It is said that every system is perfectly designed to achieve the desired results.
If so, then our current system seems perfectly designed to push us beyond planetary boundaries in a variety of Earth systems, creating widespread and worsening inequality in the process.
This poses a massive threat to the well-being of present and future generations.
Over the past few weeks I have been exploring the fundamental values that guide many of our systems, institutions and decisions.
When I look at the state of the world today, and especially our relationship with nature and with each other, it is clear that we are driven by core values that are no longer relevant for the 21st century.
And I have proposed a set of core values that are consistent with ensuring a healthy, equitable and sustainable future for all, while protecting and restoring our planet’s vital systems.
This is all well and good, but how can we bring about these massive and rapid value shifts? How can we, as the late Will Steffen put it, reach social tipping points before we reach ecological ones?
One thing is for sure, there is no app for that! But I have a few thoughts on the matter.
In the early 1980s, I devoted much of my time to fighting the tobacco industry. The social turning point for smoking came when smoking was seen as a violation of non-smokers’ rights. Therefore, using rights-based arguments could be powerful.
There have been calls for the right to a healthy environment to be recognized. Indeed, David Boyd of British Columbia has advocated for this as the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment at the United Nations, and the General Assembly recognized in 2022 that a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is a human right.
And then there are the rights of future generations to a healthy environment. This right has been successfully defended in several court cases around the world, where it has been about the failure of governments to slow or stop greenhouse gas emissions. And the Welsh Assembly passed a Wellbeing of Future Generations Act and appointed a Commissioner to oversee it.
In addition, we must consider the right of nature and other species to exist. Many countries around the world have recognised land and water systems as persons (for example, the Whanganui River and Te Urewera in Aotearoa New Zealand). If corporations can be considered persons, why not the much more obviously living ecosystems?
This entails the need to expand the strong set of values of social justice to include justice between generations, between communities and between species.
The 1987 Brundtland Report on Sustainable Development stated that we should “meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
But when we deplete a resource, poison an ecosystem, or permanently alter vital Earth systems, we act unjustly toward other people and places, future generations, and other species.
But a change in fundamental values cannot be decreed from above – it must come from the grassroots. Earth For All, about which I wrote a series of columns between October 2022 and September 2023, expressed clearly what is needed: “New conversations in every home, every school, every university, every city, every parliament. What is the future we want? How can our operating system get us there?”
And I would like to add what is important to us and what our values should be.
Since the basis of this series of columns on values is my sermon at the First Unitarian Church, I would like to end by specifically addressing the role of faith communities.
Ultimately, faith communities are all about values, our relationship to “creation,” however that is understood, and community—the very things I’ve been writing about.
They can play an important role in initiating and guiding research and discussions on new ethical frameworks for society that reflect the constellation of values we need – human solidarity, quality of life and ecological responsibility, as expressed by the Great Transition Initiative.
Such work is crucial if we are to achieve the necessary change in societal values at local and global levels.
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Dr. Trevor Hancock is Professor Emeritus and Senior Scholar at the School of Public Health and Social Policy at the University of Victoria.
