Earth Charter Research Articles

Practicing ESD at School

The Earth Charter represents the philosophy and ethics necessary to create a new period of human civilization. Understanding and adoption of this new vision is the most important mission of education for sustainable development (ESD). This article argues that for successful implementation of ESD principles at school, the school education system should be changed into a resource centre that initiates and supports students’ inclusion into processes of sustainable development in their own communities. Teachers’ self-definition as co-learners in the educational process is an essential part of this change. Moreover, in many instances the integration of nonformal educational initiatives led by youth into the formal educational system makes the transition to ESD more effective and sustainable. By introducing the activities of Youth International Education Club NEWLINE (Belarus), the authors provide examples of nonformal educational tools and methods implemented in several Belarusian schools.

Earth Charter Educational Resources

Earth Charter Educational Resources

The Earth Charter: An Ethical Framework for a Feasible Utopia

Abstract This research objective is to highlight an innovative, holistic, inclusive, integrated approach to a sustainable future promoted by the Earth Charter and describe the structure of its ethical framework. The main conclusion of the research is that the ethical framework of the Earth Charter is based on a limited number of core concepts: planetary human identity, feasible utopianism, co-responsibility and committed compassion. Planetary human identity is based on the capacity to incorporate nature into the process of identity building and integrate three complementary feelings: singularity, belonging to groups and belonging to the planetary community of life. The Earth Charter stresses the necessity to give a new life to utopianism by working out a critical-radical-alternative, but a feasible idea of future and our responsibility towards it. Moreover, the Earth Charter rethinks responsibility as co-responsibility and assigns it four different qualities: universal, synchronic, diachronic and differentiated and appeals to an innovative politically connoted notion of compassion.

A Voice for Earth: American Writers Respond to the Earth Charter

A Voice for Earth: American Writers Respond to the Earth Charter

Earth Charter International, April 2009

Earth Charter International, April 2009

The Earth Charter in Higher Education for Sustainability

A central challenge of sustainable development is to provide material sufficiency for the human population while preserving the integrity of Earth’s biosphere. Current modes of economic production and consumption accomplish neither of these ethical imperatives. Institutions of higher education must show leadership in the transition to sustainable ways of life. The Earth Charter is a people’s declaration of ethical principles for securing a just, peaceful, humane and sustainable future. The document can serve as a valuable resource for tertiary educators. The Earth Charter provides an inclusive definition of sustainability, emphasising the interrelated concepts of ecological integrity; social and economic justice; and democracy, nonviolence and peace. It can help us resolve the tension between educating for sustainability while creating learning spaces for contestation and critical inquiry. The Earth Charter also valorises the principle of intergenerational equity, challenging us to create human livelihoods that secure the continued full flourishing of all life for generations to come.

Cosmology in the World Religions, the Universe Story, and the Earth Charter

Cosmology in the World Religions, the Universe Story, and the Earth Charter

Ecology, Phenomenology, and Culture: Developing a Language for Sustainability

Education is central to two recent international efforts to address an impending ecological global crisis. The Earth Charter and the UN document Decade for Education for Sustainable Development 2005–2014 challenge all people to consider the socio-ecological, ethical, local and global dimensions of human life. These documents state clearly the international community now strongly believes we need to foster through education the competencies of heart and mind required for a sustainable future. In light of the current ideology driving education today, the proposed re-orientation of education will require challenging taken-for-granted cultural assumptions and deeply re-examining our relationship with the Earth. In this article, I argue that an international effort to re-orient education is at heart a phenomenological task. Understanding the lived experience of the person-environment relationship must be the starting point of such educational efforts and the development of a language to describe person-environment relationship is essential to the goal of re-orienting education for the values of sustainability.

World Religions, the Earth Charter, and Sustainability

AbstractThis article argues the global environmental crisis shows the need for a broad, inclusive definition of sustainability. It shows how religious traditions can help contribute to broader definitions, and describes how work from the field of Religion and Ecology has developed resources. It argues that the next step for the study of Religion and Ecology is to address sustainability, and then proposes that the Earth Charter provides an orienting framework for that engagement of religion and sustainability.

Rethinking Rights in the Twenty-First Century: The Right to Life and the Right to Peace from a Buddhist Perspective

The right to life and the right to peace are examined from a Buddhist perspective on ‘life’. This perspective differs from that of the Judeo-Christian tradition, in that it stresses that at the deepest level, each life is interdependent and interrelated. Awakening to this reality is to realise equality in the most fundamental sense – that of creative coexistence. This is exactly what the Earth Charter aims to do. The paper concludes that based on this realisation, political and economic competition will be transformed into a humanitarian competition, in other words, cooperation.

APPROACHING A CLIMATIC RESEARCH ETTIQUETTE

This paper examines the way in which climate change's complexity calls forth dialogue on various cross-cultural dimensions which resonate with its multi-dimensional reality. While the IPCC science and the Kyoto Protocol approach this inclusiveness, they ultimately limit the range of voices heard due to the continuation of cultural assumptions that are intertwined with many environmental issues. Following the Earth Charter as an alternative model of cross-cultural dialogue that can inform a methodological approach of climate change, this analysis suggests that a more inclusive sharing can offer a way of attending to limiting assumptions as a means to creating viable regional and global responses. This climatic research etiquette is clarified through focusing upon the continued dominance of economic scarcity and its religious precursor, original sin, in contemporary environmental thought.

MIDWIFERY AS A MODEL FOR ECOLOGICAL ETHICS: EXPANDING ARTHUR PEACOCKE'S MODELS OF “MAN‐IN‐CREATION”

Abstract.In Creation and the World of Science (1979) scientist‐theologian Arthur Peacocke asks what the role of humanity might be in relation to creation if conceived within the scientific perspective that favors the theological paradigm of the panentheistic God‐world relationship. Deeming roles such as dominion and steward as liable to distortion toward a hierarchical understanding of humanity's relation to the rest of creation, Peacocke proposes seven other roles to express the proper relationship of humanity to the cosmos in panentheistic relation to its Creator. Although each of these models has merit within a panentheistic paradigm, Peacocke and the paradigm itself suggest that the panentheistic model of God in relation to an evolving cosmos may be most effectively imaged through a model of female procreativity. In keeping with this proposal, I develop the understanding of humanity's ecologically ethical role in relation to the evolving cosmos in terms of the midwife to the process of procreation. I evaluate the efficacy of the midwife as a paradigm for ecological ethics by means of several criteria, including the propositions of the Earth Charter, “a declaration of fundamental principles for building a just, sustainable, and peaceful global society in the 21st century” (Earth Initiative 2000).

Religious education and peace: an overview and response

This article provides some concluding reflections on religious education and peace‐making in different countries in East and West (Indonesia, Korea, Japan, Israel, Spain, Germany, USA), as discussed in the previous papers of this volume. I mention the changed nature of modern forms of violence and war, so that peace is no longer just an option in the contemporary world, but must be an imperative if the global community is to flourish. Reference is made to the Declaration Toward a Global Ethic (1993) and the Earth Charter (2000) as helpful instruments for developing peace education. The religions of the world possess considerable seeds for peace‐making which religious education can use as resources for overcoming violence and promoting a culture of peace.

EMERGING ACADEMIC RESPONSIBILITIES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR PROMOTING REGIONAL SUSTAINABILITY

Academics have had numerous responsibilities during the centuries. However, now with global climate changes and the attendant, looming crises, it is increasingly crucial that administrators, faculty members, graduate, undergraduate students, staff members and alumni work together with governmental.. non-governmental and industrial members in envisioning, societies that are truly sustainable. The visions must then be effectively and efficiently implemented in numerous locations throughout the world in regionally adapted societal experiments that will help to ensure that our children's, children's, children's children and beyond will enjoy this wonderful planet. The UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) is an excellent framework within which academics can increasingly work to make the dramatic changes that are urgently needed. The DESD can then be implemented in the context of the The U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and the Earth Charter as further framing and challenging inputs to guide our education, research and outreach that will help to ensure sustainable cities and regions within the global context.

The Earth Charter and the Quest for a More Sustainable and Peaceful World

Mirian Vilela reflects on the Earth Charter as a common values framework for a more just, sustainable and peaceful world. She offers an overview of the Earth Charter Initiative and presents it as a good example of a civil society movement and as a useful framework that integrates the sustainability and peace building agendas. Vilela suggests that the Earth Charter can be a mobilizing force toward a culture of peace and sustainability.

A decade of democracy: environmental management in a changing world

The world’s focus on the environment started in 1972 with the Conference of the United Nations on the Human Environment in Stockholm. This led to the formation of the United Nations’ Environmental Programme (UNEP). The new interest in the role of the humans in the environment only picked up momentum after the publication of the report, Our Common Future by the World Commission on Development and the Environment, led by Harlem Gro Brundtland and the follow-up Conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 (The Earth Summit). The main products from this conference were the Earth Charter and the Agenda 21 principles and action plans. Not long after this event South Africa had a change in government in 1994. The new Constitution that was accepted in 1996 is one of the few constitutions that contain pertinent clauses pertaining to the protection of the environment. Environmental legislation such as the new National Environmental Management Act, a National Water Act, a Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act, an Air Quality Management Bill has been adapted since 1994. A huge number of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) attended the Rio Conference. Some, like Greenpeace (and locally Earthlife Africa), developed pressure groups that pressurised governments to give more attention to the protection of the environment and to improve environmental management. During this period results of scientific research that had a large impact on humankind’s perception of the environment, were published. The discovery of the hole in the ozone layer and of the increase in global warming led to great public interest. This led to conventions and protocols that have been ratified by most countries in the world, for example 189 out of a possible 191 countries ratified the Montreal Protocol for the Protection of the Ozone Layer by June 2004. The private sector responded and today it is the norm to report about the “Triple Bottom-line” (economic, social and environmental aspects). The question that arises is: who had the most influence on the wealth of new legislation and the change of emphasis to environmental management in the private and public sectors – the new government, pressure from green organisations or reaction to scientific research? This paper discusses the influence of all three.

The nature and scope of global ethics and the relevance of the Earth Charter

This article presents global ethics as critical reflection on the nature, justification and application of a global ethic. Much of the article focuses on the nature of a global ethic as the content of global ethics, e.g. whether it is thick or thin, is about universal values or transnational responsibilities, is a set of values justified by a particular thinker, values widely shared or values universally accepted. Global ethics itself as a process is also examined. In the last part the Earth Charter is examined as an example of a global ethic, and a case is made for regarding it, both in respect to its content and in respect to the senses in which it is and is not a global ethic, as an appropriate subject matter for global ethics.

The Earth Charter and Conservation

The Earth Charter is a declaration of values and principles for a more just, sustainable and peaceful world. Very nice you say, but ?what does such a document have to do with conservation and why is it of interest to the readers of Pacific Conservation Biology?? To answer these questions we must begin with a little history.

What If? The Educational Possibilities of the Earth Charter

Evoking a concern for intergenerational equity and claiming that the bounty and beauty of Earth have become diminishing prospects, I introduce the Earth Charter as an expression of the hopes of diverse communities around the globe. I argue that the Charter deserves educators' attention as an integrated vision of social justice, peace, and ecological sustainability. I believe the Earth Charter can help transform our conception of what is foundational to include solutions to the deepening anthropogenic ecological crisis. Attention is given to the rationale and methodology for teaching with the Earth Charter. I argue that those in educational studies must deeply engage the problems of our time and that the Earth Charter offers hopeful possibilities for examining and addressing our mutual interconnections.

‘Respect for nature’ in the earth charter: the value of species and the value of individuals

This paper explores the idea of ‘respect for nature’ in the Earth Charter. It maintains that the Earth Charter proposes a broadly holistic environmental ethic where, in situations of conflict, species are given ethical priority over the lives of individual sentient organisms. The paper considers policy implications of this perspective, looking by means of example at the current European environmental policy dispute about the ruddy and white‐headed duck. Questions about the value of species and biological diversity this raises are explored. The paper concludes that the principle of valuing individual animal lives should be given more prominence in Earth Charter principles.