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LBV’s Statement for Rio+20 and for the ECOSOC 2012 High-Level Segment
Da Redação
07/03/2012
Below are some extracts from the statement of the Legion of Good Will (LBV) sent to the United Nations in view of the Conference on Sustainable Development, Rio+20, and the 2012 High-Level Segment of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (UN/ECOSOC). The theme of the latter is: “Promoting productive capacity, employment, and decent work to eradicate poverty in the context of inclusive, sustainable, and equitable economic growth at all levels for achieving the Millennium Development Goals”.The recommendations are the fruit of the LBV’s experience of more than six decades and the result of the great efforts for mobilizing the civil society, academia, private initiative and government promoted by the Organization via the 9th Solidary Society Network Multi-stakeholder Forum — 6th Innovation Fair, which included a series of events held between March 13 and 28, 2012, in South American cities.
Green economy and Solidary Development
This document aims to highlight some of the recurring points that were debated. The first of them is the use of the “green economy” concept. There is great concern that its use may favor the economic and environmental pillars, to the detriment of the third pillar of the well-known concept of sustainable development: the social changes. pillar; since these three pillars should always be analyzed on an equal footing.
In this sense, the LBV supports the on-going construction of the Sustainable Development Objectives (SDOs)—taking place in parallel with the efforts to fulfill the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)—, which can become the great new development platform of the United Nations after 2015 (deadline for the MDGs). Such commitments would continue to have the reduction in social inequality as their central theme, but always combined with mitigating climate change and adapting to it and the prevention of disasters.
In order for this new agenda to be successful, the LBV suggests that we take a step further by including in the debates the concepts of “Solidary Development” and “Economy of Spiritual and Human Solidarity”, theses proposed by the Brazilian educator José de Paiva Netto. For decades, the two ideas have been the base of the socio-assistance and educational services rendered by the Organization. Under their auspices, the work of the LBV grew even during moments of economic crisis.
The prognosis of the author of the theses remains relevant until today as it can be observed in this extract of his article published: “In the case of the Economy, the indicators point to difficult years ahead. As I highlighted in the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper, in 1982, it is essential for us to consider economics as the most spiritual of the sciences, in the broadest sense of Ecumenical Brotherhood. Economics needs to discover the spirit of altruism.” Referring to excerpts from an interview he gave on the subject in 1981, he states that: “The human being, with his Eternal Spirit, is the center of Altruistic Economy, the generator of all progress. Without the human being there is neither work nor capital. (...) At a time when production expectations are constantly exceeded because of advances in technology, hunger really is a scandal! I am not referring only to physical hunger but also hunger for knowledge, i.e. spiritualized Education, without which no people are strong. Anachronistically, on the one hand the world has never known such abundance, yet on the other it has never known such penury. The Economy lacks Solidarity.”
The fact that the LBV gives central importance to the human beings and their full development allows us to identify them as the main focus of all the efforts aiming at the balance between the three pillars of sustainable development. In this sense, Education has a fundamental role to play in consolidating a new global awareness that prepares current and future generations for profound behavioral changes. Therefore, this educational proposal must be based on universal values that will increasingly serve as the foundation and inducers of new development models. (…)
Education for Planetary Citizenship
Many reports from the United Nations recognize the importance of the spiritual dimension in human lives, but this perception is not always accompanied in the same proportion by practical measures. The LBV is optimistically viewing the emergence of initiatives like the GNH (Gross National Happiness) index of development, which adds new indicators to the conventional ones, capturing subjective aspects of human existence. They are important and determining factors of social structure as well as other aspects. Since its origin in the 1940s, the LBV has been applying ecumenical (universal) spiritual principles not only in its discourse but also in its daily practices.
Poverty is a multidimensional phenomenon in which the absence of a minimum income level is its most apparent aspect. Access to quality public services, such as sanitation, health, energy, and particularly education, is a determining factor for maintaining quality of life, even given the economic swings of countries (…).
In this way, the values of Ecumenical Spirituality applied to Education are not superfluous, but an effective strategy of social and environmental investment, which promotes Solidary Development from the individual sphere to the planetary sphere. The LBV is willing to share the principles of its teaching method with countries and organizations in the UN System, just as it has done in those countries where it operates on an autonomous basis.
Recommendations
In addition to this necessary shift of paradigms, the Organization adds the following recommendations highlighted from the reports of the participating countries of the 9th Solidary Society Network Multi-stakeholder Forum — 6th Innovation Fair developed in collaboration with the participants:
- Value water resources through the rationalization of fishing and the expansion of aquafarming. This activity has a strategic importance for inclusive sustainable development; it creates jobs and produces highly nutritional proteins. It therefore helps eliminate hunger and poverty, leads to food and nutritional security, and avoids deforestation and environmental degradation.
- Invest in research on the energy potential of algae, which can be used as an important raw material for the production of bioenergy.
- Strengthen UN’s water resources management system.
- Give voice to traditional populations and prioritize their involvement in regional development processes, from the planning to the implementation phases, by valuing their history and consolidated ancestral cultures, with the purpose of making the resulting increase in food production compatible with the preservation of traditional sustainable forms of use.
- Intervene strongly in the structure of energy production and consumption, by redefining a strictly market logic as the determining factor of our needs and adopting ways that have less impact and are more efficient.
- Encourage rural workers to stay in the countryside by fomenting regional tourism with the use of local labor force and by providing people with training that gives them appropriate techniques for managing the soil in order to improve its productivity.
- Create social protection networks, especially for young people, with a focus on the problems of those who neither study nor work. The development of a network of tutors, extension of the credit and microcredit system and the strengthening of secondary schools and social organizations are just some of the measures to be analyzed and implemented.
- Boost the impact of organized civil society initiatives, enabling them to carry out an assessment of social and environmental impact and to become self-sustainable, considering that there is a reduction in sources of funding for them because of the crisis in developed countries.
- Foster activities for generating income through the reuse of solid waste and other actions of an environmental nature.
- Value the profession of pickers of recyclable materials and its economic, social, and environmental importance. Support the formation of waste picker cooperatives and their articulation in a solid waste selective collection (compulsory) and recycling chain. Strengthen the awareness of the population as to the adequate separation of garbage.
- Strengthen food and nutritional security policies by encouraging family farming through the production of organic food and the use of community vegetable gardens, as well as strengthening the formation of “Food Banks” and community kitchens, like the on-going experiments in Brazil. Make the population aware of food wastage and how to take full advantage of food.
- Guarantee asocial and environmental protection floor for people living in environmental conservation units and sustainable development settlements.
- Create policies for supporting community associations and nonprofit entities that act as facilitating agents for social inclusion policies.
Conclusion
The LBV thanks all those who collaborated towards the success of the 9th Solidary Society Network Multistakeholder Forum — 6th Innovation Fair and is entirely willing to share any additional material. In finalizing, it calls on everyone to adopt a sense of collective responsibility that is capable of guaranteeing the present and future of Humanity, as expressed in the words of the president of the LBV: “Managing one’s own home, entities, companies, and nations is keeping ahead of the game. In other words, it is trying to anticipate happenings by adopting a decisive, effective, and preventive attitude and, given the risks that arise regardless of place or time, thereby avoiding difficulties or even correcting the course of things.”