I dedicate this to all fellow men and women who hold a vision for a better future and are working towards reaching that goal and especially to Manitonquat and his partner Ellika.
What is the issue?
Ever since I was a teenager, I realised that something was not right with the way we live and the longing to put things right has never left me. I have been active in quite a few movements and political organisations during my lifetime, trying to make the world a better place. I witnessed sectarianism, splits, infighting, movements getting hi-jacked to serve a certain agenda or co-opted to advance something they were originally opposed to, persons with big egos rising to the top to become “leaders”.
In that respect the best example I can think of was the rise of Joschka Fischer to the top of the German Green Party. As such he became Foreign Minister of a coalition government, composed of Social Democrats and Greens, and denounced everything the Greens and he himself previously stood for when he advocated waging war on an independent state, the then Yugoslavia, “on humanitarian grounds of course” without UN Mandate and contrary to international law and the German constitution. It was then that all my hopes to change something by engaging in that party faded and I left it in protest and disgust. 
Many parties and movements and even “alternative” communities seem to be ending in the dustbin of history without ever achieving their initial goals – leaving behind many disillusioned good people; people who invested time, work and money to achieve a

better world and tackle the problems we are all faced with. And if they are successful they end up establishing their (or rather their leaders’) way and oppressing and dominating the remainder of society. Why is it that way?
Fear and Isolation
Most of us agree that the current way society works (referred to throughout this article as ‘the system’) is not only unfit for purpose – i.e. ensuring that the needs of people, plants, animals and everything else surrounding us in the broadest sense are met – but is also based on isolation and fear.
The fear of not passing the test in school is where it begins. The fear of not getting a job comes next. Then the fear of losing that job. The fear of not being able to provide for your family. The fear of not being able to pay the next mortgage rate and losing the roof over your head. The fear of not being taken care of in sickness or old age. And then there is the fear of the unknown. That is why people shy away from consciously acknowledging that the system is unfit for purpose and begin to think about how it can be changed and what they can do, even though deep inside they are aware of this fact.
Any movement aiming to replace the failing system with something better must create an environment where people can lose their fear. How can that be done?
Since humanity replaced tribes with ever larger entities of social organisation, comprising more and more humans, the isolation of the individual human has increased. Instead of living in a society where you knew all members of your tribe on a very personal level, where decisions affecting the community were made together and swiftly implemented, we now live in towns and cities or even hubs where you hardly know your neighbours, let alone on a very personal level.
Our direct interactions with nature, to provide us with what we need to survive, are replaced by factory farms and visits to the supermarket.  Group creativity has been replaced with hours in front of that square screen in our living rooms or with spending hours shaking to synthetic music or with finding thrill in consuming “recreational” drugs. Even in the midst of thousands of other people around us, we have become more isolated than ever before.
Hand in hand with this development came the concentration of power in fewer and fewer hands. Instead of being involved directly in decision making and implementing we now have a vote. A vote that changes nothing. Many begin to realize this as the ever less participation in elections indicates. The real power people once had has migrated to career politicians who are lobbied and sometimes financed by big corporations, which are financed by “too big to fail” banks, which are financed by central banks, which are controlled by a tiny elite who make all the vital decisions behind closed doors.
We may feel connected through the Internet, the so-called social media, but these connections are artificial, virtual. We are living virtual lives instead of real ones. The deep personal connection between humans and between humans and nature has been replaced with the illusion of it. Instead of talking to each other face-to-face and heart to heart we now send twitter messages, smileys and hit “Like” buttons. Instead of actually

interacting with nature, we watch “Nature programs” on TV.
Isolation equals disempowerment. Humans feel helpless when isolated. People do not engage to replace the failing system with something better because they feel powerless or perceive the powers that shouldn’t be as being the normal state of affairs that cannot be altered. Resulting from the isolation from nature and fellow human, instead of developing their intrinsic individual spirituality and respect and understanding for everything that is, people follow various religions, look for gurus and ideologies to fulfill their need of spiritual community. This is exploited by those who want control and domination or, even worse, it is used to turn humans against each other.

Any movement aiming to replace the failing system with something better must create an environment where people can connect with one another on a deep personal level as well as with nature, which they are a part of.  How can that be done?
Fear and isolation are the necessary ingredients that allow the current system to linger on, to manipulate most of society, to prevent development and implementation of solutions to most problems and to allow domination, control and destruction on a massive scale.
The creation of an environment where fear and isolation are absent and that encourages direct contact with nature is a prerequisite for any attempt to effect meaningful and lasting change for the better for all of life on this planet. How can we create it?
What do political parties, groups and movements look like at present?
The origins of most political parties, groups and movements stem from the desire to come together with like-minded individuals for a specific purpose.
In the case of a political party, this usually is to get a majority or enough votes to get into government to implement the policies of the party program. Political parties are structured mirroring the society as it is. There are one or several leaders, a “steering committee” or something similar, the “parliamentary party” (those party members elected to parliament) and then there are the ordinary party members. There are conventions giving the illusion that the individual party members have the power, whereas in reality the topics are decided beforehand by smaller groups and committees. The structure is hierarchical. The purpose is not the empowerment of the party members but getting into and staying in power. The so-called party whip is the expression of that. People disagreeing face expulsion and loss of party membership if they do not stick to the party line. In most cases, once in power, the original goals become less important, staying in power becomes the goal. Very often the leaders get co-opted and corrupted. Political parties are necessary in the current system to make it function. They give the illusion that people have a say. Parties are used to split society along party lines the same as religions and ideologies are used to split society along belief lines. The traditional political parties and their structures are as unfit for the purpose to solve problems as the system within which they exist.
Then there are other groups like initiatives against this or that or to save this or that. As admirable as their goals may be, they focus on a single issue and do not address the array of other problems that are present. If they are lucky, they reach their goal- let’s say to prevent the construction of a motorway. Then their purpose is fulfilled and they disappear. If they do not reach their goal they disappear out of frustration of the people involved.
Then we have movements that try to change society by stepping outside the system and living in communities of their own, like Eco villages, trying to lead the way by giving an example of how things can be done differently. But even these movements sometimes fail. These movements have rightly identified the community as the basis for change but many lack the wisdom and knowledge and, in the long run, encounter the same problems.
Indigenous wisdom and knowledge – A game changer
For long periods of time indigenous cultures have successfully lived in tribes in harmony with their fellow humans and in balance with nature. The tribe is the only form of organisation I can think of that could take care of all of our needs, physical (food), emotional (closeness to other human beings) and spiritual (knowing that the entire tribe depends on nature and thus the tribe is embedded in the wholeness of everything there is).
The limited number of people living in a tribe enabled a deep knowledge of your fellow human and an appreciation of his/her personality, virtues and traits. Due to this fact it was almost impossible for one person to dominate. Leadership was not permanent but emerged naturally to solve a certain situation and dissolved again when the situation or crisis was dealt with. Like a family, the tribe was based on mutual respect and even love. It was an environment where fear, isolation and domination were absent. No government, police, judges and prisons were needed.
The various tribes interacted with each other on the basis of mutual benefit. Conflict among them was very rare. Mostly it was young men exploring their strength and courage. It was more similar to a sporting event than a conflict.
We must conclude that tribal life is far superior to any other form of societal organisation in human history, be it feudalism, dictatorship, absolutism, kingdoms, empires, or even the present so called democracies. Especially when we take into account that indigenous tribes still exist today and originated millennia before “civilisation” emerged.
Tribal life centered around the circle. Decision making as well as dancing, singing and celebrations of all sorts were conducted in a circle. A circle where everyone was equally important. There was recognition that Elders held wisdom due to the simple fact that they had more life experience. So they were highly regarded and well cared for. The tribe as a whole cared lovingly for the children as they were joy, inspiration and presented the future. For decision making the members of the tribe met in a circle, recognizing and respecting their individuality and arrived at decisions beneficial to all and future generations (the native American Indians had the tradition of taking into account what effect their decisions would have for 7 generations to come).
I argue that our ancestors really became human when they first started to form circles, sitting together to find out how best to survive and develop. Our natural state of being as a human means living in a tribe and meeting other humans in a circle of equals.
Read the rest here: news-beacon-ireland

About the author:
R. Teichmann is an activist living in West Cork (Ireland) and the editor of www.news-beacon-ireland.info.

Action

   

 It is Man's intelligence that sets the species apart from the other animals and gives him power to change the environment, yet many of Man's actions are prompted by short-term desires, selfishness, superstition or emotion rather than clear-thinking and intelligence; sadly, this is greatly to the detriment of the planet.

 Our mega-cities are not compatible with a declining supply of petroleum. Transporting food and other materials from where they are produced into cities, and transporting wastes out, requires a lot of fuel. As the loss of petroleum makes our present form of mechanised agriculture less viable and as food prices rise due to shortages, more labour will be required to maximise food production; that labour is living in the wrong place at present. Modern cities and suburbs have been developed to suit the private car.

    The private car, as it is, is incompatible with declining petroleum supplies and the need to reduce greenhouse gas production; its use must be greatly reduced if societies are to become sustainable, but there is no indication of reduction as of now. Changing to electric vehicles of similar power to current petroleum-fuelled models will not much help, but going to much lower-powered and lighter vehicles might be viable.

   
We are travelling too quickly. The speeds that we travel at present in cars, aeroplanes, and probably even high-speed trains is unsustainable because we are approaching the end of oil and producing too much of several greenhouse gasses. Energy is about to become much more expensive, both in financial and environmental terms, and we are going to have to learn to use it more economically and rationally.

    The gap between rich and poor is widening. Even in the great democracies, the wealthy are gathering to themselves a steadily increasing share of political power (by controlling who gets into government and then controlling what those in power do – consider the lack of government action on climate change while the great majority of informed voters want action), leaving a declining amount of power to the less well-off. As in the past, a point will be reached at which those near the bottom of the heap will demand a more balanced spread of wealth and power.

Of critical importance is the fact that humanity has not reacted rationally and appropriately to these problems. In response to climate change governments are doing as little as possible and the great majority of individuals are not changing their lifestyles; governments refuse to see that growth cannot continue for ever and seem to not want to know about the declining petroleum supply. People live as if most of the above problems did not exist and we can continue to live the next fifty years with as little care for the environment as in the past fifty.

We have become reliant on a globally integrated economy. Given the above problems, this cannot continue.

Open-source Culture

In the beginning was the commons. Over vast stretches of prehistoric time, tribal cultures evolved in tandem with the natural environment. They did this without creating private property or hierarchical relationships of control and dominance that led to consumption of nature as a resource. Open-source culture provided for community sharing and community development. With the rise of patriarchy, empire, and systems of egoic control and empowerment, this open-source approach to community was destroyed. Over the course of the last centuries, the commons was fenced, and everything from agriculture to water was commoditized without regard to the true cost in non-renewable resources. Human beings, who had spent centuries evolving away from slavery, were re-commoditized by the Industrial Era.

The corruption of the commons led to the loss of integrity between and among individuals, organizations, and community. Artificial paradises made up of objects and possessions were substituted for true community based on authentic heart-to-heart relationships. Secular corruption is made possible by information asymmetries between those in power and the public. In the absence of transparency, truth, and trust, wealth is concentrated and waste is rampant.

We, Homo sapiens, were in harmony with the Cosmos and the Earth during earlier centuries when indigenous wisdom prevailed. The evolution of social forms and technology toward ever-greater levels of complexity is part of our human development toward deeper consciousness and self-awareness. The technosphere, as José Argüelles and others have realized, is the necessary detour that takes us from the pristine biosphere to the psychically collectivized state of the noosphere.

We live in a constellation of complex systems. It is impossible for any single person or even any single organization or nation in isolation to understand complex systems.

Collective intelligence -- multinational, multiagency, multidisciplinary, multidomain information-sharing and sense-making -- is the only means of obtaining near-real time understanding of complex systems sufficient to achieve resilience in the face of changes. Many of these changes, including biospheric ones such as climate change and depletion of planetary resources, are the result of human activity and industry in the last three centuries.

As our technological capacities continue to increase and our environment becomes ever more fragile and endangered, we find that changes to the Earth that used to take ten thousand years now take a fraction of that. We must rediscover and reintegrate indigenous wisdom in order to come back into harmony with larger whole systems, and do so in a manner that allows for application of appropriate technologies and science, open-source intelligence gathering, and real-time self-governance.

realitysandwich

Imagine

Where have we got to at the end of the day? Where are we going? What vision do we have of the destiny we share so closely with nature?

Those concerned about the dangerous drift of global development are asking these questions with increasing urgency. Dominant institutions have proved too timorous or too venal for meeting the environmental and social challenges of our time. Instead, an adequate response requires us to imagine the awakening of a new social actor: a coordinated global citizens movement (GCM) struggling on all fronts toward a just and sustainable planetary civilization. Existing civil society campaigns remain fragmented and therefore powerless to leverage holistic transformation. To create an alternative vision and effective strategy for realizing it, consciousness and action must rise to the level of a GCM. We propose a new organizing campaign with the explicit aim of catalyzing this historic agency. This effort would expand and diversify in a “widening circle”, adapting to changing circumstances as it evolves. From the onset, such a project must foster a politics of trust, committed to balancing unity and pluralism on the road to our common future.

A decade ago the Earth Charter sounded a clarion call to “join together to bring forth a sustainable global society founded on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace.” In the years since, the drumbeat of crises that has rippled across the global field – and reports warning of still greater dangers ahead – has underscored this historic imperative to “join together.” The burning question is no longer if or when, but how? What bold actions can forge a world polity for our interdependent world and common future?

The historic underpinning of potential unity lies in the entanglement of people, nature, and generations by long webs of economic, cultural, and environmental connectivity, binding us into one all-embracing social-ecological system. In the Planetary Phase of Civilization, humanity and Earth have become a single community of fate. We are in the midst of a turbulent transition from the world that was to some form of global society, with no exit and no separate solutions for individuals, communities, or countries. The shift is generating a host of ominous transnational problems – climate change and ecosystem degradation, economic instability and geopolitical conflict, oppression and mass migration – that left unattended might well pull us toward a bleak tomorrow.

Nonetheless, we still have time to bypass the future on offer, though it will not be easy. Charting passage to a happier outcome demands rapid emergence of ways of thinking and acting matched to the profound challenge posed by global transition. Our concern and accountability, indeed, our very sense of self, must expand across the barriers of space and time to embrace the whole human family, the ecosphere, and the unborn. We stand at an inflection point of history full of peril, but also promise, if we can come together in a joint venture: creating a culture of solidarity and politics of trust within a movement to build democratic institutions for peace, justice, and sustainability.

world-governance

Rio+20

The  Conference

will be held from 20 to 22 June 2012 in Rio de Janeiro

At the Rio+20 Conference, world leaders, along with thousands of participants from governments, the private sector, NGOs and other groups, will come together to shape how we can reduce poverty, advance social equity and ensure environmental protection on an ever more crowded planet to get to the future we want. The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) is being organized in pursuance of General Assembly Resolution 64/236 (A/RES/64/236), and will take place in Brazil on 20-22 June 2012 to mark the 20th anniversary of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), in Rio de Janeiro, and the 10th anniversary of the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg.

The Rio+20 Conference It is envisaged as a Conference at the highest possible level, including Heads of State and Government or other representatives. The Conference will result in a focused political document.

The Conference will focus on two themes: (a) a green economy in the context of sustainable development poverty eradication; and (b) the institutional framework for sustainable development..

The chair of an influential group of MPs lambasted David Cameron on Monday for not going to next week's Rio+20 Earth summit, saying it sent a signal to the world that Britain does not see sustainability as a priority and that the PM is not showing global leadership.

"The secretary general of the UN has labelled the Rio+20 conference as one of the most important conferences in the history of the United Nations. The dates were even changed so as not to clash with the Diamond Jubilee to enable Commonwealth countries to attend", said Joan Walley MP, chair of the environmental audit committee.

"In not attending, the prime minister is sending out a powerful signal that the UK government does not see sustainability as a priority", said Walley.

Deputy PM Nick Clegg and environment secretary Caroline Spelman will go to the three day high level meeting of the summit at which 130 world leaders have pledged to go. Many other leaders of G20 countries including Barack Obama and Angela Merkel will also not attend.

The summit, which will be the largest ever organised by the UN, expects countries to take long-term decisions on the directions their economies should take to tackle environment and financial crises. They are expected to sign up to a set of new environmental initiatives, as well as to commit to using fewer resources.

Deep Ecology

Deep ecology is a contemporary ecological philosophy distinguished by its advocacy of the inherent worth of living beings regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs. Deep ecology argues that the natural world is a subtle balance of complex inter-relationships in which the existence of organisms are dependent on the existence of others within ecosystems. Human interference with or destruction of the natural world poses a threat therefore not only to humans but to all organisms constituting the natural order.

Deep ecology's core principle is the belief that the living environment as a whole should be respected and regarded as having certain legal rights to live and flourish. It describes itself as "deep" because it regards itself as looking more deeply into the actual reality of humanity's relationship with the natural world arriving at philosophically more profound conclusions than that of the prevailing view of ecology as a branch of Darwinian biological science. The movement does not subscribe to anthropocentric environmentalism (which is concerned with conservation of the environment only for exploitation by and for human purposes) since Deep ecology is grounded in a quite different set of philosophical assumptions. Deep ecology takes a more holistic view of the world human beings live in and seeks to apply to life the understanding that the separate parts of the ecosystem (including humans) function as a whole. This philosophy provides a foundation for the environmental, ecology and green movements and has fostered a new system of environmental ethics advocating wilderness preservation, human population control and simple living.

Deep ecology has been described by its critics as representing a politically and philosophically radical branch of environmentalism, profoundly misanthropic, regarding humanity as a pathological infestation on the earth.  (wiki)