Climate protection and human rights - Who owns what is left

  • Wolfgang Sachs
Keywords: global resource and environmental conflicts, civil society, general human rights, subsistence needs come before aspirations to affluence

Abstract

The rise of the Euro-Atlantic civilization as a way of life that is historically based on exploiting fossil and biotic resources is not suitable as a global model for the 21st century, the resource and environmental conflicts of which are marked by the contrast of infinite demand for natural assets on the one hand and finite global environmental space on the other. Neither national power games nor economic competition but the implementation of human rights – as well as concern for the biosphere – should give the emerging global society its face. An environmental and resources policy of cosmopolitan design will therefore pursue a cutback in the consumption of resources by industrialized nations to ensure that in the global society subsistence needs will take precedence over aspirations to affluence.

Author Biography

Wolfgang Sachs

born in 1946, studied sociology and Catholic theology in Munich, Tübingen and Berkeley. In 1992, he published The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power by Zed Books, London, an anthology central to the critique of development, which has been translated into numerous languages. Since 1993 he has been working at the Wuppertal Institute for Environment, Climate, Energy, since 2009 as head of the Berlin office. From 1993 to 2001 he was chairman of the supervisory board of Greenpeace Germany, and from 1999-2001 lead author at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He was also commissioned by the Heinrich Böll Foundation to chair two international civil society expert panels, one for the preparation of a memorandum for the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002 (The Jo'burg Memo) and the other (also commissioned by Misereor) for a dialogue/report on multilateral trade rules for a globally sustainable agriculture (Slow Trade - Sound Farming, 2007). His research focuses on the environment, globalization, new models of prosperity. He was lead author of two studies of the Wuppertal Institute: Fair Future. Limited Resources and Global Justice; a report. and Sustainable Germany in a Globalised World. Sachs is a member of the Club of Rome, a lecturer at Schumacher College and honorary professor at the University of Kassel, as well as a member of Attac's scientific advisory board.

Published
2010-08-03
Issue
Vol. 16 No. 2 (2010): Issue 2/2010
Section
Artikel