Open Access and Closed Minds:Balancing Intellectual Property and Public Interest in the Digital Age
Communicating for social change is an incremental process. Despite television being the world's most pervasive medium, broadcasts alone cannot accomplish this. Our experience in developing Asia shows that narrowcast outreach in classrooms and other small groups is often more effective. However, clearing non-broadcast rights is a major struggle.
Dialogue Among Civilizations: Contexts and Perspectives
When the existing paradigm is one of war, domination and violence, the world needs to hear the voice of peace, dialogue and compromise. The widespread acceptance of the proposal to designate 2001 as the Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations by the United Nations General Assembly was of high importance.
Bringing Human Passion into Sustainability Education and Bridging Cultures
In reality, the creative and destructive sides of human passion are deeply integral to what it means to be human, but as an educator I increasingly wonder how can we differentiate between the two sides?
Human Rights as a Way of Life
The awareness that all human rights concerns and the effective move towards the realization of human rights—be it political, civil, economic, social or cultural—are indivisible, interconnected and interrelated, with a gender perspective, endows communities with a holistic insight of how we are all different from one another yet yearn to belong in community in dignity with others.
Bringing Star Power to Earth
The international community is threatened by a global energy crisis, climate, and ecosystem changes due to global warming, as well as water and food contamination. The whole world faces tremendous challenges in closing the gap between projected energy demand and the supply of sustainable, carbon-free, affordable energy. Today, about 80 per cent of the world's total primary energy demand is met by fossil fuel which emits significant quantities of carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) into the atmosphere.
Vision Needs a Seat at the Negotiating Table
In the context of the United Nations work on sustainable development, including the June 2012 Rio+20 Conference, there has been a great deal of consultation with stakeholders but until now, not at the level of a true global conversation. In addition, design renderings -- in this case visualizations of sustainable societies -- have not been a significant element in negotiations.
Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters
The Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was completed in 2007 stated that: Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level.
Hunger: A National Security Threat
Although the term food security was coined only 16 years ago, humanity has been striving against famine and hunger since ancient times. Agreement at the 1996 World Food Summit, based on the concept that food security exists when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life, gave a new vision to efforts against hunger and malnutrition.
Health and Food Security: Benefits from Climate Change Mitigation
Societies must find a way to stop the rapid growth in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to avoid a disastrous future for our planet. As the greatest contributor to global warming, CO2 is the natural focus of current climate negotiations. Unfortunately, one of the very properties that makes CO2 so problematic—the long time it stays in the atmosphere—creates high barriers to efforts aimed at reducing its emissions.
The Link Between Disarmament and Sustainable Development
Twenty years after the 1992 landmark Earth Summit, the world is getting prepared for another conference of the same magnitude, hopefully with increased positive results. Building on commitments adopted by the international community over the last two decades, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development -- Rio+20 --should pave the way for the launch of a reinvigorated sustainable development agenda -- one that takes into account the complex nature of the root causes of poverty which lie at the core of the devastating effects of environmental degradation, as well as the cross-cutting nature of this issue that it is embedded in almost every economic and social activity of mankind.
Feeding the World Sustainably
Approximately 925 million people are suffering from hunger. We cannot call development sustainable if one out of every seven persons is left behind. At the same time there is hunger, which is senseless in a world that already produces enough food to feed everyone. Hundreds of millions more suffer from obesity and related medical problems.
Ombudspersons for Future Generations: Bringing Intergenerational Justice into the Heart of Policymaking
As the philosopher Edmund Burke wrote: [Society is] a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born. Society is not, as it has become, a game of political horse-trading between the ruling party and the opposition which tries to court capricious swing voters.