Earth Emergency: World Future Council Issues Global Policy Action Plan

With growing climate chaos and desertification, biodiversity decline, ocean pollution and forest decimation, the interlinked crises brought about by human action are threatening the very capacity of the earth to sustain life. Defining a political framework for changing course, the policy advocacy organisation World Future Council presents an emergency policy agenda consisting of 24 tipping-point policies that need to be implemented globally to preserve a habitable planet.

The condensed, six-page document is titled "Saving our Shared Future - Best Policies to Regenerate our World". It is the result of more than five years of work with parliamentarians, national and international policy-makers, as well as scholars and civil society groups to identify, debate, legislate and implement breakthrough policies to enable the transition to a fair and sustainable future.

Jakob von Uexkull, Founder and Chairman of the World Future Council: "With the best laws and right policy incentives we can mobilise human inventiveness and entrepreneurship to safeguard a healthy planet for future generations. It has to be understood that the purpose of our Policy Action Plan is not to promote one specific solution but to identify interlinked reforms which rapidly enable us to change direction."

The 24 tipping-point policies are divided into four main areas of necessary policy reform, evocatively titled "Regenerating our Planet", "Making Money again our Servant", "Governance and Education" and "Protecting Our Shared Future". They include policies to speed up the global transition to renewable energy, policies regulating financial instruments, securing sustainable ecosystems, granting equal educational opportunities for women and outlawing nuclear weapons. Ahead of the Rio+20 Conference in Rio de Janeiro, the top policy recommendation concerns the election of a High Commissioner or Ombudsperson for Future Generations by the United Nations and national parliaments to institutionally integrate a long-term perspective in policy-making.

The full Global Policy Action Plan can be downloaded at www.worldfuturecouncil.org/plan.html

For its planned advocacy work on the tipping-point policies the World Future Council counts on its existing international network but is also looking for new allies. Jakob von Uexkull: "We are actively seeking partnerships to secure the implementation of the Global Policy Action Plan. We appeal to governments, inter-governmental and civil society organizations, academia, media and youth groups to work with us on saving our shared future and regenerating our world."

The launch of the Global Policy Action Plan coincides with the 40th Anniversary of the UN's World Environment Day on June 5, 2012.

Download the PDF.