Earth Values Caucus Position Paper

Eleanor Rae

Encouraging news! During the past several months, the Earth Values Caucus at the United Nations has been working to update our paper “Earth’s Code of Conduct.” Recently, we were notified that our proposed workshop, for which this paper is the basis, has been accepted for the September 2007 NGO/Department of Public Information Conference, the UN’s biggest event for NGO’s. Following is the beginning of our revised “Code”.

 Earth’s Values

In 2005, the United Nations released a document that had been prepared by 1,360 international scientists working over a four year period. This document, called the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), contained the sobering fact that, of the 24 major ecosystems that support life on Earth—ecosystems that provide such essentials as fresh water and climate regulation—15 are being pushed beyond their sustainable limits or are already degraded. In summary, they acknowledged that: “Human activity is putting such a strain on the natural functions of Earth that the ability of the planet’s ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted.”

 Much of this information has been emerging during the past few decades, and yet the human community seems unable to respond appropriately. While the United Nations often attributes this lack of response to lack of “political will,” we at the Earth Values Caucus would like to suggest a deeper underlying cause—we suggest that we are facing a values crisis. Further, we would like to suggest that there is one place—beyond government and/or any other values system—where we can turn if we truly want to address the crisis. And that is Earth itself.

 Earth, over its billions of years of existence, has developed its own set of values that can serve as a learning instrument for those who are willing to listen. The Earth Values Caucus invites you to first consider where we are today and then to look at where we need to go in terms of principles, vision and the Earth’s values if we are to move to a viable future. We do not consider our analysis to be closed and comprehensive, but rather invite you to begin with it as we move into this critical time in Earth’s history.

  Where We Are Today

The Earth Values Caucus has explored and identified some basic—and destructive—assumptions that seem to be operative and increasingly problematic in our global culture. They include the following:

·          Human beings are a privileged species separate from all others in the natural world.

·          Humans are superior beings and in control of Earth’s processes.

·          Earth is merely a collection of “resources” meant for human use (and abuse).

·          Other components of Earth have no intrinsic value and are not essential for the well-being                   of the planet.

·          The variety, exquisite design and interplay of Earth’s species make no essential contribution that cannot be altered or improved by human ingenuity and technology.

These assumptions—and no doubt others—operate at a subconscious level and, for the most part, activities based on them do not raise any ethical questions for us. In fact, because they are working assumptions, most people do not even “see” them or question them.

 (To be continued).

First World Vision Summit-Berlin, June 4/5 2007

Susanne Schaup

Strategically scheduled only two days ahead of the G8 Summit (of the 8 leading industrial nations), which was   held near Rostock, Germany, a smaller, but highly significant event took place in Berlin. Sponsored by a number of progressive German networks and business companies, the “First World Vision Summit” drew a crowd of about 500, among them many young persons, economists, business executives, philosophers, journalists, academics and media people. Except for the short, but supportive appearance of the German Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development (a woman, incidentally), this was not a meeting of politicians, but of citizens with a vision, people who decided to take the future of the world into their own hands.

“Globalization” as such, they intoned, is not the bogy. However, it must not be left, as it is now, to jungle capitalism and an economic system which impoverishes growing numbers of people in developing countries. As the German Chancellor Angela Merkel publicly stated, and as indeed we all know, the world does not lack insights or ideas. We know what measures should be taken to solve global problems. It is the political will to implement these measures that is lacking because the prevailing economic system is recklessly profit-oriented. This is why atmospheric pollution is dramatically on the increase despite the Kyoto Protocol, under which more than 160 nations committed to reducing their emissions of certain greenhouse gases by 2012. It is also why unfair terms of trade drive poorer economies even further into debt and poverty; why millions of refugees are forced into exile by famine and violence; and why so many children die of starvation every day in Africa.

The world needs a Global Marshall Plan, most notably for Africa. Many have thought of such a plan, among others,    Al Gore. In Germany it is Professor of Economics Franz Josef Radermacher who has carried this mission across Germany and beyond through publications and tireless appearances in the media.

No country can do it alone, however. The world community needs to forge instruments to implement the necessary reforms on a global level. International standards need to be set to reduce air pollution. As our own economy is fuelled by energy, then energy becomes a critical factor in the strategy for change. And today, technology has advanced to such a degree that energy from renewable, non-polluting sources—sun, air, water, bio mass—is marketable and even profitable.

If there is a person who has proven single-handedly that the world can be changed, it is Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Laureate for Peace of 2006. His speech was the highlight of the Berlin Summit. Yunus, Professor of Economics from Bangladesh, is a modest, engagingly natural man of compelling sincerity. He told the simple story of how he came to give loans out of his own pocket to the poorest during a famine in his country. He invested a total of $27, and with this small amount saved 42 families from starvation. He did it because banks always refuse to give credit without security, which the poorest obviously don’t have. Yunus defied this system and put his trust in people, in their inherent strength and will to survive. His experiment proved him right. His world-famous Grameen Bank has led millions of people in Bangladesh out of poverty and has been instituted with equal success in other countries. Today, Grameen is a whole network of development—financing self-employment and education, leading to social reform and to the empowerment of women.

This last is perhaps his greatest achievement. In a country where women are traditionally suppressed and dependent on male authority, he found that women, when given a chance, made the most effective use of mini credits and handled money more responsibly than men. Today, 97% of all mini credits in Bangladesh are given to women. As a result, the self-esteem and sense of empowerment of women in this male-dominated Muslim society has been given a tremendous boost. The audience thanked Muhammad Yunus with a standing ovation.

The Rostock Summit, as most summits in the past, may  have been disappointing, as political leaders still seem unable to transcend their nationalist interests. But the Berlin gathering offered a broader vision in the hope that sustainable development is possible with good husbandry and more economic justice worldwide.

The Center for Women, the Earth, the Divine is committed to these goals, with an emphasis on the empowerment of women and the sacredness of the Earth. It is gratifying to know that more and more world citizens are sharing this vision. We are definitely on the right track.

An additional outcome of the Berlin Summit was an appeal to sign the call for a Parliamentary Assembly of the United Nations with consultative status, as a preliminary step toward a World Parliament. I am proud to report that C:WED is among its signatories.

Associates of C:WED:

Eleanor Rae, Ph.D., founder

Anne Andersson, editor

Giles E. Rae, publisher

Representatives at the United Nations:

       New York: Rosalyn Dischiavo

                          Lina Gupta, Ph.D.

                          Alayne O’Reilly, Ph.D.

       Vienna: Susanne Schaup, Ph.D.

Mission Statement

     The Center for Women, the Earth, the Divine is dedicated to exploring the parallels that exist between the imaging and treatment of women and of the Earth, and how our images of the Divine are related to these parallels.

     We began by exploring these relationships within the context of our own tradition— the Christian. While we continue our exploration in this tradition, we have also engaged people of other traditions such as the Buddhist, Goddess, Hindu, Indigenous, Jewish and Muslim. Our work is made available through talks, workshops, writings and retreats. The immediate purpose of the Center is educational, while the ultimate goal is the healing of the Creation.

The founder of C:WED is Eleanor Rae, Ph.D., author of Women, the Earth, the Divine, President Emerita of the Network Alliance of Congregations Caring for Earth and founder of the Earth Values Caucus at the United  Nations.          

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Meditation

 Cantonese Woman

 ——————————
You sit down on a hill top or anywhere high enough for you
to see nothing, but the sky, in front of your eyes.
With your mind you make everything empty.
There’s nothing there, you say.
And you see it like that—nothing
emptiness.
Then you say, AH
but there IS something.
Look, there’s the sea,
and the MOON has risen—
full, round, white.
And you see it like that—
Sea, silver in the moon light,
with little white-topped waves. And in the
Blue Black sky above
hangs a great moon Bright,
but not dazzling,
a soft brightness you might say.
You stare at the moon a long,
long time, feeling calm, happy.
then the moon gets smaller,
but brighter and brighter and brighter till you see it as a
pearl, or a seed, but so bright
you can only just bear to look at it. The Pearl
starts to grow. And before you know what’s happened its

KUAN YIN herself, standing up against the sky
all dressed in gleaming white
and with her feet resting on a lotus
that floats in the waves.
You see her
once you know how to do it
as clearly as I see you.
Her Robes
are shining
and there’s a halo
round her head.
She smiles at you
such a lovely smile. She’s so glad
to see you that tears of happiness sparkle
in her eyes.
If you keep your mind calm,
by just whispering her name
and not trying too hard
she will stay a long
long time.
When she does go
it’s by getting smaller.
She doesn’t go back to being a pearl
But just gets so small
That at last you can’t see her. Then you notice
that the sky and sea
have vanished too.
Just Space is left.
Lovely, Lovely, Space, going on forever.
That Space stays long
if you can do without you. Not you and space, you see
Just Space.
No you.
 

C:WED and the Parliament of the World’s Religions –Eleanor Rae

Recently The Center for Women, the Earth, the Divine (C:WED)  received a call from the Parliament of the World’s Religions. The caller asked for a submission on the work of C:WED to be included in a publication on organizations engaged in interreligious activities. Writing the submission caused me to reflect: while interreligious dialogue does have its value, might it not be better if we devoted more time to a task we can all share—caring for Earth—and let our understanding of one another grow out of our common agenda?

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi states it well in his book The Evolving Self:

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