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The New Path to Peace and Sustainability Mikhail Gorbachev, Chair More than ever, world leaders are coming to recognize that the new path to peace and sustainability into the 21st century will require not only a fundamental change in the culture of conflict, but as well, a change in the way humanity relates to the greater community of life. These issues were most recently addressed at the January 2004 World Economic Forum, which devoted its Annual Meeting to the triple challenges of forging "partnerships, security and prosperity" in the new millennium. The Earth Dialogues (co-hosted by my own organization Green Cross International and the city of Barcelona), to be held in Barcelona on February 5-6 as an official launch event for the Universal Forum of Cultures Barcelona 2004, will address similar issues but in a more open, transparent and participatory manner than the way in which the World Economic Forum tends to conduct its own meetings. The Earth Dialogues are not intended as a mere "talk shop", but as a dynamic and highly interactive forum that brings together not just world leaders and captains of industry, but the actors who really count, members of civil society. The Earth Dialogues will certainly deepen the global dialogue, but the main focus will be the identification of concrete strategies, which are needed to operationalise the new global agenda for peace and sustainability. Increasing tensions on the world scene, escalating terrorism, religious intolerance, environmental degradation, and the systematic violation of human rights all demonstrate the need to understand the diverse roots of conflicts, as well as the links between poverty, environmental deterioration and scarcity, and peace and security. These challenges also point to the need for a global vision of common values, which must underlie the new forms of dialogue and cooperation needed among nations and civilizations. World politics are in a state of crisis. Preventive diplomacy and dialogue, which are meant to avoid conflicts are being replaced by policies of preventive wars aimed at eliminating alleged threats. As never before, the "post-Iraq" world community beckons for a new understanding of the global situation. Indeed, a central message of the seven US Democractic leadership candidates is the need to build a new security and sustainability paradigm. The timing of their messages could not be more relevant since the beginning of the 21st century has added new and deadly dimensions to the challenge of maintaining global peace and security. Most recently in a Der Spiegel interview published on January 26, Mohamed El-Baradei, Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, pronounced that the world is now closer to the threat of nuclear war than ever before, in particular, because of the growing illegal trade in nuclear technologies. However, despite the pervasive threat of international terrorism and the terrifying prospect of nuclear war in the 21st century, the reality is that security in this new millennium is not just about protection from aggression, but also from disease, economic shocks and environmental degradation and resource scarcity. For most of the world, security tensions center less on boundaries and external might, but more on internal conflict that stems from poverty, social exclusion, dispossession and marginalisation, as well as economic instability and competition over shared resources, such as water and arable land. The sad reality is that security on all these fronts is an illusory exception to the general state of affairs. Indeed, these were some of the key challenges that the World Social Forum (the civil society counterpart to the World Economic Forum) tackled in Mumbai just one month ago. Another important phenomenon is that in our globalized society, governments alone can no longer provide adequate security to their citizens, let alone protect increasingly porous geo-political borders. How then does the world move forward to respond to the new global survival challenges of the new millennium? Well, as a first important step, I maintain that we must replace the overriding culture of violence and conflict with a new culture of peace. This means not just strengthening and democratising our institutions of peace and security to better respond to and prevent violence, war and conflict. It means developing, at all levels and in all spheres of life, a complex of attitudes, values, beliefs and patterns of behavior that promote not just the peaceful settlement of conflict, but as well, the quest for mutual understanding, and opportunity for individuals to live harmoniously with each other and the larger community of life. Above all, it means promoting a new global security and sustainability ethic. By a global ethic, I do not mean a new ideology or superstructure. A new global ethic is not intended to make the specific ethics of the different religions superfluous. Neither is it intended to be a substitute for the Torah, the Sermon on the Mount, the Qur'an, the Bhagavadgita, the Discourses of the Buddha or the Sayings of Confucius. Rather, a global ethic, as reflected in the Earth Charter, an authoritative statement of ethical principles for sustainable development and recognized by more than 8,000 organizations (representing more than 100 million people), constitutes a core of belief, which is indeed acceptable to all. As one of the architects of the Earth Charter, I stressed that the global ethic enshrined therein should not impose one vision or legislate away important cultural differences. This is particularly important for nascent democracies around the world, which I assert, must be free to define for themselves, their own democratic paths to sustainability and security. Contrary to the efforts of the world's remaining "uber-power" to impose its own political, social and religious imperialism on the rest of the world, the Earth Charter reflects an important balance that strives for unity, seeking neither to eradicate nor compromise diversity. The new global ethic also asserts that real security and sustainability can only exist in a world where finite ecological and economic resources are protected in a spirit of stewardship to enable all to meet their basic human needs and to live a life of material and spiritual well-being. In a world increasingly besieged by corruption, greed and self-interest, we need leaders who have the moral courage to ground their decisions in this new global ethic. We need leaders who understand that, in the words of the Earth Charter, "when basic needs have been met, human development is primarily about being more, not having more". We also need global leaders who understand that attending to the growing environmental, economic and cultural stresses are just as critical as the political and military factors in the maintenance of international peace and security. And, in a year in which there will be an unprecedented number of national elections, we especially need leaders who care not only about the results of yet another election campaign, but who take decisions that respect the increasing interdependence of the community of nations. This means leaders who have the moral rectitude to transcend narrow national self-interests and to recognize that the new generation of global survival problems are only resolvable through multilateral channels, and in a true spirit of global solidarity that recognizes that the culture of peace and sustainability is really the only viable path forward. |