This is perhaps the biggest challenge of the 21st century: How to achieve global development and equity without further overstepping the ecological limits of the Earth?
The planet’s limited resources need to be managed in a manner that still provides an opportunity for future generations to create their own ways of life in a sustainable manner. Social justice and ecological sustainability are closely linked.
Today, many ecological limits of the Earth already have been overstepped. Instead of trying to provide alternative concepts and solutions to the world’s resource and development needs, the world continues to extract resources (both fossil and renewable ones) at increasing ecological and social costs and risks.
The Heinrich Böll Foundation (HBF) and the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) want to develop better, alternative strategies for the sustainable use of the Earth’s resources.
HBF and CSE have invited young activists and academics from India and Afghanistan to deliberate freshly about an equitable global resource governance policy of the future. A Future Workshop on Resource Governance will take place from January 14-17, 2013, in New Delhi.
More information on the background of the workshop, and about new ideas for a sustainable use of natural resources can be found at www.boell.de/resource-equity, especially in the paper “To Have and Have Not: Resource Equity in a Finite World” (http://www.boell.de/ecology/resources/resource-governance-ecology-resource-equity-i-a-finite-world-14929.html).
The Workshop in Delhi in January 2013 will have a focus on land, water and resource extraction. Its aim is to facilitate an exchange between young people working on, or dealing with, resource issues and to sensitize them towards different approaches and perspectives outside of their own discipline or resource focus.
This workshop will be conducted in cooperation with HBF Kabul, Afghanistan, as an effort to promote regional cooperation in a time where a boom in natural resource extraction is about to start in Afghanistan.
Similar workshops held by other HBF offices worldwide will lead up to an Alternative Resource Summit in Berlin, Germany, planned for autumn 2013.
The workshop addresses young women and men from India and Afghanistan, up to the age of 35, including (graduate) students, young scientists, politically committed individuals and civil society activists with knowledge about different resources or different aspects of the resource topic.
The selection process for 15 participants from India has been completed. Ten participants from Afghanistan have already been selected by HBF Kabul.
Axel Harneit-Sievers
Country Director, HBF India
Aditya Batra
Program Director, South Asia, CSE, New Delhi