Boston Research Center for the 21st Century* Be the heart of a network of global citizens.
* Be a bridge for dialogue between civilizations.
* Be a beacon lighting the way to a century of life.
Boston Research Center (BRC) is an international peace institute founded in 1993 by Daisaku Ikeda, a Buddhist peace activist and President of Soka Gakkai International (SGI), a religious association with members in 128 countries. Aiming toward the goal of a twenty-first century free of war, the Center fosters dialogue among scholars and activists on common values across religions and cultures. Human rights, nonviolence, ecological harmony, and economic security are focal points of the Center’s work.
THE EARTH CHARTER
During the BRC’s recently completed Religion & Ecology conference series, Steven Rockefeller, Professor of Religion at Middlebury College, presented an early draft of the Earth Charter&emdash;a kind of “people’s treaty” that sets forth principles on environmental conservation and sustainable living. Like the Human Rights Declaration, it is hoped that the Earth Charter will be adopted by the United Nations General Assembly and become an international standard.
Worldwide support for an Earth Charter has been building since 1987. In 1994, Maurice Strong, as Chairman of the Earth Council, and Mikhail Gorbachev in his capacity as Chairman of Green Cross International, launched a renewed effort to pursue adoption of an Earth Charter by the UN in the year 2000. These two leaders serve as co-chairs of the Earth Charter Commission, the coordinating body of the Earth Charter initiative.
In his 1997 Peace Proposal, Center Founder Daisaku Ikeda requested the BRC’s support for grassroots efforts to develop an Earth Charter. He pointed to the need such a charter can fulfill for a “kind of bond that links people together on a dimension that is noble enough, broad enough, and strong enough to determine the fate of humanity.” Many of our Religion & Ecology conference guests said that learning about the Earth Charter project was a highlight of the entire series, and indicated their wish for more time to discuss the document.
In response to these requests, the BRC has created two opportunities for further involvement in the Earth Charter process. First, the BRC will sponsor a consultation on the Earth Charter here at the Center on June 14th (please see box on p. ec-4). Also, we have compiled this special feature of our newsletter focusing on the Earth Charter Benchmark Draft. In the following pages, you will find the text of the Benchmark Draft (approved at the March 1997 Rio+5 Forum, the five year progress review of the 1992 Earth Summit), comments on the significance of the document from scholars and activists of widely varying backgrounds who are playing key roles in its development, and a form you can use to send us your comments on the Draft. All of the feedback we receive will be forwarded to Steven Rockefeller, who has been enlisted by the Earth Charter Commission to gather input on the document in the final year of consultation, which ends in March 1998.
In this historic undertaking which depends for its success upon the initiative of globally minded citizens, every person’s involvement is meaningful, especially now during this “feedback stage.” The staff of the BRC hope this Earth Charter draft is informative and useful for future reference.
THE EARTH CHARTER BENCHMARK DRAFT
18 March 1997
Earth is our home and home to all living beings. Earth itself is alive. We are part of an evolving universe. Human beings are members of an interdependent community of life with a magnificent diversity of life forms and cultures. We are humbled before the beauty of Earth and share a reverence for life and the sources of our being. We give thanks for the heritage that we have received from past generations and embrace our responsibilities to present and future generations.
The Earth Community stands at a defining moment. The biosphere is governed by laws that we ignore at our own peril. Human beings have acquired the ability to radically alter the environment and evolutionary processes. Lack of foresight and misuse of knowledge and power threaten the fabric of life and the foundations of local and global security. There is great violence, poverty, and suffering in our world. A fundamental change of course is needed.
The choice is before us: to care for Earth or to participate in the destruction of ourselves and the diversity of life. We must reinvent industrial-technological civilization, finding new ways to balance self and community, having and being, diversity and unity, short-term and long-term, using and nurturing.
In the midst of all our diversity, we are one humanity and one Earth family with a shared destiny. The challenges before us require an inclusive ethical vision. Partnerships must be forged and cooperation fostered at local, bioregional, national and international levels. In solidarity with one another and the community of life, we the peoples of the world commit ourselves to action guided by the following interrelated principles:
1. Respect Earth and all life. Earth, each life form, and all living beings possess intrinsic value and warrant respect independently of their utilitarian value to humanity.
2. Care for Earth, protecting and restoring the diversity, integrity and beauty of the planet’s ecosystems. Where there is risk of irreversible or serious damage to the environment, precautionary action must be taken to prevent harm.
3. Live sustainably, promoting and adopting modes of consumption, production and reproduction that respect and safeguard human rights and the regenerative capacities of Earth.
4. Establish justice, and defend without discrimination the right of all people to life, liberty, and security of person within an environment adequate for health, and spiritual well-being. People have a right to potable water, clean air, uncontaminated soil and food security.
5. Share equitably the benefits of natural resource use and a healthy environment among the nations, between rich and poor, between males and females, between present and future generations, and internalize all environmental, social and economic costs.
6. Promote social development and financial systems that create and maintain sustainable livelihoods, eradicate poverty and strengthen local communities.
7. Practice nonviolence, recognizing that peace is the wholeness created by harmonious and balanced relationships with oneself, other persons, other life forms and Earth.
8. Strengthen processes that empower people to participate effectively in decision-making and ensure transparency and accountability in governance and administration in all sectors of society.
9. Reaffirm that Indigenous and Tribal Peoples have a vital role in the care and protection of Mother Earth. They have the right to retain their spirituality, knowledge, lands, territories and resources.
10. Affirm that gender equality is a prerequisite for sustainable development.
11. Secure the right to sexual and reproductive health, with special concern for women and girls.
12. Promote the participation of youth as accountable agents of change for local, bioregional and global sustainability.
13. Advance and put to use scientific and other types of knowledge and technologies that promote sustainable living and protect the environment.
14. Ensure that people throughout their lives have opportunities to acquire the knowledge, values and practical skills needed to build sustainable communities.
15. Treat all creatures with compassion and protect them from cruelty and wanton destruction.
16. Do not do to the environment of others what you do not want done to your environment.
17. Protect and restore places of outstanding ecological, cultural, aesthetic, spiritual and scientific significance.
18. Cultivate and act with a sense of shared responsibility for the well-being of the Earth Community. Every person, institution and government has a duty to advance the indivisible goals of justice for all, sustainability, world peace, and respect and care for the larger community of life.
Embracing the values in this Charter, we can grow into a family of cultures that allows the potential of all persons to unfold in harmony with the Earth Community. We must preserve a strong faith in the possibilities of the human spirit and a deep sense of belonging to the universe. Our best actions will embody the integration of knowledge with compassion.
In order to develop and implement the principles in this Charter, the nations of the world should adopt as a first step an international convention that provides an integrated legal framework for lasting and future environmental and sustainable development law and policy.
COMMENTS ON THE EARTH CHARTER
The staff of the Boston Research Center are grateful to the people who graciously shared with us their insights on the importance of the Earth Charter process and personal commitments to earth ethics. Some of the comments that follow were offered in response to our questions; others are more general reflections.
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Steven Rockefeller, Professor of Religion at Middlebury College and coordinator of the Earth Charter Consultation Process
How can individuals best support the Earth Charter process?The Earth Charter Commission has called for another year of international consultation before the text is finalized. Comments on and recommendations regarding the Charter are welcome. The Commission plans to issue a final version of the Earth Charter in June 1998. The Earth Charter will then be circulated widely throughout the world as a people’s treaty and the Commission will seek the support of nongovernmental organizations, business groups, religious communities, and national councils of sustainable development. It is hoped that the Earth Charter will be adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in the year 2000.
Individuals can best support the Earth Charter process by circulating and discussing the Benchmark Draft of the Earth Charter and by participating in conferences or workshops, which are being arranged by a variety of organizations throughout the world. Most important of all, people can support the process by striving to implement in their daily lives the principles in the Charter. The implementation process begins with how we live at home and requires a major ecological transformation in the way our communities and institutions function. In addition, as a statement of ethical values, the Earth Charter invites all of us to strive to achieve new levels of ecological and moral awareness and to find for ourselves appropriate means and methods of spiritual growth.
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Mary Evelyn Tucker, Professor of Religion at Bucknell University and co-director of a series of conferences on world religions and ecology at Harvard University
What is the source of your commitment to earth ethics and the Earth Charter?
I feel very much committed to the Earth Charter and to the inclusive process of consultation that it has involved. Steven Rockefeller’s leadership in this respect has been admirable in so many ways.
I am particularly keen on helping to foster a concern for our planet and its myriad species in ways that will insure the continuation of life, not its diminishment. We are at a critical moment in the history of humanity and of our planet. The real challenge is how to forge a comprehensive global ethics, expressed in the Earth Charter, that recognizes both diversity and commonality. If we are unable to articulate the ethical grounds for our common survival, we may not survive as a species.
The Earth Charter begins to formulate a new ethical consciousness which can create and sustain mutually enhancing human-earth relations. One of the most promising linkages in this regard is the alliance of those concerned with social justice and those concerned with ecological integrity. This alliance has been called “eco-justice” and embraces the need for both personal and institutional changes. This will not be easy for any of us, but it will be necessary. The Earth Charter helps to light the path in that direction.
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Mikhail Gorbachev, President of Green Cross International and Co-chair of the Earth Charter Commission (from his March 18, 1997 remarks at Rio+5)
I believe that our Charter gives ethical and moral orientations that will help to strengthen the human spirit. Only a person who has self-confidence, who is open to friendship and solidarity, can answer the challenge of our time.
All we want to achieve by working on the Earth Charter is to show to all peoples of the world, politicians and business circles, that we have only one option. That is to live within the demands of nature. We must do everything we can to be worthy of our time, to prove that we are a mature society, able to assess our situation and act wisely and responsibly in the interests of the present and future generations.
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Maurice F. Strong, Chairman of the Earth Council and co-chair of the Earth Charter Commission
The Earth Charter process must be taken up by people. Only the voices of the people of the planet will make the Charter influential. That is why it must be simple, concise, and enduring, in a language that will survive political change…. It will be a set of ethical standards by which people may measure their behavior, and governments their performance.
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Mercedes Sosa, Co-chair for Latin America of the Earth Charter Commission and popular musician
Where poverty reigns, death reigns; where poverty reigns, the law is unjust; where hunger sleeps in the street with thousands of children, hopes are destroyed. Since a long time ago we have lived in an unjust system, lacking in values, far from respect, and neglecting mother Earth.
The Earth Charter will be a document that…by itself will turn around the reality of the planet. If we are sincere with the message of our hearts, if we put our thoughts into action, we can push this group of values to protect the tropical jungle, the pure air, the clean water. But also, and fundamentally, to reject exploitation, the inequality of resources, and egoism.
This Charter is a document that will serve as a guide to strengthen the values of a connected existence. But the true work is up to us. And when I speak of us I speak of all of humanity and our unity to face a new challenge as a species&emdash;that of achieving an integrated consciousness.
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The Earth Charter initiative, and the process that the Earth Council is conducting to get the document circulated to grassroots people around the world, is essential so as to allow people to express the values and quality of life issues which lie below traditional economics.
In a globalized economy and a world where markets and “economism” are spreading&emdash;and sometimes even equated with democracy&emdash;the Earth Charter is a powerful tool for democratic participation in world public opinion.
I endorse the Earth Charter and congratulate the Earth Council for its leadership.
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Susan Davis, Executive Director of Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO)
The Earth Charter reaffirms the gains women have made through global conference agreements since Rio, particularly at Beijing, such as recognizing that gender equality is a prerequisite for sustainable development. The Charter also frames the sustainability debate around consumption, production, and reproduction in an empowering manner for women. The Earth Charter’s significance may spring from the fact that it mainstreams women’s human rights as part of an environmental ethic thereby increasing support by a wider circle of constituencies.
The values embedded in the Charter of respect for the Earth and for all its peoples represent a counterweight to the values of economic determinism and scientific rationalism that dominate much discourse today.
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Richard M. Clugston, Director, Center for Respect of Life and Environment
In light of the obstacles to creating an Earth Charter that will shape the behavior of a diverse global population, how can civil society best support the Earth Charter process?
There are three major obstacles to creating the Earth Charter. The first criticism is that it is a Northern environmentalist document being imposed upon the South: it is an environmental, not a social justice agenda, and it fails to reflect the needs of the developing world. This was the major criticism that derailed the Earth Charter when it was to be the preamble to “Agenda 21:” and it’s a dynamic still embedded in the whole Earth Charter process.
Another criticism of the Charter is that it doesn’t adequately represent the progress that’s been made as a result of the international summits including and since Rio&emdash;summits in Cairo, Beijing, Copenhagen, Vienna, and Rome. Critics say that the language of the Principles doesn’t reflect the language set forth in earlier international agreements. A third critique focuses on the basic worldview embedded in the Earth Charter. Statements such as “Earth itself is alive” and “nature has intrinsic worth” are seen as a romantic organicism that isn’t scientific enough.
What can people do? They’ll have to make coherent arguments about why this kind of worldview has validity and what it really means in terms of constructing a sustainable society. They’ll have to show that a lot of the impulse for the Earth Charter came from people in developing countries who care about the earth and about people. Indeed, the sensibilities expressed in the document are really more indigenous, Southern, and from local communities than they are from a Northern elite. People need to show that there have been a great diversity of interests involved in the process. In this next round, the people who are managing the consultations need to make sure that the constituencies who feel they have not been adequately represented are indeed included.
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Wangari Maathai, Coordinator/Founder, The Green Belt Movement, National Council of Women of Kenya
We intend to translate the principles of the Earth Charter into local languages so that African farmers can become part of the worldwide movement to have a collective responsibility towards all life forms on Earth.
We are privileged to be part of that process and to be able to share it with our people at the grassroots level.
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Patricia M. Mische, Executive Director and Co-founder of Global Education Associates
What kinds of inner or spiritual changes are needed to support an effective Earth Charter?
There must be a movement of the will by citizens to live ecologically responsible lives. We must go beyond asking governments to clean up our messes. Governments alone have not caused all environmental damage. Much comes from the private sector and from our individual consumer choices and actions. Governments alone will not be able to turn the problem around. People must be willing to change their behavior. The level of our commitment must be very deep. It’s not enough to recycle. We must transform our lives and learn to live in conscious attunement to the sacredness and integrity of creation. This requires a new kind of consciousness: that Earth is not an object; Earth is a subject. Earth is alive. Earth is a living organism, and we are not over Earth, we are a privileged part of her life. We will live or die as Earth lives or dies. We need to be deeply attuned to the ways we are affected by and affect our living planet.
An Earth Charter is needed to complement the UN Charter. Up to now there has been no comprehensive framework of principles to guide the development of international environmental law. The environmental law that has evolved up to now has been piecemeal, uncoordinated, full of loopholes, weak on compliance, and too little, too late. It will not suffice for the added environmental strains we anticipate in the twenty-first century.
A citizen draft of an Earth Charter can lay out the basic principles that citizens themselves think are the most important. It may provide important language for an intergovernmental agreement, such as “Earth is alive.” It will be a tough struggle to get such language into an intergovernmental treaty, but it’s a worthwhile struggle. This simple phrase with its profound truth represents a conceptual shift that is really important for the future and for how we think about Earth and each other.
PLEASE SHARE YOUR VIEWS
You are invited to use the space below (and attach additional typed sheets if you wish) to jot down your ideas for improving the Earth Charter Benchmark Draft. All comments we receive will be conveyed to Steven Rockefeller for use in the Benchmark Draft refining process. At this point in the consultation process, your views are being requested on the following questions:
1) Is the preamble effective?
2) What is missing from the eighteen principles?
3) What is unacceptable to you in the present draft?
4) How can this document (or its wording) be improved?
Name
Phone
Affiliation
We look forward to hearing from you!
Boston Research Center for the 21st Century
396 Harvard Street
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
Tel: + 1 (617) 491-1090
Fax: + 1 (617) 491-1169
Email: brc21c@aol.com
Conference series…
In the first half of each year, the BRC sponsors a series of major public conferences. The 1997 series, Religion and Ecology: Forging an Ethic Across Traditions, examined the worldviews of more than ten religious traditions on what many believe to be the ultimate common value: saving the Earth itself. Religion and Transnational Civil Society in the 21st Century, the 1996 lecture and dialogue series, drew hundreds of guests to the Research Center for discussions on Confucianism, “Earth Ethics,” Martin Luther King’s legacy, Islam, and engaged Buddhism in Asia and the West.
Other dialogues…
Throughout 1995, in support of the United Nations and in recognition of its 50th anniversary celebration, the Center solicited perspectives from civil society on UN reform with a series of UN Renaissance forums. These discussions culminated in the publication of A People’s Response to Our Global Neighborhood, which was presented to the United Nations and the Commission on Global Governance. Other activities sponsored by the BRC have included a conference at Columbia University in October 1994 on global ethics and a university symposium series held in 1993 on nonviolence.
The proceedings of the Columbia conference were published in a book titled The United Nations and the World’s Religions: Prospects for a Global Ethic. Edited transcripts of most BRC-sponsored events are available to the public. A newsletter, published three times a year, widely disseminates the proceedings of the Center’s dialogues so that ideas explored here can be taken up and furthered by an expanding network of socially engaged scholars and activists.
Women’s leadership…
Women’s leadership is a focus of the BRC each fall in commemoration of the 1995 UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. Immediately following the women’s conference in September 1995, the Center hosted a two-part colloquium called “Voices from Beijing,” featuring the experiences of women from diverse cultural backgrounds who had just returned from the UN/NGO meetings. The following September, the Research Center took part in an anniversary conference at Simmons College by sponsoring a workshop on “Women’s Leadership in Developing Countries.”
Global Citizen Awards…Committed to fostering a network of global citizens, the Center presents a Global Citizen Award annually to scholar-activists who have made outstanding contributions to the cultivation of civil society nationally and internationally. The award recipients in 1996 were Nobel peace prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel and Hazel Henderson, the futurist and economist who coined the phrase, “Think globally, act locally.” The first Global Citizen Awards in 1995 honored peace research pioneer Elise Boulding and international development specialist John Montgomery.
