If we want to understand where we are going as a global civilisation and get out of the societal crises rooted in the overexploitation of Earth’s resources and currently exacerbated by the effects of the pandemic, it is not enough to define the targets of sustainability and push towards them. Understanding the extent of C02 emissions reductions just as well as other civilisational targets, captured by the SDG’s concept, encourage us to reach out to ambitions like the level of literacy or equality and life expectancy we would like to achieve, apart from the environmental sustainability targets.
The SDG’s definitely pinpoint a holistic societal transformation. Therefore, a shared understanding of a more integral concept could get more people involved and motivated to active themselves to achieve a more sustainable and inclusive society. Imagining where we are headed can help us all to distinguish the right moves from the wrong ones on our pathway into the future. The Ecocivilisation, a concept initiated by Violeta Bulc that represents a desired destination of such transformative endavour, still needs to be fully imagined, described and understood.
First, we must all be able to engage in innovative solutions that contribute to transformations at multiple levels, namely systemic, business and cultural. It is important to be able to clearly understand our common goals and to imagine our common destination. This way we can increase the proactive engagement of citizens as voters and taxpayers, as professionals, experts, businesspeople or as family members, students or mentors of all sorts. A broad and active participation is needed in order for Ecocivilisation to thrive.
The exercise aims at a common understanding of the future, explaining the paths to go and metamorphoses we are going through on our voyage. In autumn 2020 we continue with three areas health; communities; and individuum. Together, with our interlocutors and expert panellists we will visualise and clarify several relevant dimensions of this phenomenon.
Violeta Bulc, former EU Commissioner for Transport, entrepreneur, manager, advisor, and lecturer co-creates the CBA Talks on Ecocivilisation as the author of a comprehensive interpretation of this concept. Violeta contributes an introduction and her reflections during the debates. She provides a wrap up speech of the autumn part of the Ecocivilisation cycle.
