Living the Earth Charter



Living the Earth Charter

Introduction

The Earth Charter initiative is a particularly notable juncture both in environmental ethics and in the attempts to formulate a global ethic. It represents a significant step not only in the content of the final document, but also in its drafting process and the ongoing activity it has sparked. The development of the charter entailed nearly a decade and involved international consultation with tens of thousands of participants. The intent was the creation of a “people's treaty” that expressed a consensus of values and principles among diverse cultural, economic, religious, and scientific interests. Its content is comprehensive; it connects ecological integrity and sustainability to social and economic justice and the establishment of enduring peaceful relations. The charter and its supporters are not without their critics. Despite a decade of efforts since the launch of the Earth Charter, the initial aspiration of formal adoption by the United Nations General Assembly, similar to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, has not been fulfilled, although it has been endorsed by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and many other bodies. Therefore, all the issues related to Earth Charter will be discussed in detail.

Overview of the Earth Charter

The proposal for a new charter or universal declaration that would deal with ecological protection and sustainable development came from the work of the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), Our Common Future, also known as the Brundtland Commission report, in 1987. Although creation of such a charter was attempted at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, an intergovernmental agreement could not be reached. The Rio Declaration, while containing important principles did not represent the cohesive vision many, particularly those representing nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), had sought.

In 1994, Jim McNeill, secretary general of the WCED, along with Queen Beatrix and Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers of the Netherlands, brought together the secretary general of the Rio Earth Summit, Canadian Maurice Strong, with former Soviet Union president Mikhail Gorbachev to lead a new civil society initiative. These two leaders worked at first through organizations they each had founded (Earth Council and Green Cross International, respectively) with initial funding from the Netherlands. This strategy led to the initiative of creating a charter to a more varied set of participants, taking it out of the domain of official representatives of nations. It would be in the hands of interested organizations and individuals, and consultations were sought at all levels of society. The intent was to develop a soft law, or set of guidelines that could be used at many levels of community and international deliberations, rather than an official, legally binding treaty. There was still an objective of international adoption, as the document would theoretically represent a broadly based consensus of the world's peoples. In 1995, Ambassador Mohamed Sahnoun of Algeria became the first executive director of the project, which then embarked on several years of consultation that drew on ...