Now at last “We, the peoples”

The time has come for citizens to get involved without delay in both local and global governance in order to be able to tackle the irreversible processes that have today become a serious threat for the standards of living of the planet Earth.

It’s been years since the UNESCO, the Club of Rome, the United States National Academy of Sciences and the UN panel of scientists first requested and then urged to monitor the prejudicial effects on environment -soil, sea and air- produced by “greenhouse” gasses emissions and resulting from the burning of fossil fuels, especially those used for industrial, transport and cooling activities.

To ensure that these urgent calls would not be ignored and that the appropriate measures would be implemented, it was essential for democratic multilateralism to swiftly and efficiently operate and, therefore, to provide United Nations with all personnel, defence and financial resources that were needed to allow an efficient and urgent response.

Neoliberalism not only ignored the many requests from the scientific and academic communities, it also put the common fate of mankind in the hands of just a few countries (G6, G7, G8, G20 plutocratic groups), who submissively obeyed their master’s voice and took decisions based on short term financial interests, without taking into account the obvious deterioration signs such as the climate change and the melting of polar ice caps.

In the autumn of year 2015, and owing largely to President Obama, Paris Agreements on Climate Change were signed and UN approved the 2030 Agenda, which contained the Sustainable Development Goals for “Transforming our World”.

The period for hope did not last very long: President Donald Trump sidelined United Nations, as his predecessors of the Republican Party had done in the past, and he then proclaimed that the Sustainable Development Goals and the objectives regarding climate change would not be implemented.

And silence prevailed. Silence from the European Union which was still seen by many countries as the main reference with regards to universal values that should prevail.

Silence also from big global consortia, the most faithful guardians of communication and information media. 

And silence -the most baffling silence- from the academic, scientific, artistic and literary communities... that is, from intellectuals.

All were absent-minded, all looked elsewhere, instead of caring about future generations just behind us, instead of letting Mr. Trump know that no outrage would be committed against humanity without being punished. 

The American President asked for more money for defence, and all countries remained silent and submissive, and immediately said they would increase their investment in military expenditure and weapons.   Apparently more than 4 billion dollars per day were not enough to ensure territorial defence... although thousands of people were dying every day from hunger and extreme poverty, most of them boys and girls ranging from one to five years old.

The time has now come to take notice of what is happening and raise our voice, now that for the first time in history we, the peoples, can freely express ourselves.

We should bear in mind Stephane Hessel’s words urging us to become angry and commit ourselves, and José Luis Sampedro’s advise to young people when he told them they should “change direction and embark on a new ship”.

It is today urgent to establish a new concept of security, so that these big amounts of money are no longer invested exclusively in armies and weapons for territorial defence, but also in efficient prevention and response systems allowing us, for example, to deal with fires that have -in America itself- reduced to ashes thousands of acres without any essential step being taken during one whole year to protect the forests and with no available ground and air technology  for an efficient  response.  The same applies to other natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes, tsunamis... In a word, we have prepared ourselves and have gathered thousands of soldiers in barracks in order for them to tackle military conflicts, but not to deal with natural disasters, in order for them to be ready to protect the property of land, but not the well-being of people living there.

Once again, if the opportunity was given to United Nations to act as it should, all human beings, equal in dignity, would have access to the five social priorities set by UN System: food, drinking water, high quality health services, environmental protection and education.

I must insist: a new concept of security is needed to be able to tackle global threats. Faced with problems that have an impact on humanity as a whole, all citizens of the world should react.  We must indeed admit that, in terms of quantity, most countries are irrelevant. Compared to India or China, each with more than 1 billion inhabitants, most nations of the world have no weight, if an objective analysis is made. But they might be extremely influential in terms of quality, if they show with their actions, their projects, their vision of the future, etc. that they have the ability to correct current worldwide trends and to enter the new era full of hope.

The time has come to hear the voice of “We, the peoples”, especially the voice of women and young people who have taken on today responsibilities they were not allowed to assume up to now.

Because I’m deeply concerned about the silence of some of our leaders and the statements of others (such as those made by the heads of IT corporations), I’ve come to believe that the time has come to promote without any further delay big worldwide demonstrations from the “peoples”, as citizens were referred to so prematurely and so wisely in the Charter of the United Nations in 1945, citizens who are today our only hope.