Herman Wijffels over de Crisis

tijdens de WRR conferentie

van 8 Dec. 2008

Summary

1. Bad news:

– We have to change our way of life

2. Good news:

– We know what and how

3. We have no choice

– Major issues are global

1. His starting point

• World = interconnected and interdependent life support system

• It’s out of balance in many aspects

• Monetary system – only one manifestation of the crisis we are in

Other crises

• Climate change• Energy system• Water

and also• Food

• Also the availability of essential resources like– Forest– Fertil land– Fish stocks– Bio-diversity

• is declining !

• Influencing ultimately in a negative way – the quality of life– life itself of all people and living species on the planet

Claim not sustainable

• 6½ billion people• Our present way of life, of producing and

consuming • Creates a claim on the planet’s resources

that is not sustainable• We want and use more than is available in

a sustainable way • Our ecological footprint is exceeding the

sustaining / carrying capacity of the earth

Cultural crisis• We are consuming the future• Common background of the credit crisis and the

ecological (and the related social) crisis: in both cases we are– Living on credit– Borrowing from the future

• It is in fact: – a cultural crisis, – a crisis of our western way of life

• Will get worse with 7, 8 or 9 billion people on the planet

The real challenge

• We have to change nature and structure of our economies, the way we cater for our needs

• Challenge to develop a culture, a way of life, a way of producing and consuming, which is compatible in a sustainable way with the carrying capacity of the earth

• That’s the big challenge

2. The good news

• Quite achievable

• We have the knowledge and the related technologies to make that change.

• Challenge: to create – awareness– political will– capacity to execute what is needed

Not easy

• We directly counter vested interests in– Business– People’s life– National governements

• That’s going to be the battle especially in the Western world

3. Not much of a choice

• No choice

• Major issues of our time– are

• global• related to the very basis of life itself

– require • common global effort• a ‘global social contract’

A global social contract

• On our national level we did it

• We added this on Europe level, to express our desire to have a balanced society

• We have to bring it on global level

Subsidiarity

• Nation states have to accept: we need dialogue and cooperation on global level

• The subsidiarity principle could serve us at global level

• The principle is about delegating to the next higer level problems you can’t solve at lower level

Global institutions need reform

• IMF and World Bank need transformation

• mandated to act in the interest of the world as a whole, instead of dominated by major shareholder nations only

• Reflecting the change:

uni-polar multi-polar world power structure

• Cooperation is the only way out