Paris Call for action : Conférence for global ecological governance “citizens of the earth”.
Paris, 3 February 2007
We, citizens from all over the globe, policy-makers, representatives from international and non-governmental organisations, scientists, business leaders, are sending out a solemn call for massive international action to face the environmental crisis and to promote growth that respects the environment.
1. Today, we know that humans are destroying, at an alarming rate, resources and balances that have enabled them to evolve and are determining their future. We are coming to realise that the entire planet is at risk, that the well-being, health, safety, and very survival of humankind hang in the balance.
Today, the time has come for lucidity. We must realise that we have reached a point of no return, and have caused irreparable damage. We must admit to ourselves that we can no longer afford to be idle and that the risks and dangers are exacerbated with each passing day.
2. In Rio, Johannesburg, Montreal and Kyoto, the international community has moved forward on these issues. But we need to go further, be more effective, faster, more coherent and more ambitious.
3. That is why, aware of our responsibility to future generations and aware of the cost of inaction, we commit to putting our concern for the environment at the heart of our decisions and our choices, each in our own field. We commit to taking measures with a view to averting perils that threaten the very survival of humankind, especially that of climate change. For the most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forcefully shows how grave that last issue is.
4. We commit to advancing awareness at local, national and international levels. To promote environmental ethics, we are calling for the adoption of a Universal Declaration of Environmental Rights and Duties. This common charter will ensure that present and future generations have a new human right: the right to a sound and well-preserved environment.
5. We commit to making choices for a new kind of growth, environmentally- oriented growth, the choice of an economy that furthers sustainable development and poverty eradication. All peoples, from every continent of the world, must be able to have access to a standard of living to which they legitimately aspire. But we refuse to accept a model based on wasting our natural resources at a furious pace and generating ever increasing pollution in the world.
We commit to promoting development of technologies, more efficient organisational methods and behaviours concerning energy, water and natural resources and incorporate the environmental conservation costs into our economic systems.
6. Within our collective responsibility, the effort should be distributed fairly among the richest and poorest countries, the emerging and least developed countries. Technology and financial transfers must be broadened. We must craft and implement innovative financing mechanisms to help the poorest countries adapt.
7. All of us here today, Citizens of the Earth, we support the efforts of the nations who are taking action, in the spirit of a shared sovereignty, to strengthen international environmental governance. We call for the transformation of the United Nations Environment Programme into a fully-fledged international organisation that is genuinely universal.
Modelled on the World Health Organisation, the United Nations Environment Organisation will be a strong voice with global recognition. It will be the instrument used to assess environmental damage and understand how to repair that damage; an effective instrument to promote technologies and behaviours that respect ecosystems more effectively; a way to support the implementation of environmental decisions all over the planet.
8. We welcome Morocco's proposal to host the first meeting of the pioneer group of “Friends of the United Nations Environment Organisation”, which already gathers more than 40 countries.
9. We call on all countries to join this struggle.
It is the responsibility of each and every one of us.
The future of humanity is at stake.
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