Date: 7/8/00 6:40 PM From: Earth Charter Project To: Copy: "Mirian Vilela" Subject: EARTH CHARTER UPDATE Return-Path: Received: from janus.hosting4u.net ([209.15.2.37]) by fep02-svc.tin.it (InterMail vM.4.01.02.27 201-229-119-110) with SMTP id <20000807164050.LXR17558.fep02-svc.x(at)yhosting4u.net> for ; Mon, 7 Aug 2000 18:40:50 +0200 Received: (qmail 17446 invoked from network); 7 Aug 2000 16:40:49 -0000 Received: from taurus.hosting4u.net (209.15.2.33) by mail-gate.hosting4u.net with SMTP; 7 Aug 2000 16:40:49 -0000 Received: from ecouncil.ac.cr ([196.40.1.51]) by taurus.hosting4u.net ; Mon, 07 Aug 2000 11:40:35 -0500 Received: from bmcdermott [196.40.1.51] by ecouncil.ac.cr [196.40.1.51] with SMTP (MDaemon.v3.1.0.R) for ; Mon, 07 Aug 2000 10:46:58 -0600 Message-ID: <00a301c00086$b1454b20$6fx(at)yil.ac.cr> From: "Earth Charter Project" To: Cc: "Mirian Vilela" References: <200008052209300870.00x(at)ylubnet.tin.it> Subject: EARTH CHARTER UPDATE Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2000 10:46:39 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="----=_NextPart_000_00A0_01C0005C.C5976B00" X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2014.211 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2014.211 X-MDaemon-Deliver-To: x(at)yinker.com X-Return-Path: ecx(at)yil.ac.cr X-MDRcpt-To: mx(at)yil.ac.cr X-MDRemoteIP: 196.40.1.51 Dear Danilo D'Antonio: Many thanks for your e-mail and your nice words regarding our efforts towards a better a sustainable world. We will certaintly include you in our mailing list. Let me start by telling you that the final version of the Earth Charter document, which I am here enclosing, was officially launched at the Peace Palace, The Hague, The Netherlands on June 29th. The ceremony was enhanced with the presence of Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands and 300 local and international invitees. The idea is now to use the Charter as an educational tool for sustainable development in formal and non-formal education and as a guide and framework for professional and business codes of conduct. In addition, the Earth Charter Commission has created a new Steering Committee with eleven members to direct a number of new programs and activities to be coordinated by the Earth Charter Secretariat, which continues to be located at the Earth Council in Costa Rica. Ruud Lubbers, the former Prime Minister of The Netherlands and the current president of the World Wildlife Fund, is now serving as a co-chair of this Committee and its principal leader for the immediate future. Wangari Maathai, who heads the Green Belt Movement in Kenya and is an Earth Charter Commissioner, has recently joined the Steering Committee. The success of the Earth Charter Initiative depends upon partnerships with many other organizations and groups, and the Steering Committee and Secretariat are working to build these partnerships. Over the past two months a number of organizations have formally endorsed the Earth Charter and called on their members to use the document, apply its principles, and promote it. Among them are the following: . The Millennium NGO Forum, which brought together over 1,000 NGOs for its meeting at the UN headquarters in late May, endorsed the Earth Charter in its final report and Declaration which will be submitted to the heads of state and delegates gathering for the UN Millennium General Assembly session and Millennium Summit in September. In "We the Peoples Millennium Forum Declaration and Agenda for Action," the Forum "urges governments to endorse the Earth Charter in the UN General Assembly" and "urges civil society to adopt and disseminate the Earth Charter as a tool for promotion of values and actions which will create sustainable development." . The Sierra Club board of trustees formally endorsed the document at its spring meeting on the recommendation of its International Committee and called on Club members and entities to study its interdependent principles. . Green Cross International formally endorsed the Earth Charter at its June annual meeting in Geneva, which included representatives from its twenty-six national committees. . The International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), the membership of which is made up of 350 cities, towns and counties around the world, formally endorsed the Earth Charter during its tenth anniversary World Congress in Wittenberg, Germany. The endorsement by ICLEI is a significant step forward in securing government support for the Earth Charter vision. . The Russian Association of the Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON), which includes thirty-one indigenous peoples living in Siberia and the Russian Far East, formally endorsed the Earth Charter at its tenth anniversary meeting this spring. In addition, the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, the Fenno-Scandinavian Saami Council, and the Danish Committee of Nature and Peoples of the North have joined RAIPON of Russia in pledging their full support of the Earth Charter. The support of these groups representing the inhabitants of the Arctic is especially significant since their representatives were concerned with the wording of certain principles in early drafts of the Earth Charter. Their concerns, however, were addressed, and they are now actively engaged in promoting the Earth Charter. The final version of the Earth Charter is being translated into dozens of languages. It is now available in Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, Korean, Italian, English, French, Japanese, German, Greenlandic Inuit, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. The following Earth Charter-related activities are scheduled for the near future: 1. The presentation of the Earth Charter in the Peace Summit of Religious Leaders that will take place during the opening session of the UN General Assembly at the end of August. This meeting should use the Charter as an instrument in their recommendation to the Assembly for reaching peace. 2. Presentation and discussion of the Earth Charter in the State of the World Forum to take place on September 9th. 3. And most important, the role of the Earth Charter within the IUCN World Congress on October 4-10. A resolution for endorsement of the Charter is being submitted for the IUCN members consideration. Since this world congress will take place in Jordan, we are exploring the possibility of presenting the Earth Charter also to the King of Jordan asking for his support. I invite you to visit our renewed website: www.earthcharter.org in which you will find relevant information about this important initiative. It would be great to have you involved and supporting this initiative and hope we can move forward, with a share notion of interdependence and responsibility, towards the achievement of a global partnership of sustainable development. We encourage you to read the Earth Charter, embrace it, promote it and integrate it into activities you are involved in. If you can do nothing more, please endorse it at: www.ecouncil.ac.cr/template/endorse If in need of further information please do not hesitate to let me know. Best regards, Betty ----- Original Message ----- From: Laboratorio Eudemonia To: Sent: Saturday, August 05, 2000 3:09 PM Subject: For the determination of an optimal local demographic density on the European territory. Kind Sirs of The Earth Charter Campaign, many thanks for your precious efforts in building a better world! We are a little Italian laboratory of global researches and the environment is at the first place in our list of concerns. We are very interested in your activities, and for this reason, we would be very happy if you could add our e.mail: x(at)yinker.com to your newsletter or mailing list. Certainly, you are interested in overpopulation themes, like we are, so we send you the call below for the determination of an optimal local demographic density on the European territory. We heartily hope to meet your adhesion and contribution in this initiative and to keep in touch each other. Receive our best greetings, thanks for all in advance, Danilo D'Antonio --- EUDAEMONY LABORATORY oOOo What will you sow today? Piazza del Municipio - 64100 - Teramo - Italy tel: ++39 861 415655 - e.mail: x(at)yinker.com http://eulab.hyperlinker.com/ --##-- Call to the European Political Forces and Governmental Organizations for the determination of an optimal local demographic density. Kind Madame, kind Sir, We send you our warmest greetings! As you certainly know, in the last few months the world's population has reached and exceeded the amount of six billion units, that of India having exceeded one billion. These facts, although they represent a serious demographic issue that should be faced with immediate and extreme care, have not been treated with the necessary attention by the general public. Even the people and groups most socially committed are almost all indifferent to that which contributes heavily to the rise of the most serious social illnesses of our era. Imagining that you, like us, are also feeling impulses of healthy personal involvement, we permit ourselves to contact you at this point in the hopes that you will want to treat this theme within your Group and in the administrative and politic local Assemblees. Far from being an issue that relates only to places far from our Nations, this demographic problem has, in fact, for some time and in the general unawareness, fully expressed itself also within those Nations, even made worse by heavily industrialized ways of life. And in effect, observing the average of the European Union, we remember that (according to data of 1997) the population density of the whole territory is of 127 individuals per square kilometer, that means that every European, ideally dividing the territory of our Union, has at his disposal an area of only 0.78 parts of hectare (note 1) from which to get his life needs (note 2) and on which to enjoy his individuality and to express his creative power. It is rather complex to determine through a scientific method a total optimal inhabiting density or the highest reasonable for a society, and to establish how many individuals a territory can support without degrading itself; however, with the simple comprehensive view we get by living this situation personally, it is easy to understand that we have already for some time exceeded a certain threshold of psychophysic wellbeing and healthiness, and also of sound economic indipendence, since the European's life, their territory no longer being enough to satisfy the exigencies of a widely excessive population, by now depends much more from other zones of the Earth than from Europe itself. For these reasons of internal overpopulation, without forgetting the current phenomena of wild immigration onto European ground, deriving from external overpopulation and certainly destined to grow, we think it is right that the international demographic issue should be faced at, and should receive contribution from, various levels. It must be discussed, made clear and decided in a global ambient, with the intervention of overnational and world political forces, being the problem of a planetary burden, but also in a local ambient, at a national, regional and even provincial level, observing both right and duty, as the demographic issue manifests itself also locally and can find also locally effective solutions. In particular and to begin, it would be more than opportune to start a diligent multidisciplinary study on the demographic situation, in every Region and Nation, on the effects, not at all positive, that the local overpopulation, not only urban but also rural, produces on the individuals themselves, on the society and the environment. In this way it could be finally possible to attribute a more precise responsibility to many of the problems, still with a vague paternity, that worry us today, and to present them the solutions they are waiting for. In the same time it would be extremely auspicable to make clear in what measure we are real children of our land and in what other we are instead dependent on far zones of the world, in order to try to re-establish, with time, a sound equilibrium between these two economic modalities (note 3). From this study immediately it would emerge that our present demographic density has already reached and exceeded evident danger signals and that a further growth of the local population (whether for endogenous motives: restarting of local birth-rate, or exogenous: for immigration) would ulteriorly and terribly overburden our already precarious situation. In this case, even if it is late, this same study should then determine an optimal number, for our epoch and from the point of view of the individual, the society, and the environment, of inhabitants per Nation and for the whole European Union, that can serve as a point of referral for all our errands of present management and plans of future development (note 4). Also aware of the numerous implications that such an initiative would involve, we believe that the local and planetary situations demand an immediate and intense engagement in this direction. We believe also that this engagement of self-discipline not only would secure a serene future to our Nations, but would also furnish an important point of reference both to the less developed Countries, generally affected by exponential growth of population, and to the other more developed, generally affected, like we are, by hyperurbanization, both being still immersed in the torpor, distracted and undecided on which direction to take. For all this, we hope that the demographic issue will rise powerfully to the attention of our consciences and soon become theme of wide local debate, and similarly we hope the study here augured will soon become concrete reality (note 5). Kind Madame, kind Sir, thanking you deeply for your courteous attention, and auguring ourselves that this initiative of ours, though modest, has met with you some degree of consensus, we extend to you our best wishes. Signature Date _____________________ __________________ NOTES 1) For a brief comparison, and starting with our Country: an Italian (national average) has at his disposal only 0.52 parts of hectare, an area much smaller than everyone would wish to, and be opportune to, have at his disposal. In this heavy, sad situation Italy finds inside the European Union crowded companions in Germany (235 inhabitants per square Km - 0.42 hectares per person), in England (243 inhabitants per square Km - 0.41 hectares per person), in Belgium (310 inhabitants per square Km - 0.32 hectares per person), and in Holland (457 inhabitants per square Km - 0.21 hectares per person). The European average is: 127 inhabitants per square Km, equal to 0.78 hectares per person; the world average is: 44 inhabitants per square Km. equal to 2.27 hectares per person (but mind that in this count are considered also deserts and ice-caps, otherwise the area per person goes down further: about 1.3 hectares). Inside the planetary situation, there are cases as those of the United States in which every one has at his disposal still an area of 3.44 hectares of national territory, and Australia, where every one can enjoy 50 hectares (and we hope they will be able to preserve them); but there are also case of atavic carelessness as those of India, where every one has 0.31 parts of hectare, and of Bangladesh, where a human being has only 0.10 parts of hectare, the which gives light of greater clearness to many tragical facts we see in the daily chronicles told by the media. 2) Some researchers of the University of British Columbia, in Canada, have determined, even though with a large approximation, the ecological footprint that an individual, based on the style of life he leads, leaves on the territory. And so, through a special calculator available on the Internet, it is possible to derive that for the middle european individual needs of food, lodging, transports, consumer goods, services and what other he uses to live, it is necessary an area between 6 and 7 hectares. Even though certainly the measure is rough, we cannot not keep it well in mind in the important decisional processes relating our Region and Nations. Measure your own ecological footprint going to: http://www.lead.org/leadnet/footprint/intro.htm 3) Both an economy that expresses itself locally and one that expresses itself globally have both values and faults. Here is not the place to face this argument, but we would however remember that a local economy makes the society that practices it more solid but gives it a scarce innovation; an economy that bases itself on exchanges with distant countries certainly enriches but at the same time creates instability and dependence from outside. The climate of continuous emergence and of insane economic chase we are living today derives in great part just from the lack of balance born from having given too much space to the global economy taking it away to the local one. A re-equilibrium of these two components is the wisest choice to which one could today dedicate himself in the economic field. 4) With regard to our future development, we permit ourselves to remember that today, in times of science and no longer of brute force, this development is favoured in an enormously greater way by a qualitative growth of people, then by their intellectual maturity and preparation, that not by a simple quantitative growth of population. More than favouring this last, then, we need to cultivate and organize as best we can the existing population: so doing, people that today may even be a burden for the society and are abandoned will tomorrow become able to accomplish authentic prodigies and to be a positive guide for others. Consider, moreover, that after such a great exterior, material development like that reached by our society, a natural organizational evolution, a real interior development, must necessarily be added now, otherwise the former not supported by the latter would fall down very soon on itself. 5) After about two months since the first drawing up of this call, we received an excellent study entitled "Optimum Population for Europe" made by David Willey, chairman of Optimum Population Trust. Setting about the enterprise of the determination of an optimal local demographic density, this more general study will be a great help. This study is available asking for it at: inlingx(at)yipex.com or at Mr. David Willey, OPT, 12 Meadowgate, Urmston, Manchester M41 9LB, England. Concede us this one last note. In case the study would confirm what we are here hypothesizing (that our territories already support too much humanity) we must engage ourselves even more, or begin very eagerly, to contribute in making better the conditions of life in those Countries whose inhabitants would have wished to move next to us. Maybe, just intensifying, or sending for the first time, temporaneous invitations to some of them in order to freely furnish them the knowledge that we have, that could help their Community to reach a full self-sufficiency. At the same time, to avoid that our dutiful respect for an ideal demographic density could even in the least thwart the positive process of universalization of cultures and union of peoples that is already in act, we should promote even more cultural exchanges of excellent quality (mostly telematic, being immensely more effective than the simple transport of organic matter activated by conventional tourism) with all the Countries in the World. Data on the demographic density are derived from: www.istat.it www.worldbank.org For updates (also deriving from your precious feedback: thanks in advance!) and other matter on the same theme, please see our web site: The World Demographic Issue http://spg.hyperlinker.com/pop.htm Every kind of contribution (adhesion, divulgation, articles, links, etc.) you can give to this call will be very useful to favour the awareness on the European heavy demographic situation. This is an initiative by the Eudaemony Global Researches Laboratory http://eulab.hyperlinker.com/labing.htm --##--