WHEN the 21st century started, the world was well aware that a number of mostly inter-related environmental problems had become serious enough to pose an existential threat to humanity and many other forms of life on earth. Some of the most senior scientists, as well as their groups and panels had issued repeated warnings regarding this.
The overwhelming message emerging from all their research and warnings was clear for anyone willing or caring to pay heed — it is time for the greatest international effort and cooperation to resolve these existential problems, within a framework of justice, before these can cross their much-feared tipping points and the crisis spirals rapidly out of control. The twin objectives of meeting the basic needs of all people of world while resolving existential environmental problems in time needed to be integrated and prioritised in ways that required unprecedented levels of international cooperation in conditions of stability and peace.
For such a well-coordinated international effort to become a reality it was essential to rapidly take the most essential steps for ensuring a future of completely avoiding wars.
This was also necessary to ensure that the highest life-threatening dangers associated with all weapons of mass destruction, space warfare and very heavy use of the most dangerous conventional weapons are entirely avoided.
However, instead of following this path, the world was pushed heavily by very powerful interests to rush ahead further on the highway of entirely avoidable, highly destructive wars. More recently, this started becoming so destructive that even the possibility of one or more nuclear wars and the third world war has been discussed several times.
In these highly troubling conditions, the future of our children and the following generations is becoming more and more insecure. It is time to take urgent decisions that should have been taken at least three to four decades earlier to ensure the safety of humanity and all forms of life and to protect the basic life-nurturing conditions of earth.
To focus at a world level on the urgency of these issues and tasks, the next decade 2026-36 should be declared as the International Decade for Protecting Earth, and the underlying message of this declaration should be that during this period all important issues will be pursued within the wider framework of whatever needs to be done for protecting the essential life-nurturing conditions of earth. As this involves the highest level of sincere international cooperation in conditions of peace and stability, all wars and possibilities of war should be completely avoided.
It is important to take this message in highly persuasive ways all over the world that all this is essentially a matter of protecting basic life-nurturing conditions of the planet, something essential to ensure a safe life for us and even more for our children, and hence all narrower considerations which take us on a contrary path including that of wars simply have to be given up.
While some of the more formal work and announcements must certainly be taken up by the United Nations, this involves much wider mobilisation than even the biggest campaign of the UN so far. Efforts should be made to involve not just the best scientific expertise, but in addition also those who have been contributing the most, including social movements and senior diplomats and scholars — for environment protection, for peace and justice.
It must be clear that the essential tasks of protection of environment and biodiversity, peace and disarmament must be achieved within a framework of democracy and justice at various levels. Women and youths must have a very important role in all this. Educational institutions at basic and higher levels must be involved too. Both spiritual and secular organisations can contribute a lot to this effort in their own ways.
The planning for the decade must be such that at the end of this the world must have come out of the crisis of existential threats, or else would be well on the way to achieving this objective within a framework of justice and democracy. Many millions of well-informed people would have been mobilised on this issue during the decade, and will continue to play a very important role in taking forward this task whose great importance would be accepted by a much greater number of people and by those in leadership roles.
The declaration and actual observation of such a decade would be very helpful for making up for some of the lost time in recent decades, and bringing back hopes for a safe future for people, children and all other forms of life.
Yours truly had initiated a small effort in this direction (for declaring the next decade as the decade for the protection of earth) by preparing a statement, getting it signed by several eminent persons, and sending this petition to the United Nations. and had devoted almost an entire year (and spent most of his personal savings kept for old age) to write and publish five books in English and Hindi on this and related subjects. While normally I stay away from publicity, in this case I went out of my way to twice arrange for the public release of these books. However, I realise now that this should be a much larger and sustained effort and hope that others more capable of a successful and sustained, continuing, larger-scale effort can take this up. I would like to emphasise once again that all this must be taken forward only within a framework of justice and democracy, and I firmly disassociate myself from any efforts which talk of “saving the world” but ignore justice, equality and democracy.
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Bharat Dogra writes extensively on environment, development and welfare issues. The views expressed here are the writer’s own, and Clarion India does not necessarily subscribe to them. He can be reached at: bharatdogra1956@gmail.com
