A Global Solutions Network

By:  Jeffrey D. Sachs, 

Professor of Sustainable Development, Professor of Health Policy and Management, and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, is also Special Adviser to the United Nations Secretary-General on the Millennium Development Goals. His books include The End of Poverty and Common Wealth.

Great social change occurs in several ways. A technological breakthrough – the steam engine, computers, the Internet – may play a leading role. Visionaries, such as Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Nelson Mandela, may inspire a demand for justice. Political leaders may lead a broad reform movement, as with Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal.

Our own generation urgently needs to spur another era of great social change. This time, we must act to save the planet from a human-induced environmental catastrophe. Each of us senses this challenge almost daily. Heat waves, droughts, floods, forest fires, retreating glaciers, polluted rivers, and extreme storms buffet the planet at a dramatically rising rate, owing to human activities. 

Our $70-trillion-per-year global economy is putting unprecedented pressures on the natural environment. We will need new technologies, behaviors, and ethics, supported by solid evidence, to reconcile further economic development with environmental sustainability.

Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is taking on this unprecedented challenge from his unique position at the crossroads of global politics and society. At the political level, the UN is the meeting place for 193 member states to negotiate and create international law, as in the important treaty on climate change adopted at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. At the level of global society, the UN represents the world’s citizenry, “we the peoples,” as it says in the UN Charter. 

At the societal level, the UN is about the rights and responsibilities of all of us, including future generations. In the past two decades, governments have come up short on solutions to environmental threats. Politicians have failed to implement properly the treaties adopted at the 1992 Earth Summit. Ban knows that strong government action remains vital, but he also recognizes that civil society must also play a larger role, especially because too many governments and politicians are beholden to vested interests, and too few politicians think in time horizons that extend past the next election. 

To empower global society to act, Ban has launched a bold new global initiative, for which I am grateful to volunteer. The UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network is a powerful effort to mobilize global knowledge to save the planet. 

The idea is to use global networks of knowledge and action to identify and demonstrate new, cutting-edge approaches to sustainable development around the world. The network will work alongside and support governments, UN agencies, civil-society organizations, and the private sector.

Humanity needs to learn new ways to produce and use low-carbon energy, grow food sustainably, build livable cities, and manage the global commons of oceans, biodiversity, and the atmosphere. But time is running very short. Today’s mega-cities, for example, already have to confront dangerous heat waves, rising sea levels, more extreme storms, dire congestion, and air and water pollution. 

Agricultural regions already need to become more resilient in the face of increased climate volatility. And as one region in one part of the world designs a better way to manage its transport, energy needs, water supplies, or food supplies, those successes should quickly become part of the global knowledge base, enabling other regions to benefit rapidly as well. 

Universities have a special role to play in the new UN knowledge network. Exactly 150 years ago, in 1862, Abraham Lincoln created America’s “land-grant” universities to help local communities to improve farming and the quality of life through science. 

Today, we need universities in all parts of the world to help their societies face the challenges of poverty reduction, clean energy, sustainable food supplies, and the rest. By linking together, and putting their curricula online, the world’s universities can become even more effective in discovering and promoting science-based solutions to complex problems. The world’s corporate sector also has a significant role to play in sustainable development. Now the corporate sector has two faces. It is the repository of cutting-edge sustainable technologies, pioneering research and development, world-class management, and leadership in environmental sustainability. 

Yet at the same time, the corporate sector lobbies aggressively to gut environmental regulations, slash corporate-tax rates, and avoid their own responsibility for ecological destruction. Sometimes the same company operates on both sides of the divide. We urgently need far-sighted companies to join the Sustainable Development Solutions Network. These companies are uniquely placed to move new ideas and technologies into early-stage demonstration projects, thereby accelerating global learning cycles.

Equally important, we need a critical mass of respected corporate leaders to press their peers to cease the anti-environmental lobbying and campaign-finance practices that account for the inaction of governments. Sustainable development is a generational challenge, not a short-term task. The reinvention of energy, food, transport, and other systems will take decades, not years. But the long-term nature of this challenge must not lull us into inaction. 

We must start reinventing our productive systems now, precisely because the path of change will be so long and the environmental dangers are already so pressing. At the Rio+20 Summit this past June, the world’s governments agreed to adopt a new set of goals on sustainable development for the period after 2015, to build upon the Millennium Development Goals’ success in reducing poverty, hunger, and disease. 

In the post-2015 era, the fight against poverty and the fight to protect the environment will go hand in hand, reinforcing each other. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has already initiated several global processes to help establish the new post-2015 goals in an open, participatory, and knowledge-based way. The Secretary General’s launch of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network is therefore especially timely. Not only will the world adopt a new set of goals to achieve sustainable development, but it will also have a new global network of expertise to help achieve those vital objectives.

Source:

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/a-global-solutions-network-by-jeffrey-d--sachs

A Global Agenda for Seven Billion

By: Dr. Ban Ki-moon,  

has been Secretary-General of the United Nations since 2007, prior to which he was South Korea’s foreign minister. A career diplomat, he previously served as Director of the UN’s International Organizations and Treaties Bureau, Vice Chairman of the South-North Joint Nuclear Control Commission, and South Korean National Security Adviser.

Late next month, a child will be born – the 7th billion citizen of planet Earth. We will never know the circumstances into which he or she was born. We do know that the baby will enter a world of vast and unpredictable change – environmental, economic, geopolitical, technological, and demographic. 

The world’s population has tripled since the United Nations was created in 1945. And our numbers keep growing, with corresponding pressures on land, energy, food, and water. The global economy is generating pressures as well: rising joblessness, widening social inequalities, and the emergence of new economic powers. These trends link the fate and future of today’s seven billion people as never before. 

No nation alone can solve the great global challenges of the twenty-first century. International cooperation is a universal need. The 66th session of the UN General Assembly is a renewed opportunity for the countries of the world to set aside narrow, short-term interests and commit to cooperative efforts to address humanity’s long-term imperatives. At a time when all nations are experiencing individual challenges, we need to forge a worldwide common agenda that can help to ensure that the seven billionth baby and future generations grow up in a world characterized by sustainable peace, prosperity, freedom, and justice. 

To help create this future, I am focusing my second term as Secretary-General on five global imperatives – five generational opportunities to shape the world of tomorrow by the decisions we make today. The first and greatest of these imperatives is sustainable development. We all must understand that saving our planet, lifting people out of poverty, and advancing economic growth are one and the same fight. We must connect the dots between climate change, water scarcity, energy shortages, global health, food security, and women’s empowerment. 

Solutions to one problem must be solutions for all. In the next five years, we need to create a new economic vision for sustainable development and forge global consensus on a binding climate change agreement. Fostering economic growth, realizing the Millennium Development Goals, and combating climate change will all depend on creating a new energy system for the twenty-first century and extending it to every person on the planet.

Prevention as a framework for international cooperation is a second opportunity. This year, the UN peacekeeping budget will total $8 billion. Think of what we could save by avoiding conflicts – by deploying political mediation missions, for example, rather than troops. 

We know how to do this. Our record proves it – in Guinea, Kenya, and Kyrgyzstan. A third imperative is building a safer and more secure world. In this effort, we must be courageous in standing up for democracy, human rights, and peace. This year was one of signature achievements in restoring and securing peace – in Côte d’Ivoire, Darfur, Egypt, and elsewhere. But hatred and bloodshed still stand in the way of our vision for peace.

In the Middle East, we must break the stalemate. Palestinians deserve a state. Israel needs security. Both want peace. A negotiated settlement can produce these outcomes, and the UN is a platform for forging such a peace. So, too, will we continue our efforts to foster democratic governance in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sierra Leone. 

And, in the name of all of humanity, we will continue to push forward on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, in service of realizing a world free of nuclear weapons. The fourth big opportunity is supporting countries in transition. This year’s dramatic events in North Africa and the Middle East inspired people around the globe. Let us help make the Arab Spring a true season of hope for all. 

In Libya, we are deploying a new UN support mission to assist the country’s transitional authorities in establishing a new government and legal order, consistent with the aspirations of the Libyan people. Syria is a special concern. For six months we have seen escalating violence and repression. The government has repeatedly pledged to undertake reforms and listen to its people. It has not done so. 

The moment to act is now. The violence must stop. Last but not least is the imperative of working with and for women and young people. Women hold up more than half the sky and represent much of the world’s unrealized potential. We need their full engagement – in government, business, and civil society. The UN has placed a high priority on promoting women at all levels of the Organization and this year, for the first time, UN Women is operating to promote the interests and rights of women all over the world. Seven billion people now look toward the United Nations for solutions to the world’s great global challenges. 

They hold different religions and backgrounds but common dreams and aspirations. Our global future depends on bringing these individual talents and universal rights together in common cause. Let our common agenda begin.

Source:
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/a-global-agenda-for-seven-billion

Can We Increase Gross National Happiness?

By: Prof. Peter Singer, Ph.D.

(Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University)

Patrick: "Berapa harganya?"

Mr. Crab: "5 dolar"

Patrick: "Aku hanya punya 7 dolar"

Mr. Crab: "Yasudah"

Patrick: "Patrick star kau adalah pembeli yang beruntung"

~Sponge Bob Movie~

PRINCETON – The small Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan is known internationally for two things: high visa fees, which reduce the influx of tourists, and its policy of promoting “gross national happiness” instead of economic growth. The two are related: more tourists might boost the economy, but they would damage Bhutan’s environment and culture, and so reduce happiness in the long run.

When I first heard of Bhutan’s goal of maximizing its people’s happiness, I wondered if it really meant anything in practice, or was just another political slogan. Last month, when I was in the capital, Thimphu, to speak at a conference on “Economic Development and Happiness,” organized by Prime Minister Jigme Y. Thinley and co-hosted by Jeffrey Sachs, Director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University and Special Adviser to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, I learned that it is much more than a slogan.

Never before have I been at a conference that was taken so seriously by a national government. I had expected Thinley to open the conference with a formal welcome, and then return to his office. Instead, his address was a thoughtful review of the key issues involved in promoting happiness as a national policy. He then stayed at the conference for the entire two and a half days, and made pertinent contributions to our discussions. At most sessions, several cabinet ministers were also present.

Since ancient times, happiness has been universally seen as a good. Problems arise when we try to agree on a definition of happiness, and to measure it.

One important question is whether we see happiness as the surplus of pleasure over pain experienced over a lifetime, or as the degree to which we are satisfied with our lives. The former approach tries to add up the number of positive moments that people have, and then to subtract the negative ones. If the result is substantially positive, we regard the person’s life as happy; if negative, as unhappy. So, to measure happiness defined in that way, one would have to sample moments of people’s existence randomly, and try to find out whether they are experiencing positive or negative mental states.

A second approach asks people: “How satisfied are you with the way your life has gone so far?” If they say they are satisfied, or very satisfied, they are happy, rather than unhappy. But the question of which of these ways of understanding happiness best captures what we should promote raises fundamental questions of value.

On surveys that use the first approach, countries like Nigeria, Mexico, Brazil, and Puerto Rico do well, which suggests that the answer may have more to do with the national culture than with objective indicators like health, education, and standard of living. When the second approach is taken, it tends to be the richer countries, like Denmark and Switzerland, that come out on top. But it is not clear whether people’s answers to survey questions in different languages and in different cultures really mean the same thing.

We may agree that our goal ought to be promoting happiness, rather than income or gross domestic product, but, if we have no objective measure of happiness, does this make sense? John Maynard Keynes famously said: “I would rather be vaguely right than precisely wrong.” He pointed out that when ideas first come into the world, they are likely to be woolly, and in need of more work to define them sharply. That may be the case with the idea of happiness as the goal of national policy.

Can we learn how to measure happiness? The Center for Bhutan Studies, set up by the Bhutanese government 12 years ago, is currently processing the results of interviews with more than 8,000 Bhutanese. The interviews recorded both subjective factors, such as how satisfied respondents are with their lives, and objective factors, like standard of living, health, and education, as well as participation in culture, community vitality, ecological health, and the balance between work and other activities. It remains to be seen whether such diverse factors correlate well with each other. Trying to reduce them to a single number will require some difficult value judgments.

Bhutan has a Gross National Happiness Commission, chaired by the prime minister, which screens all new policy proposals put forward by government ministries. If a policy is found to be contrary to the goal of promoting gross national happiness, it is sent back to the ministry for reconsideration. Without the Commission’s approval, it cannot go ahead.

One controversial law that did go ahead recently – and that indicates how willing the government is to take tough measures that it believes will maximize overall happiness – is a ban on the sale of tobacco. Bhutanese may bring into the country small quantities of cigarettes or tobacco from India for their own consumption, but not for resale – and they must carry the import-tax receipt with them any time they smoke in public.

Last July, the UN General Assembly passed, without dissent, a Bhutanese-initiated resolution recognizing the pursuit of happiness as a fundamental human goal and noting that this goal is not reflected in GDP. The resolution invited member states to develop additional measures that better capture the goal of happiness. The General Assembly also welcomed an offer from Bhutan to convene a panel discussion on the theme of happiness and well-being during its 66th session, which opens this month.

These discussions are part of a growing international movement to re-orient government policies towards well-being and happiness. We should wish the effort well, and hope that ultimately the goal becomes global, rather than merely national, happiness.

Peter Singer is Professor of bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne. His books includePractical Ethics, The Expanding Circle, and The Life You Can Save.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2011.

www.project-syndicate.org

How To Reform of the United Nations?

"Adanya Hak Veto dari Dewan Keamanan PBB adalah Bentuk Ketidakadilan terhadap semua warga Dunia"

~Arip Nurahman~

Since the late 1990s there have been many calls for reform of the United Nations (UN). However, there is little clarity or consensus about what reform might mean in practice. Both those who want the UN to play a greater role in world affairs and those who want its role confined to humanitarian work or otherwise reduced [1] use the term "UN reform" to refer to their ideas. The range of opinion extends from those who want to eliminate the UN entirely, to those who want to make it into a full-fledged world government.

On June 1, 2011 UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed Atul Khare of India to spearhead efforts to implement a reform agenda aimed at streamlining and improving the efficiency of the world body.[2][3] Khare, will lead the Change Management Team (CMT) at the UN, working with both departments and offices within the Secretariat and with other bodies in the UN system and the 193 member states. The CMT is tasked with guiding the implementation of a reform agenda at the UN that starts with the devising of a wide-ranging plan to streamline activities, increase accountability and ensure the organization is more effective and efficient in delivering its many mandates.[4]

Reform of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) encompasses five key issues: categories of membership, the question of the veto held by the five permanent members, regional representation, the size of an enlarged Council and its working methods, and the Security Council-General Assembly relationship. Member States, regional groups and other Member State interest groupings developed different positions and proposals on how to move forward on this contested issue.

The reform of the Security Council requires the agreement of at least two-thirds of UN member states and that of all the permanent members of the UNSC, enjoying the veto right.

Notes

1. Muravchik, Joshua (2005) The Future of the United Nations: Understanding the Past to Chart a Way Forward AEI Press ISBN 978-0-8447-7183-0.

2. "Ban appoints experienced UN official to lead change management team". United Nations. 1 June 2011.

3. "UN Secretary General Ban appoints Atul Khare of India to be the leader of his change management team". United Nations. 1 June 2011.

4. "UN change management team: Spearheaded by Atul Khare". Deccan