About This Issue

This is an issue about summits. Within weeks, our leaders will gather at Johannesburg, South Africa, for the World Summit on Sustainable Development to address an agenda "impossibly ambitious to some, disappointingly narrow to others", in Kofi Annan's phrase (page 4), to articulate "a message of shared responsibility", as President Tarja Halonen of Finland hopes (page 5), and, indeed, in Ambassador Lars-Göran Engfeldt's words (page 14), to "show a critical mass of concrete deliverables".

And, as Huey Johnson stresses (page 8), if "only the United Nations can provide a vision of sustainable development as an alternative to war", that peace itself "will never really come without learning how to live more in harmony with the natural world", to quote Jane Goodall (page 25). The vision itself could be one, as Yolanda Kakabadse argues (page 24), "where natural systems are intimately linked to the systems created by people to allow life to continue to flourish in many forms" or, to put it in Ernst von Weizsaecker's phrase (page 12), where there is "a true harmonization of environmental and developmental goals". Whatever the definition, the "relationship between the human race and the earth's diverse resources" is complex, as Lydia Makhubu reminds us (page 28), even as the dramatic scientific achievements of the "post-genomic era", discussed by Arturo Falaschi (page 29), offer real possibilities to address the most visible problems arising from an inequitous relationship - whether in health, nutrition or poverty.

Native American wisdom, shared at the United Nations two years ago by a member of the Zuni Pueblo, holds that by triggering the pressure points of certain places at certain times, on the landscape or elsewhere in the universe, humans can, knowingly or unknowingly, control the creation of beings, fertility or even climate. This is wisdom from an indigenous people, whom Edmund Hillary called "the original environmentalists", who have established "a close liaison with nature in all its forms", with their survival made easier by "a limited population, a simple life and frequently an abundance of natural food". Each of those essential premises is now challenged, as our centre section, "A Planet, A People", attests (page 35).

And even mountains, which at one time could figuratively, as much as literally, be said to rise above the world's preoccupations and concerns, are no less vulnerable (page 48). This is the International Year of Mountains; and it was fifty years ago that the plans to scale Mount Everest were readied, culminating in the ascent by Edmund Hillary and Tensing Norgay on 29 May 1953, and the anchoring of the United Nations flag upon the pinnacle of the highest peak. And so, one summit is remembered even as another is looked forward to.

There is a coherence to the memory and the anticipation. As Eric Shipton, whom we remember in this issue (page 50), wrote in 1938: "The ascent of Everest, like any other human endeavour, is only to be judged by the spirit in which it is attempted. Let us climb peaks, not because others have failed, … nor in patriotic fervour for the honour of the nation, nor for cheap publicity. Let us not attack them with an army, announcing on the wireless to a sensation-loving world the news of our … advance."

And so, let there be no armies at Johannesburg; just individuals prepared to make the attempt and make a difference. And, in that spirit, read on! And write …