We need to redesign our societies so that they become ecologically and energetically viable. The human community needs comprehensive structural reform so that our children and grandchildren can live in peace with one another and with the ecological systems that sustain human life and existence. Today’s looming climate, ecology, energy and nuclear threats are neither manageable by purely fiscal measures, nor isolatable into narrow specialty areas.

The kind of economic growth that the G20 treats as a panacea merely bolsters the same unsustainable economic system that is now threatening the wellbeing and even the survival of vast underprivileged populations, and is altering the planet’s climate and damaging its ecologies. While no attention whatsoever was given to the wealth, power, and consumption orientation that dominates the aspirations of the world’s influential governments, businesses, and populations.Ī focus on short-term global economic and financial issues is crisis management and not an acceptable response by the world’s political leaders to humanity’s intensifying problems. International trade disequilibria, discriminating exchange rate policies, and the threat of recurring financial crises occupied center stage, with scant attention to climate change, the global ecology, and the endemic poverty of nearly one half of the world’s peoples. The Summit’s Declaration reads like an emergency report of Ministers of Trade and Finance, rather than a report on the deliberations on the wellbeing of the world community by the heads of government of our twenty most powerful nations. This thinking was very evident in the G20’s Seoul Summit. Negotiators from leading economies build upon narrowly specialized agendas inherited from the past acting in the name of creating more economic growth to make narrowly defined economic coordination problems more negotiable. However, the international community is the prisoner of ‘ silo thinking’ in meetings such as those of the G20.

The ‘window of opportunity’ to begin such a large-scale transition may only remain open for a few years from now.

Current global systems of economics, governance, societal organization and ecological relationships between humanity and nature must be urgently re-designed based on the consciousness, values and principles which can provide peace and long-term sustainability for the human community. Systemic collapse cannot be either wished away or ignored. On-going efforts by the leaders of the industrialized states to re-adjust the collapsing systems of our unsustainable world are far from a sufficient response to the current crisis. The WS-20 Council intends to shift the attention of the global public and media from the increasingly intractable problems and deepening crises of our deteriorating world to the opportunities and vistas of a new world where seven billion and more human beings can live in peace, prosperity and harmony with each other and the Earth’s natural systems. The pursuit of narrow interests are accelerating systemic breakdown in our presently unsustainable world. It is to transcend short-term and self-serving economic and political interests in recognition of the fact that thinking and acting in exclusive reference to narrow national or multi-national agendas cannot solve the problems currently confronting humanity. The Council’s mission is to articulate the collective voice of humanity, drawing on the heritage of all peoples, cultures and religions. The mission of the Council is to give urgent attention to the new condition of the world emerging today and provide essential orientation so that an informed and determined movement toward a peaceful and sustainable planetary civilization could be brought into being. The Worldshift 20 Council is composed of twenty prominent global citizens from diverse cultures and religions worldwide. Here is the complete text of the WS-20 Declaration. Some of our favorite people make a planetary appeal for a world that works for everyone: Deepak Chopra, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Jose Arguelles, Jean Houston, Edgar Mitchell, Ervin Lazlo, etc.

Worldshift pdf