The Earth Charter – ARCHIVE ARTICLE.
December 10, 2008

10.12.2008 – This week the Australian government has been questioned over it’s decision not to publish it’s emission targets prior to the UN climate talks in Poland. Below is a transcript of a piece broadcast on Radio 2CBA back in April 2000 on the subject of the Earth Charter.

RADIO 2CBA FOCAL POINT COMMENTARY BROADCAST FRIDAY APRIL 28th,2000

April 22 was Earth Day. It has now been going for exactly 30 years. Soon there will be an Earth Charter to remind us of the importance of this planet’s environment.

Negotiations are continuing for the creation of an Earth Charter. I was involved in a 1999 session held in Canberra, the only session so far held in Australia for this massive international project.

The Earth Charter will be a statement of fundamental ethical principles and practical guidelines of enduring significance that are widely shared by all people. It will serve as a universal code of conduct to guide people and countries towards sustainable development.

The Earth Charter will the third pillar of global governance. When the United Nations was created in 1945, it was primarily concerned with world security in terms of how countries treat other countries. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was created in 1948, was concerned with how people treat other people. The proposed Earth Charter will deal with how people treat Earth.

The document has been a long time in the making. Efforts to develop a set of principles for ecological security began at the United Nations Stockholm Conference on the Environment in 1972 – the first major international conference on the environment. 16 years later the World Commission on Environment and Development called for a charter “to consolidate and extend relevant legal principles to guide State behaviour on the transition to sustainable development”.

The intention is to have a document done in time for the 30th anniversary of the Stockholm Conference, in 2002.

The Earth Charter is being drafted by a group of concerned citizens, including Maurice Strong (who was the executive officer of the two big UN conferences on the environment at Stockholm in 1973 and Rio in 1992), Mikhail Gorbachev the former Soviet leader, and Ruud Lubbers, the former prime minister of the Netherlands.

In due course, governments will be formally drawn into the process. It is important that the Australian Government supports the process when it is invited to do so.