Workgroup on Humanity and the Biosphere

13 Proposal Papers

Sustainable Forest Management
The Proposal Paper "Forests of the World" was elaborated on the basis of many contributions to an electronic forum by participants, which took place in 2001, from February to October. As expected, due to the complexity of the theme, this Paper is full of contrasts. The proposals reflect several realities and visions - such as the United Nations conference in New York and a meeting of young (...)

Agriculture and Sustainable Development
This Proposal Paper describes the situation of agriculture in an economic globalization context and provides elements of proposals for sustainable agriculture and development. In spite of the commitments made in Rio in 1992, the challenges related to the environment and development (pressure on natural resources, reduction of poverty, and reorientation of forms of production and (...)

An Energy-efficiency Strategy for the Twenty-first Century
Energy efficiency is the moderate, economically and ecologically efficient, and socially sustainable use of energy. It depends on changing the ways in which we produce, travel, and consume, and in particular on the use of more adapted materials (better insulation for buildings). The workshop focuses its proposals on three central issues: A change of approach: energy is too often dealt with (...)

Civil society and GMOs: What Strategies Should be Applied Internationally?
Since the introduction into the market of GMOs in 1996, the polemic between opponents and partisans has been feeding the international debate, as much on the effects of GMOs in the nutritional domain as on those in the biotechnological and environmental ones. Whereas the first argue that this biotechnological revolution will make it possible to save humanity from malnutrition and certain (...)

Environmental Education
6 proposals for action by citizens Degradation of the biosphere is accelerating. The mission of environmental education can no longer be limited to raising consciousness; henceforth it must be expressed through socially responsible action. This is the framework in which six directions have been identified. These are to: seek to strengthen citizens’ sense of critical appraisal to ensure a (...)

Food Sovereignty and International Trade Negotiations
Negotiations on agricultural products within the WTO have led to deepening inequalities between the North and the South. This Proposal Paper thus suggests, without for all that refusing trade of food products, solutions that take into account sustainable forms of production in favor of small-scale farming in order to establish fair trading. The negotiations on agriculture within the World (...)

Food, Nutrition, and Public Policies
Starting from the finding that despite the different international initiatives, more than half of the world’s population is still affected by some form of malnutrition, this Proposal Paper places nutritional well-being at the center of the debate in terms of Human Rights. Today, more than half of the world’s population is affected by some form or another of malnutrition, disease, (...)

Industrial Ecology: Agenda for the Long-term Evolution of the Industrial System
Industrial ecology considers industrial activities as ecosystems in themselves, composed of flows of materials, energy and information. It uses knowledge on how ecosystems function, in order to formulate proposals to reorganize the industrial system, making it compatible with the biosphere and sustainable in the long term. Industrial ecology therefore aims at solving the question, "How can (...)

People’s Right to Feed Themselves and Achieve Food Sovereignty
Completed August 28, 2001, this document summarizes the proposals worked out by the APM networks in fields as various as nutrition, land reforms, international trade, sustainable agriculture, GMOs and land management. Half the world’s population suffers from some form of malnutrition, and the nutritional situation is growing worse for the poorest. The central question is no longer a (...)

Proposals on Food Security
The concept of "food security" can be approached in different ways, though which are more or less limited. This document takes a wide-ranging approach that takes into account the different aspects related to the supply of food and the capacity of access to it. It also deals with issues such as food quality, food related customs and culture and the sustainability of the food system. In (...)

Proposals Related to the Water Issue
If there is one field in which governance is necessary, even vital, it is that of water supply, for it is indeed in this field "that a far-reaching change in the management of our planet and the life therein is necessary." Why? Because water is Life and because, on this planet, water commands and regulates all fundamental phenomena and all essential interactions. Water is an unalienable (...)

Rejecting the Privatization of Life and Proposing Alternatives
This document proposes a critical focus on the different juridical models regarding the structure of the living world and tries to show the problems involved in the extension to living organisms of the law-on-patents model. The struggle for the recognition of the basic elements of life as not being part of the commercial domain, which is how they are understood and organized by the (...)

Save Our Soils to Sustain Our Societies (SOS2)
This document presents proposals likely to contribute to the emergence of behavior and practices leading to the protection of soils against different types of degradation and to the rehabilitation of degraded soils. Protecting soils from degradation and using them in a renewable way requires a real and profound transformation of humankind’s attitudes towards this resource. The Soil (...)

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