This brief guide includes:
* an introduction, with guidelines for writing the proposals booklets
* A general presentation of all aspects of the collection
* Contact details of the publishers of the proposals booklets
* Charter for the organization of the international publishing and circulating the proposals booklets
* 2 examples: the draft proposals booklets of the Global Governance workshop and of the Soil Campaign

    the cartography
    the experience files
    the Web pages
    the electronic forums
  the proposals booklets
    the breakthroughs
    the bibliographical files

Guide n°5:

The proposals booklets

Brief practical guides for the Alliance

Guide n 5:
The proposals booklets

Objectives:
The Alliance is an international network for sharing knowledge and experiences and for collective reflection aimed in particular at inventing new forms of action capable of influencing the challenges facing the modern world. During 2000 and 2001, via its topical, socio-professional and geocultural workshops, it has launched the formulation of “proposals for the 21st century” which will result in the publication and diffusion of a collection of booklets intended to:
•	Highlight the major breakthroughs to be implemented in different areas decisive for our future (cf. Guide 6 on the "breakthroughs");
•	Identify the strategies for concrete change that should permit these breakthroughs to take place, with particular emphasis being given to building alliances between already existing networks and to the inclusion of new actors;
•	Strengthen these proposals through the description of significant experiences illustrating the dynamics of change already at work and the barriers they have come up against; 
•	and through intelligent publication and diffusion permit the appropriation and modification of these proposals as a function of different geographic, political and professional contexts.

What to do?

1/ Preparation and discussion of a first version of a booklet
In order to set up the conditions for a wide-ranging, rich and productive work process, an initial series of proposals must be presented as early as possible. This initial version of the booklet, available in two or three languages, groups at least three elements: 
•	the division of the subject dealt with into major directions of work (the beginning of the "breakthroughs"), 
•	elements of proposals drawn from the work already accumulated by the workshop or issued by networks and organizations working on the same subject,
•	a selection of experience files (cf. Guide 2 on the experience files).
The debate can be started on this basis in the form of "real" meetings (physical meetings, workshops, seminars) and virtual meetings, by setting up an electronic forum that should bring together the widest possible range of participants, even if only occasionally. This discussion should bring to the fore other innovative experiences, "test" the proposals in relation to different geographic, political, cultural and professional contexts, and create wherever possible the basis for agreement on the challenges and main strategic directions. 

2/ Formulation of the final version and translation
Following the discussion intended to hone the proposals, a final version (ready for publication) will be written, by the person or small group that co-ordinated the formulation of the booklet. A last round of validation by the participants in the discussion will be beneficial, for instance, at a final meeting held at international level.
The text must not exceed a total of fifty pages. The “breakthroughs" must be presented on two pages and provide a kind of summary of the rest of the booklet. In order to set the proposals in concrete situations, a certain number of elements need to be clarified: What is the context? What are the objectives of the proposals? Who are the actors? What experiences exist already? These elements are set out in the fairly flexible specifications that are useful as a guide (provided in the appendices).
The final version of the booklet will then be translated to make it available for publication in six languages: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese and Arabic. To identify a translator familiar with the subject dealt with, consultation will often be required either with the publishers of the booklets (cf. resource (2) below), or the translator file constituted by the Alliance support team (contact Juan Carlos Jorquera <juan@echo.org>).

3/ Publication and diffusion of the booklet
Once the text has been completed, it will be published jointly by a small network set up especially to publish the collection. This network comprises institutional and associative publishers based in Peru, Brazil, Zimbabwe, France, Lebanon, India and China (2). Since the first versions of the texts will have been sent to the publishers beforehand, the publishers will have had the time to make comments, if any, on the content itself to the booklet coordinators. During this phase of work directed toward diffusion, the task will be to produce the elements (prefaces, introductions, boxes, postscripts, appendices) intended to enhance the text and share them between the publishers, thereby allowing the latter to reach the publics for which the booklet is intended. Publication and diffusion of the booklets will begin at the end of 2001 and continue over the following years, permitting the enhancement of the proposals at different meetings (international meetings, etc.).

Who to ask for assistance:
•	Overall supervision and co-ordination of the booklet collection:
Olivier Petitjean <olivier@fph.fr>, Michel Sauquet <michel@fph.fr>, and the other booklet publishers (cf. resource (2) below)
•	Setting up electronic discussion forums on the booklets:
Marina Urquidi <marina@echo.org>, Pierre Johnson and Denis Pansu <web@echo.org>
•	Identification of translators: Juan Carlos Jorquera Lopez <juan@echo.org>
•	Experience files: Vladimir Ugarte <vladimir@fph.fr>

Available resources:

•	(1) General presentation of all the aspects of the collection 
•	(2) List of contacts of the collection publishers 
•	(3) Charter setting out the objectives and working methods of the publishing network

Please also consult
•	(4) Guide 2 on the experience files
•	(5) Guide 6 for the identification and formulation of the “breakthroughs” (forthcoming)
•	(6) The Alliance Website: <www.alliance21.org>

2 examples: as mentioned above, no standard model exists or can exist for the proposal booklets. The following are two preliminary versions of booklets on soils and global governance. Other examples are available on the Alliance Website.

Guidelines 

The following suggestions do not constitute the “model” for Proposal Booklets. They are merely indications aiming to highlight the aspects that should be taken into account, which we feel are essential to the relevance of these Booklets and also to their legibility. These Booklets are intended for extensive circulation, both to be discussed and rediscussed, and to be used as of means for action. 

The list of proposals 

This is to be a summarized one- to two-page presentation of the list of proposals. To focus the reader directly on the core of the subject, every proposal should have a title followed by a brief description in a few lines. 
Ideally, this presentation should both bring about a “list effect” (a determined number of proposals, chosen according to their emblematic nature and their capacity to underscore the needed breaks, in order to stimulate the discussion) and provide a preview of the overall issues of the topic under consideration. 
This list is all the more important that it is likely to be used as such, separately from the rest of the Booklet (in the printed press and on the Internet) and translated into other languages. It should clearly highlight the decisive and innovating aspects of the proposals (breakthroughs). 

Dimensions to include: context, perspectives, and actors 

To avoid having the proposals seem too general or abstract, their formulation should be completed by a description of the way in which they take shape or can take shape in society. This would require three elements to be included (and to be relatively consistent with each other): 

1. Context 
A description of the economic, social, cultural, etc. context that constitutes both the basis from which the proposals have been drawn and the situation that they intend to change. This implies identifying the scale at which the proposals are formulated: it could be an urban or rural district, a country, a continent, or the world. Nonetheless, the questions on the links between the local and the global and between the short and the long terms must be tackled at every level. 

2. Perspectives 
The proposals must be oriented by a prospective vision. It is important to describe this vision, at least briefly, so as to give the proposals their full meaning. This description should not just be a list of universal values, which could give too abstract a vision of the perspective opened by the proposals. The purpose is not only to express the “desirable” perspectives, but those that will become possible and “realistic” from the moment proposals are implemented. 

3. Actors 
In order to keep the proposals connected to concrete social realities and to prevent them from appearing as simple wishful thinking, it is indispensable to identify the actors that will implement or are liable to implement these proposals. We cannot be content, for instance, to put responsibility for the changes exclusively on the legislative options of governments. Regarding this, it would be useful to ask, for every proposal, what it means or could mean for young people, political and institutional leaders, scientists, business leaders, farmers, etc. 

Experiences and case reports

To give the previous points more strength and to fuel the Proposal Booklets with concrete elements, it will be essential to give a lot of room to experience reports, whether they are at the source of the formulation of certain proposals or they report on attempts to put these proposals into practice. 
Several Alliance Workshops have already accumulated a large number of experience reports in the course of their work. It will be important to exploit these experience reports when elaborating the Booklets. 

General layout of the File 

All these elements can be presented in the form of successive texts, but it is also possible to explain for each proposal its context, the perspectives it opens, etc. These elements could then be summarized in the form of a set of “proposal reports.”

The File should also include the history of the elaboration of the proposals and an invitation to participate in the drafting and discussion process of these proposals.

Memorandum on the formulation of
Booklets of Proposals for the 21st Century

Foreword

With the approach of the 2001 Event organized by the Alliance for a Responsible and United World, the moment has come to formulate together a number of proposals resulting from the short but fruitful experience of grouping and developing different initiatives by citizens in the framework of the geo-cultural, topical and collegial directions.
During the first meeting of the International Facilitation Team of the Alliance, held at Barcelona from September 12th to 16th 1999, we discussed at length the process of preparing and organizing this Event, which will take place from January 2000 to December 2001 and culminate with the simultaneous organization of several international meetings on each continent, all "interconnected" together.  These will take place around the solstice of 2001 (June 21st). Each of the continental meetings will bring together local and regional participants as well as those from other continents in order to mark their intercultural and international dimension. These assemblies will be followed by a world assembly in December 2001 which will group the results and consider the next step to be taken by the Alliance. All these meetings will express the allies' desire to build a new world civil awareness at the dawn of the next century and millennium.
Thus it is vital during the following months for the allies to start formulating and discussing the values, experiences and above all the concrete proposals that can be used as intercultural references for the coming decades. 
It is clear that the contribution made by the allies towards building a juster, more responsible and more united world for the next century cannot simply be reduced to highly formal texts. It can and must give an important place to symbolic and artistic expression, in order to put across that which words cannot express. However, it is important to give particular attention to the formulation of documents that set out the allies' visions and proposals in writing.
Putting these texts together will permit wide intercultural, inter-topical, and inter-collegial participation, and it could take three forms (the titles below are only temporary and are given only as indications):
- Charter for a Responsible, Plural and United World (document setting out common values),
- Proposals for the 21st century (documents setting out proposals),
- Perspectives of the Alliance 2002-2004 (document on the next step).
To advance surely and give ourselves the time required for discussion, to confront ideas and proposals, it is vital that we start immediately to write and layout preparatory texts so that they can be debated throughout the year 2000, in view to enhancing them progressively. At the end of 2000 we should have a range of texts that will have been formulated and approved collectively. 
The document on the Perspectives of the Alliance 2002-2004 could be formulated during the first six months of 2001 on the basis of the contributions of those who will be involved in the process of the Event. A first version will be presented during the meetings of June 2001 for enhancement and approval.
The works devoted to the intercultural formulation of an  Intercultural Charter of the Earth have already begun, at the initiative of many allies from several continents. This dynamic is also linked with other initiatives making progress in view to achieving convergence and formulating a basic document for humanity at the dawn of the next century
This memorandum therefore focuses on the formulation of Proposals for the 21st century.
The Proposal Booklets

The aim is to write a booklet of proposals using the topical workshops as basis, or any group formed by the allies to think about the challenges currently facing the world.

The following suggestions do not constitute the backdrop of a "standard proposal booklet". They merely underline the elements we feel essential to give substance to these booklets and above all make them clear: do not forget that these booklets are intended for a wider audience for discussion and re-discussion. 

1. The list of proposals
A presentation of one or two pages listing the proposals. To get the reader directly involved in the heart of the subject, each proposal should have a title followed by a short description of a few lines (no more than 10 if possible). 

2. The context
A text describing the economic, social, technical, and cultural context, etc., forming the basis on which the proposals have been formulated. The boundaries of this context raise a complex question. They entail identifying the scale on which the proposals are formulated: this scale could be a rural or urban district, a country, a continental region, or the world. However, the questions on the link between the local and global and between the short and long terms have to be tackled at every level. What is important is to take this complexity into consideration and not stop mid way. True, we could limit ourselves to making a proposal based on the context of a city in India, for instance, and not presume to widen the pertinence of the proposal to other cities in the world. The challenge will be to formulate the proposals whose scopes are as wide as possible, and viable just as much locally as world wide.

3. The perspectives
The proposals must be oriented by a vision of the near and distant future. This future must be evoked succinctly so as to give the proposals their full meaning. Efforts must be made not to make a simple list of universal values that may give too abstract a vision of the perspective opened up by the proposals. We have already mentioned several general principles in the Platform for a Responsible and United World. The purpose of this booklet is not only to list the "desirable" perspectives, but those that will become possible and realistic from the moment the proposals are implemented. Thus, the formulation of proposals, the context and the perspectives will constitute a coherent whole.

4. The players
In order not to detach the proposals from concrete social realities and prevent them from appearing simply as pious wishes, it is vital to identify the players that contribute or who are liable to contribute these proposals. Regarding this, it would be a good idea to ask oneself what each proposal means for the young, politicians and heads of institutions, scientists, businessmen, farmers, etc.

5. The experiences
To give the previous points more strength and fuel the booklet of proposals with experiences of real successes and failures, an additional booklet comprising several experience sheets could prove very useful. These sheets, placed at the end here, could very well be placed at the beginning insofar as the list of proposals of the first part are influenced by accumulated experiences.

All these elements could be presented in the form of successive texts, but it is also possible to explain for each proposal its context, the perspectives it opens, etc. These elements could then be summarized in the form of "proposal sheets", using the DPH format as model. 
To aid this collective exchange and the debate begun on the proposals, we will present all these booklets in the Alliance database. 

We think that a booklet composed in this way should be a tool that is both solid and pedagogical enough to provide the basis for debate. As underlined by us in the foreword, these booklets will be a precious aid in developing the social, participatory and innovative considerations for the 2001 Event.

To make solid progress, we ask you to take a break from your many activities and devote yourselves to writing this booklet. We know that you have already accumulated a wealth of material during the meetings, seminars and conferences that you have organized or participated in, as well as in texts, booklets, and publications that you have already produced. We ask you to make use of this wealth in these proposal booklets without further ado and write a first version in the next months. 
This period will give us the time required to discuss the subject with you and help you to formulate, translate and link up with the other booklets. In this way we will have all the booklets ready for publication before the end of 2000 in several languages and in several countries, make them available on-line on the allies' web sites, and diffuse them in still other forms.

Thank for in advance for playing the game within the lead-times given.
The important thing is that your proposals are put forward for debate, collective work and diffused as widely as possible. 

Please, send your booklets to:
Olivier Petitjean
Fondation Charles Léopold Mayer
38, rue Saint-Sabin
75011 Paris
Tel: 33+ (0) 1 43 14 75 75
Fax: 33+ (0) 1 43 14 75 99
E-mail: olivier@fph.fr
Warm and sincere regards.

Contact details of the publishers of the proposals booklets

Publication in Castillan in Peru :
CENCA (Lima) and Centro Bartolomé de las Casas (Cusco)

Paul MAQUET MAKEDONSKI
E-mail: makedonski@terra.com.pe
CENCA - INSTITUTO DE DESARROLLO URBANO
Coronel Zesarra
426 Jesus Maria
11 Lima - Peru
Tel: +51 12 66 00 12 / 266 00 14
Fax: +51 14 71 20 34

Yvonne BELAUNDE
E-mail: yb@cbccus.org.pe
Pampa de la Alianza 465
Cusco - Peru
Tel +51 84 236494 
     +51 84 232544
Fax +51 84 238255

Publication in Portuguese in Brazil :
Instituto Pólis (São Paulo) and Imagens Educação

Hamilton FARIA
E-mail: hfaria@polis.org.br
José Carlos VAZ
E-mail: vaz@polis.org.br
Instituto Pólis
Rua Conego Eugenio Leite, 433 - Pinheiros
CEP 05414-010 - São Paulo - SP - Brasil
Tel: + 55 11 3085-6877
Fax: +55 11 3063 1098

Isis de PALMA
E-mail: isis@educ-imagens.com.br
Imagens Educação
Rua Pedroso Alvarenga, 975 Cj. 11
04531-011 - São Paulo - SP - Brasil
Tel/Fax: +5511 3167 2575

Publication in English in Zimbabwe :
Non-violent Action for Social Change (Harare)

John STEWART
E-mail: afsc@harare.iafrica.com
PO Box CY369 Causeway Harare [work - NoVASC]
PO Box UA 446 Union Avenue Harare [personal]
Tel 00 263 4 722168
Fax   00 263 4 703122

Publication in French in France :
Editions Charles Léopold Mayer (Paris)

Julien BONI
E-mail: julien@fph.fr
Olivier PETITJEAN
E-mail: olivier@fph.fr
Michel SAUQUET
E-mail: michel@fph.fr
Fondation Charles Leopold Mayer
38, rue Saint Sabin
75011 Paris - France
Tel: +33 1 43 14 75 75
Fax: +33 1 43 14 75 99

Publication in Arabic in Lebanon :
Southern Lebanon Cultural Centre (Beirut)

Hassan KRAYEM
E-mail: krayem@aub.edu.lb
Ziad MAJED
E-mail: zmajed@hotmail.com
Tel: + 961 1 815 519
Fax: + 961 1 703 630

Publication in English in India :
Pipal Tree (Bangalore)

Pradeep SEBASTIAN
E-mail: pipaltree@vsnl.com
Pipal Tree
139/7 Domlur Layout,
Bangalore 560071 - India
Tel : +91 80 556 44 36
Fax : +91 80 555 10 86

Publication in Chinese in China :
Yanjing group (Beijing)

GE Oliver (Haibin)
E-mail: ollie@mail.263.net.cn
Room 521, Goldenland Bldg.
#32 Liangmahe Road, Chaoyang District
Beijing, P.R. China
Postal Code 100016
Fax: +86 10 64643417

WANG Yi
E-mails: wangyi@mail.rcees.ac.cn, wangyiz@public.bta.net.cn
Center for China Studies
Chinese Academy of Sciences and
Tsinghua University
18 Shuangqing Road, Beijing 100085
Tel:+86-10-6292 5511ext.3058
Fax:+86-10-6291 8178 or 6292 3563

Charter for the organization of the intercultural publishing and circulating the proposals booklets

Barcelona, November 16th, 2000

This text is the result of the joint work of the representatives of the following organizations :
•	Instituto Polis, Brazil (José Carlos Vaz and Hamilton Faria)
•	Imagens edução/Instituto Agora, Brazil (Isis de Palma)
•	CENCA, Peru (Paul Maquet Makedonski)
•	South Lebanon Cultural Council, Lebanon (Hassan Krayem)
•	NoVASC, Zimbabwe (John Stewart)
•	Pipal Tree, India (Pradeep Sebastian)
•	Yanjing group, China (Wang Yi and Ge Haibin)
•	Nova, Centre per a la Innovació Social (Martí Olivella, accompanied by Laia Botey and Joan Ramon Gordo)
•	Caravan (Philippe Guirlet)
•	Fondation and éditions Charles Léopold Mayer, Switzerland/France (Julien Boni, Isabelle Decout, Olivier Petitjean and Michel Sauquet, accompanied by Keith Hodson and Rim Natour, translators).

1. Objectives and target audiences of the proposals booklets

The proposals booklets constitute a series of documents comprising, for each of the domains that determine our future, proposals that are highly relevant for the implementation, in our societies, of the breaks and changes needed to build a more equitable and sustainable twenty-first century. Their objective is to stimulate a debate on these issues, both at local and global scale.

Their target audiences, at least in a first stage, shall be :
-	People engaged in action, with any kind of responsibility in changing public and social practices : in public administration, trade unions, NGOs, farming communities, enterprises, etc.
-	the “ opinion makers ” : media, scholars, etc.
-	people with future responsibilities and their trainers (students, teachers).

2. Commitments

The publishers present in Barcelona commit themselves, in 2001, to :

•	Take in charge in their own cultural area the task of publishing and diffusing, the series of “ proposal booklets ”, within the limits of financial possibilities and local relevance of the titles of the series.
•	Share their viewpoint with the other publishers concerning the relevance of the themes and proposals in relation with their culture. They will share also the questions of linguistic and stylistic adaptation ;
•	Contribute if possible to the redaction process through communicating to the authors any relevant document or resource person likely to enrich their work.

If a publisher thinks that a proposals booklet is impossible to publish and to circulate because of its irrelevance to the cultural reality of his audience, he may decide, after the discussion between the publishers, not to include it in his own series.

The Fondation Charles Léopold Mayer commits itself to :

•	Organize the dialogue and information exchange between the publishers, and between publishers and authors of the proposals booklets, in order to secure an intercultural enrichment of the whole series in its different versions ;

•	Provide financial support to the proposals booklets’ translation and publication work.

3. Procedures

3.1.	Respective responsibilities in the editorial process

The authors make the final decision as far as the body of the text of the proposals booklets is concerned.

The publishers make the final decision concerning the editing of the text (boxes, introduction, post-face, etc.), provided that such additions be agreed on between the publisher and the author. 

Authors and publishers are welcomed to exchange comments, reactions and recommendations on their respective work. The Fondation Charles Léopold Mayer will facilitate this exchange, e.g. by sending as soon as possible first drafts of the texts in progress (in the original language and in English), or by informing the authors of the publishers’ comments.

3.2.	Publishers’ collective work

As soon as the authors judge their text ready for being published, it is sent to all the publishers by the Fondation Charles Léopold Mayer (Olivier Petitjean).

The publishers read this text, possibly have them read by relevant reviewers, and propose additions, making clear their procedures (boxes, post-faces, etc.). Those additions are concerned with :
-	the clarification of the meaning of a word, or an expression, or a reference ;
-	situating interculturally such or such proposal ;
-	the gaps noticed in the booklet as far as the cultural and social reality of the publisher and his audience is concerned.

These suggestions are shared between all the publishers. The Fondation Charles Léopold Mayer on its part will make a synthesis of all these reactions and will propose it to the publishers. The latter then will decide for themselves (in agreement with the authors) their own additions, either from the synthesis made by the Fondation, or from the various suggestions collected during the exchange.

There could be, for each booklet, a preface written by a well known personality, conversant with the subject. It could be common to all publishers, or specific to local versions.

3.3.	Recommendations to the proposals booklets’ authors

Taking into account the preliminary indications contained in the 2000 summer texts, the publishers wish to make it clear for the authors the necessity to:
-	Strive to respect the model of structure given in the August 2000 paper (“ The elaboration and circulation of proposals files for the 21st century ” (list of proposals, context, perspectives, actors, experiences) ;
-	Be explicit as far as possible on the proposals’ “ how to ” instead of mere theoretical principles ;
-	Stay within a range from 20 to 30 pages (equivalent in English language) ;
-	Secure the best possible intercultural and collective writing process, especially as far as the implication of concerned social movements is concerned. 
-	Draft their text in a way that is accessible, and not coded or allusive.

3.4.	Contents common to all the publications

The proposals booklets will contain :

-	A short text presenting the series’ and the Alliances objectives. This text will be adapted by each publisher. 
-	The list of the booklets (available or in preparation) and of the other publishers of the booklets.
-	The history of the text’s elaboration, and an invitation to participate to debate around those proposals (contact, bibliography, internet site, electronic forum, etc.) 

3.5.	Common presentation elements for all the publications.

On the proposal booklets, there will be logotypes of the Alliance, of the publishers, and possibly of the organization that has coordinated the text’s drafting process.

The physical size of the booklets should vary as little as possible from country to the country. Each publisher will inquire about the cheapest format and the decision will be taken in accordance with this collective inquiry. The front page will contain some common layout characteristics, but will respect cultural specificity. 

3.6.	Iconography

The author might ask for illustrations for his booklets. In this case he has the responsibility for it.

The publishers will decide the illustration of the cover, with a possible specific iconography. The publishers and Caravan will keep available to all other publishers their own iconography for possible use in the booklets. 

3.7. Translation rules

The choice of the translator is up to the publishers. But they commit themselves to be sensitive to the demands of the authors. 

Whenever possible, the translations will be done from the original language, and failing that, from English version. In all cases, the Foundation commits itself to secure the existence of an English version for all the texts (a version likely to be modified afterwards by the English speaking publishers). In some cases, their will be a necessity to be in direct relation with the authors. The authors commit themselves to be available to answer the questions of the translators.

The list of the languages in which the publications will be done is not limited to the languages used by the participants of this meeting. In further stages, and if there are means for that, additional languages may be used.

3.8.	Financing

The publishers wish to point out that the way the overall budget was designed only takes into account the translation and printing costs for all the texts to be written, and therefore neglects the costs generated by iconography, editorial work, distribution, communication systems and tools, etc. Thus at present it is not entirely adequate for the project as described here. 

It is therefore suggested that the Fondation support, for the proposal booklets, in addition to translation and publication costs, such other costs as may be indicated by the quotations submitted by the publishers. 

In principle, the Foundation has not yet committed itself to go beyond translation and printing costs. But the publishers here are preoccupied by the question of extra-work of publishing, linked to the intercultural characteristic of the series, the importance of the iconography as an integral dimension of the series, as well as by the question of diffusing and promoting the booklets : the publication is intended to stimulate the process of meetings of 2001 (a good place to disseminate the books), and intended also to have an output in terms of concrete action, which means a significant effort of diffusion. The FPH will then explore the means to meet those additional needs. On their part, the publishers will also try to secure means on their own. There is no guarantee of success, but at least we all shall try. 

Before the end of the year 2000, all the publishers will indicate to the Foundation their intentions (number of booklets to be published, number of copies to be printed in 2001) with the corresponding costs. The Foundation commits itself to inform them about all the requirements, with real transparency.

We shall then collectively decide the composition (items to be financed) of the financial support, depending on :

•	the total of the publishers requirements
•	either possible Foundation’s new commitments, or modification of the sectors for which current funding is allocated
•	sales expectations from the publishers
•	the requirements in terms of copies by the meeting organizers

This last element is linked to the fact that some distribution costs might also be integrated within the meetings budgets (it will depend then on the negotiations with the meeting organizers).

Moreover, the Foundation and the group of publishers here might try to get resources for an overall “publishers fund” for such material. In such a case, the Foundation might support a part of the work necessary to look for new funding.

3.9.	Communication between publishers

An electronic forum will be created for the collective work of the publishers, with semi-automatic translation of the messages, and that will permit the sending of attached files.

In the next few months, the publishers will seek new communication tools to facilitate remote dialogue for a better working relationship.

3.10.	Distribution

There is a need for a sharing of experiences and coordination among the publishers on the subject of distribution both to the Assembly 2001 process and to the other identified target audiences. The publishers wish to point out that a significant part of the distribution process will need to be financed.

4. Calendar

The publishers propose the following model for the publication calendar of the proposals booklets during the year 2001 :

First wave (continental meetings)

February : delivery of the texts by the workshops
March : remote discussion among publishers
End of May : Publication of the booklets
End of June : circulation and discussion within the continental meetings

Second wave (world meeting)

Summer : delivery of the texts by the workshops
September : remote discussion among publishers
Beginning of November : Publication of the booklets
Beginning of December : circulation and discussion within the world assembly

Alliance for a Responsible, Plural and United World 
A citizens’ thinking and action dynamics. Movements and persons from 115 countries
Preparation of a Citizens’ Earth Assembly in 2001 
Geocultural, Socioprofessional and Topical Workshops

Web : http://www.echo.org – Email : alliance@echo.org

Proposals for a Global Governance Adapted to the Challenges of the Twenty-first Century

There is general agreement on the serious shortcomings affecting international relations today. As global unity becomes manifest, awareness of the vulnerability of humankind rises. This situation has produced numerous contributions and initiatives emanating from all the horizons. The present document is set in the perspective of refusing inhumanity and of searching for the way for when there is a will. Just as movement is demonstrated by walking, the possibility of a “global governance" is confirmed through sharing and accumulating experiences. 

The present paper testifies to the preceding statement: it is the fruit of work conducted collectively in an international citizens’ dynamics, the Alliance for a Responsible, Plural and United World, and constitutes the third draft of a proposals document that has been progressively enriched by reactions from four continents: America, Africa, Asia, and Europe. 

August 2000 

The Global Governance Workshop (Web site: http://www.echo.org/en/idx_global.htm) 

I) The Need to Recast Global Governance

There is a constantly increasing gap between the de facto interdependence linking the peoples of the world and the de jure mechanisms intended for the organization of international relations. It is urgent to set up a new global governance. 

By governance, we are not only referring to the executive systems in charge of stating and applying international or judicial rules but also to the practical conditions under which these rules are designed and applied and to the role of public and private actors in their development and implementation. 

In the second half of the twentieth century, starting with the Bretton Woods institutions and the San Francisco agreement on the Charter of the United Nations, the first elements of global governance were set up. They have among others made it possible to open up world trade and recognize Human Rights, a preliminary world order founded on a set of relations between Nations. They have not prevented the advent of very serious conflicts, or even of genocides, especially affecting the peoples of the Southern Hemisphere. This form of governance must nonetheless be given credit for having generated a general dynamics of human progress and, in particular, for having established democratic principles as a majority reference. 

It is precisely the success of this dynamics – especially in its aspect of the very fast growth recorded in the past thirty years, of interdependence among human beings and between humankind and the whole of the living world – that makes the present forms of global governance obsolete, despite continuous, but partial, efforts to adapt them. The economic and financial globalization of the world is an incomplete but eloquent illustration of the speed at which interdependence has developed; it illustrates the unique character of present globalization compared to other phases in the history of humankind that have also been marked by an opening and globalization process. However, although awareness of interdependence reinforces, with the help of modern means of information, the feeling of belonging to a common humankind, it is far from founding, in itself, the idea of a global community. 

Many concrete signs show the acute unsuitability of present global governance: 

•	Conflicts are frequent and generally associated with humanitarian disasters, the victims of which are in their majority the civilians, older persons, women, and children that fundamental human rights are precisely intended to protect, without the global political systems’ offering any organized reaction in response to the movement of international conscience. 

•	States no longer have the initiative on the elaboration of the rules and there is even a tendency to the inversion of public and private agendas, the latter substituting for the former in the absence of rules capable of promoting any international public good other than the freedom of circulation of commodities and trade. An example of this inversion is the negotiation on the legal framework for the mobility of investments on a global scale, in which rules have been developed that are practically imposed on governments by a small number of private operators. The high visibility of this kind of situation has turned public opinion against multilateral institutions, which paradoxically leads to thwarting their modernization. 
•	Present governance suffers from a structural near-sightedness linked to the North-South unbalance of interests that it embodies. This is illustrated by the example – not an isolated one – of the global energy fora. Practically all of the debate and decisions in this field are concentrated on nuclear or fossil energy, which are of concern to only 800 million people. The two billion persons of the planet whose survival currently depends on firewood have neither visibility nor expression in these fora. 

•	The legitimacy of the present international institutions is all the more contested that they are lacking in coherence. Every multilateral agency has its own counterparts within the national administrations and pursues its own agenda without much of a dialogue with the others and without any real arbitration. Furthermore, they do not all have the same financial and regulatory means to promote their ideas and impose the application of the rules that they decree. Some – the IMF, the World Bank and today the WTO – can do so; others are restricted to simple recommendations. This dissymmetry accredits the idea that globalization is no more than the economic globalization wished for and imposed by the most powerful in their own interest. 

•	In fact, this legitimacy deficit is probably the handicap most seriously weighing on present governance. The gap is clearly getting wider, at different levels, between the legality of the exercise of power, which refers to the formal rules that define it, and its legitimacy, which refers more subjectively to the perception that the population has of it. On a global level, this gap is colossal. International rules stated by authorities that have no face, no clear mandate, and no identifiable body of recourse are proliferating, undermining the authority of these rules and their effectiveness, but also discrediting, for the future, the claim to formulating others, including in fields where the law of the jungle and the proliferation of injustice are denounced. 

These few examples are among the many symptoms of the unsuitability of present governance, but we need to undertake a much deeper analysis to disclose the shortcomings in the foundations and the architecture of the global governance system, shortcomings that are rooted much further back than in the fifties. 

These shortcomings should first be sought in the deficiencies of the very conception of the Nation-State, defined in the past centuries as the exclusive embodiment of public interests. This exclusive right is, according to the expression of Ambassador Valaskakis, at the heart of the "Westphalian order," an order that imposed itself in late-seventeenth-century Europe and became the model for the whole world in designing international law. Today, however, identification of the Westphalian State, with its own system of administration and appraisal of the "public domain" has frozen a practice that is now out of date. The renewal of governance requires a revision of the traditional borders between what is defined as public and what is defined as private: henceforth the public character of an institution, a rule, or a responsibility is no longer defined by a formal status but by its real impact on the community. Private actors, large corporations in particular, exercise a public influence through the considerable number of people whose everyday life they orient or affect. As a result, for example, the growth in the circulation of trade, that is of the private rights of access to markets, should be accompanied with a correlative responsibility to the preservation of public, environmental, and social goods. Equally ensuing is the need to associate private actors - civil society, corporations, etc. - in some form or another to the conception and implementation of public rules. 

The Westphalian order also erects the sovereignty of the State as absolute. This results in a weaker status of international law as compared to national law, including in areas of major concern to a set of nations or the community of nations. The experience of the European Union – which requires reconciling an effective supranational law with the autonomy and respect of the cultural identities of very unequal nations - remains exemplary but exceptional in this respect. This same absolute conception of sovereignty institutes every national territory as an isolated entity cut off from the rest of the world and turns international action into a layer added onto the national and infranational political orders. 

This situation is in contradiction with the need for coherence in the public actions taken at the different territorial scales, increasingly concerning same fields of activity and interacting with one another. This is probably a major, distinctive feature of the new global governance: it is not only concerned with the superficial sphere of interaction among nations, its object is the achievement of positive coherence among the different levels of government, from the local to the global. The relation among the different levels of government is at the heart of tomorrow’s public management. This finding is just as valid when it has to do with managing an urban area made up of multiple territorial communities as when it has to do with reconciling the global rules governing freedom of trade with national laws. This is additional proof that the effort to recast global governance cannot be separated from all the efforts made to reconsider the foundations and methods of public action at every level. 

The second congenital flaw of present global governance, the fruit of successive historic concessions among constituted States, is to remain centered on a founding core of Western nations. Certainly, the “North-South” concept needs to be qualified: the great diversity of situations in the "South" limits the reach of any generalization. The fact remains that the center of gravity of the interests managed by present global governance is in the North. The result is an obvious lack of legitimacy, the dismal character of which bursts forth when the issue is - as in the Earth Summit of 1992 - to discuss a sustainable, fair access to natural resources. 

II) Recasting Global Governance on a Pillar of Common Ethics and Common Principles 

A.	A pillar of common ethics: Moving toward a constituent Charter of the International Community 

Governance, from the local to the global, is today a vast construction site. It is being rebuilt, a bit here and a bit there, in no special order. Negotiations follow one another in succession and overlap, field by field. The issue is clearly no longer to extend the reach of international conventions or the areas of trade liberalization. It is also the fact that the organization and operation of public institutions at every level are being simultaneously debated on. Many countries are building, at the national level, the conditions for a state of law and democracy. International institutions lavish advice, sometimes even seeking to impose, through aid conditionality, rules of "good governance". In the early democracies, a vast movement of public-action reform is in progress, marked by a strong accent on decentralization so as to move closer to the citizens. Nothing, however, ensures the convergence of these movements, except, probably, the democratic perspective itself. However, how can democracy be given back its meaning when the essential part of our common future is being played out outside of the national and local democratic bodies? How can we ensure that at the various levels there is concern for the public goods that have become the common heritage of humankind? How can public actors and private actors be included in a common perspective of rights and responsibilities? 

To answer these questions, a true recasting is necessary. It must go beyond what has been achieved by the Charter of the United Nations, which in fact only recognizes Nations–States as the subjects of international law and gives little value to the peoples. It must also go beyond the rights of individuals, because a true implementation of the solidarity that unites them also requires their active commitment and their personal responsibility. What we need is a new founding charter, complementary to the first. The elaboration of such a charter can only be the result of collective and progressive work. The Charter for a Responsible, Plural and United World drawn up in the framework of the Alliance, prefigures the kind of process this can be and its results. Without claiming to be exclusive, it represents the beginnings of this collective contribution. 

This Charter has produced five fundamental ethical postulates:

1	To preserve humankind in its wealth and the planet in its integrity, there must be harmony at every level between unity and diversity. 

2	Recognition of others is the foundation of all relationships and all peace.

3	Acceptance of the constraints entailed by the preservation of the common good is indispensable to the exercise of individual freedom. 

4	Material development is at the service of human development. 

5	Change is not an aim in itself; it is a means to serve human development and the safekeeping of the planet.

From these five postulates, we can deduce the responsibilities that should be taken by the “International Community.” These include, in particular:

a)	preservation of the common good – understood to include all living beings – and of the integrity of all ecosystems;
b)	guaranteeing the preservation of the diversity of societies, the preservation of the dignity of persons, the access of all to the common good, and the implementation of the principle of precaution;
c)	distribution and redistribution, in particular of scarce goods, and management of the debt incurred by Nations with regard to each other and with regard to the biosphere for having used these goods;
d)	monitoring the evolution of humankind and of the ecosystems, as well as enforcing codes of conduct and standards, and setting up the means to do so;
e)	learning: by helping to circulate all goods that are multiplied through sharing, experience in particular; by promoting conflict resolution through cooperation and education to tolerance; by facilitating continuing reflection on the rights and responsibilities of humankind; 
f)	arbitration, in particular with regard to contradictions among standards and codes of conduct; construction of a hierarchy of standards and its continuous revision; and the search for complementarity among such standards;
g 	recourse regarding the way in which private and public actors, particularly the supranational ones, assume their responsibilities.

For international rules to be effective and lastingly agreed to, they also need to resonate deeply among the people and be consistent with the ethics that guide their own conduct. There needs to be a correspondence between the general principles of collective action – which are source of law – and the ethical orientations that are the source of individual conduct. This way, the need to reconcile at every level unity and diversity, the two inseparable faces of the living world, is in agreement with personal inspiration to freedom and creativeness, including the spirit of research and innovation, as well as with the individual exercise of tolerance and respect of others. This way, the principle of responsibility goes hand and hand with the personal obligation of solidarity and mutual aid. 

Such correspondences very extensively escape the judicial field and its ensuing policies. They refer responsibilities and duties to the citizens themselves. This leads to underscoring the importance of the educational and teaching function assumed by the various moral and religious traditions. For this reason, the major religions of the world must contribute to the development and multicultural expression of such a charter. 

B. Three common principles of governance 

The Charter points to the magnitude and depth of the renewal that is needed. Nonetheless, without waiting for the process of development and appropriation of the Charter to be completed, there is sufficient consensus established today among a very large variety of actors to agree on some basic principles, the application of which would ensure a greater legitimacy and a greater coherence to the reforms of public action being undertaken at various levels. 

In reviewing our experiences as NGOs, persons in charge of administration and policy, and stakeholders at every level from local development action to international negotiations, we have noted that three main principles prove to be essential, at every geographical scale, to inspire collective action and to organize public action. 

These three principles – of responsibility, subsidiarity, and plurality – are not fortuitous. Their exactness has been proven through innumerable experiences, at various geographical scales and in different contexts, whenever it has been necessary to obtain a collective mobilization in view of complex objectives integrating various dimensions in a context of interdependence. These principles can therefore be perceived as a form of contemporary wisdom. Their formulation is of course open to further discussion. 

1 The Principle of Responsibility 

All power induces the responsibility of whoever exercises it, not only with regard to those who entrusted it and can also withdraw it but, even more so, with regard to all that which, in society and the biosphere, is affected by the exercise of such power. Under these conditions: 

•	Any power is held to be accountable. In particular, any public authority can be tried by a higher authority, any sovereignty is limited, and any State is held accountable not only to its own citizens but also to the international bodies in charge of representing "the rest of the world." 

•	The scope of such responsibility does not only ensue from the mandates that are given for the exercise of power by voters or shareholders, but more generally from the impact of the exercise of such power on third parties. 

2 The Principle of Subsidiarity 

One of the roles of international rules is to ensure as much as possible the cohesion and unity of the whole, by taking into account two conditions: the need to promote our common good or goods; the need to preserve the greatest possible autonomy for each of the components. 

•	The principle of subsidiarity leads to seeking a distribution of jurisdiction among the various levels of authority or responsibility, but it gains to be enhanced by the concept of active subsidiarity in the increasingly frequent situations where jurisdiction is necessarily shared: no major problem, whether it has to do with ensuring security or essential needs, or with the management of the biosphere, can be taken at only one level of responsibility; this therefore requires cooperation among the different  levels and leads to the exercise of shared responsibility. In the practice of active subsidiarity, decisions are taken at the lowest possible level in compliance with the duty to achieve a given result. The definition of this mandatory result is the fruit of collective elaboration. Active subsidiarity thus serves as a foundation for the necessary cooperation of power exercised at different levels. 

3 The Principle of Plurality 

Collective action cannot be fully engaged without the acknowledgement of a common objective. The identification of such an objective must not, however, conflict with the diversity of cultural belonging and identities. This is what the principle of plurality expresses. 

This principle can be applied through legal provisions designed to prevent or repress of discrimination based on ethnic belonging, gender, or religion, but it should also be expressed positively through the attribution of greater value to geographical, cultural, and linguistic diversity. At the various territorial scales – local, regional, national, and plurinational – where collective action is sought, the process of construction of unity placing value on plurality can take the form of partnership approaches. 

III) Ten Proposals for a More Effective and More Legitimate 
Global Governance

The lack of legitimacy and credibility is currently a major obstacle to the strengthening of global governance. This deficit has multiple causes, which are related to the way those that exercise authority are designated then controlled, to the absence of transparency and of checks and balances, to the dissatisfactory nature of the way institutions work, and to the quality of decision-making processes. 

To strengthen the legitimacy of the multilateral system, it is necessary to translate into acts the pillar of common ethics and common principles of governance that were expressed above, and the ensuing responsibilities of the International Community. This is the object of the following proposals – not exhaustive – which aim: to materialize the principle of responsibility; to achieve a higher involvement of the civil society and the national parliaments in the development and the implementation of rules; to restore a balance, to the benefit of the South, in their negotiation and application methods; to accelerate the constitution of regional entities; to extend and to specify the concept of the common good; to draw a distinction between the power of proposal and the power of decision; to develop independent monitoring, warning, and assessment systems; to diversify and consolidate the bases for the financing of international collective action; and finally, to undertake a vast consultation process. 

Proposal 1: Materialize the principle of responsibility

We have previously defined, for all levels of governance, the main principles of responsibility. Translating them into concrete realities on a global scale is all the more urgent that, at this scale, actual power is mostly exercised outside the framework of classic political responsibility: by bodies of officers and experts whose autonomy is all the greater that the problems they deal with are complex and that the political decision bodies are weak, distant, and divided; and by private actors who are only accountable to their own principals. 

Under these conditions, it is necessary to reinforce both the transparency of decisions and the accountability of those who hold power. For this, we propose: 

•	Greater transparency. All international rules that have been transposed nationally should have source and recourse clearly identified. The subjects and users of these rules should insofar as possible know the references of the international and national agencies that originated the statement of the rule as well as the methods of recourse in case of litigation on their application. 

•	Publicizing of the way in which the bodies in charge of the implementation of international rules have carried out their mission. 

•	Possible implementation of sanctions in cases of serious shortcomings with regard to the execution of mandates. 

Proposal 2: Achieve greater involvement of the civil society in the development and implementation of international rules

It will be lastingly difficult to establish a parliamentary-type representation on a global or plurinational scale, even though this perspective remains a long-term objective. Nonetheless, there is already a global public forum where many forms of civilian influence are exercised and heard, independently of national and international public authorities, for the promotion of individual or general interests. 

This "global civil society" is not limited to NGOs. Its emergence, increasingly organized at the international level, is facilitated by the new information and communication technology. This is one of the major changes of these past fifty years. It is often through more-or-less organized forms of the civil society that new issues appear on the political agenda, and that the actions of the public authorities and the implementation of international conventions are monitored and checked. Similarly, the large companies and large pension funds have become major actors and sometimes regulators of international choices. 

Associating this international civil society to the preparation and the implementation of international rules can constitute a legitimization factor for the institutions themselves, provided that there is compliance with rules of procedure. We propose the following rules as examples: 

a) Companies and NGOs acting at an international scale should necessarily subscribe to a code of conduct, the implementation of which must also be controlled at the international scale (symmetry of levels of action and control). 

b) Methods for the representation of the civil society and an obligation of transparency of this representation must be defined by all international agencies as a guarantee for public control over their action. 

c) Appeal mechanisms for the civil society should be able to produce audits of the action of the public authorities at different levels or of the implementation of codes of conduct and rules of the International Community. At present, this power of referral to higher authorities is reserved for all practical purposes to the holders of financial power: shareholders in the case of companies, and the shareholders countries in the case of the World Bank and the IMF. This power of referral needs to be extended to all those who undergo the impact of the action of private or public actors. 

d) Population-based initiatives should be able to lead to the organization of global consensus conferences, on the model first initiated by the Danish government. These consensus conferences would apply to the complex problems engendered among others by the impact of science and technology. 

e) The civil society must be involved in the establishment and management of monitoring systems at the international scale. 

f) The consequences of scientific and technological development play a decisive role in the evolution of humankind. They should be part of the public good par excellence. Their forms of production and exploitation are leading today to their increasing privatization. The International Community must earmark part of the investment devoted to the development of new technology for the promotion of a citizens’ use of technology, so as to strengthen the civil society. 

g) In order to increase the awareness of a single human community and the consideration of the diversity of contexts and interests, it is necessary to work toward the emergence of an international representation of the different social sectors with organization and appraisal means allowing them to take into account the complexity of the problems and to move beyond corporatistic attitudes. 

Proposal 3: Achieve greater involvement of national parliaments in the development and implementation of international rules 

In the absence of a world parliament, the legitimacy of international rules depends on that of the national governments themselves, which can also, in the framework of constitutional rules, be suited to the exercise of shared sovereignty. Ultimately, however, in the democratic states, national parliaments have the responsibility of ensuring the proper application of any international action conducted by governments, directly or indirectly. 

However, international comparisons show that the provisions by which the competent parliamentary commissions or delegations are informed or are set up to assume their responsibilities are extremely variable. All too often, the international field escapes parliamentary discussion and assessment. It is necessary to encourage the dissemination of the most positive experiences in which there has been parliament involvement in international debates, interparliamentary cooperation or the constitution of independent evaluation bodies at the service of parliaments. National administrations will not necessarily appreciate what they may consider as interference in what they basically see as their own territory, and many parliaments are likely to have, at the start, unenthusiastic and nationalistic reactions, but democracy stands to gain in the long run. 

Proposal 4: Put the South on an equal footing with the North for the negotiation and the implementation of rules 

The time for a true representative global democracy may have not arrived, but we can certainly do much better than the inequitable poll-tax system that currently prevails, in which the richest countries have, given in particular the lack of a world taxing system, the monopoly of power. It is a poll-tax system where the G8 poses as the board of directors of the world, with the United States as censor or policeman, where the power of shareholders – private in the case of companies, public in the case of the Bretton Woods institutions – totally overrides the power of citizens. It is a system in which the techno-administrations of the rich countries and the international institutions have the monopoly over the definition of the terms of negotiations. 

To be legitimate, global-governance systems should truly be negotiated with all regions of the world and be judged equitable. Above all, the stated priorities must correspond to the real concerns of the most numerous and poorest peoples. 

To stop being mere spectators of negotiations conducted over their heads, according to an agenda determined by the rich countries, and to get existing international rules to play in their favor, the countries that are not part of the G8 must first be helped to reinforce their capacities of analysis, independent appraisal, and proposal, in particular in the framework of regional coalitions (see Proposal 5), failing which they have no way of being heard. 

As long as only the rich countries can decide what it is acceptable or not to negotiate (for instance: the circulation of goods but not the circulation of people; the development methods for poor countries but not the lifestyles of the rich countries; negotiable permits but not the property of natural resources, etc.), all the other countries will pay no more than lip service to accepting global governance and its ensuing constraints. As long as the rich countries, often under the influence of their economic agents, claim the monopoly over concepts (as for the definition of what is merchandise and what is public good) and strategies (as for the promotion of large-scale or high-technology development projects to the detriment of more socially adapted solutions), the populations of the other countries will not feel involved, nor even concerned by what their administrative and political elite will have possibly negotiated in their name. 

The negotiations to set the international agenda could, in fact, lead in certain areas, as in trade or science, to slowing down negotiations or technological innovations, against the pressures of lobbies intending to strengthen their comparative advantage by constantly pushing for innovation and the opening of borders in the name of the progress of humankind. Indeed, the major problem of our societies today is no longer to accelerate the evolution of technology nor even yet to enlarge the sphere of the market economy. It is rather, on the contrary, to fill the gap between this speedy evolution and the tremendous lagging behind of mindsets and institutions. 

Finally, equity requires that sanctions for non-compliance with rules should be just as dissuasive for the powerful. This is not yet the case, as illustrated by the WTO, in which the poor countries do not have the means to know and master the complexity of the rules, to finance contentious actions, and, if they are successful in a suit, to have dissuasive sanctions applied against an economically powerful country. For sanctions to be sanctions, they must be applied automatically by the whole of countries and not only by the adversely affected country. 

	Proposal 5: Accelerate the constitution of regional entities

A North-South balance in the management of world security and in the establishment of the multilateral agenda requires setting up large regional entities that are not just common economic markets but also political and institutional realities and efficient mediation entities between the national and global levels. 

Along with the opening of markets to international trade, we have witnessed the spontaneous formation of regional economic and social entities, of which the European Union is an example. It has turned out that, far from being an obstacle to trade, these groups have accelerated globalization through the fact of having had to fully elaborate the necessary rules for free circulation within their group of countries. 

To accelerate the formation of regional entities, three procedures need to be applied: 

•	In the various international agencies and institutions, representation must be explicitly based on regional groups, with every representative thus being accountable to the countries of their region. 
•	Negotiation and decision-making processes must privilege the regional scale. This is particularly the case for the inevitable reform of the Security Council. The latter should be constituted as an Executive Board made up of representatives of the regions of the world. Every country of a region would occupy the Chair in turn, and, as such, representation in international negotiations. The concerted action of the European Union in such negotiations already illustrates this principle. 
•	In the framework of essential principles expressed on a global level, a set of rules under international law should be able, in accordance with the principle of active subsidiarity, to be given their specific form at the regional scale. 

Proposal 6: Extend and specify the concepts of common good 

Global governance is warranted, in the final analysis, by the need to agree on a number of rules for living in society at the world scale and by the safekeeping, creation, or development of global public goods. There is, however, enormous confusion regarding the definition of these common goods and on what distinguishes the public good from that which is a matter for market mechanisms. This confusion is convenient for all those who, in a position of power, can profit from a complete marketability of the world. To dispel this confusion, we propose to refer to a new typology of the goods that are necessary for wellbeing and development. This typology, which is subject to discussion, takes into account the recent developments of science and technology. It makes a distinction among several categories of goods: those that are destroyed when shared, for example the integrity of ecosystems; those, such as energy, that are the result of the working of the biosphere and are divided when shared; those that are the object of human intervention in their production and are divided when shared; those that are multiplied when shared, starting with knowledge and experience. The privatization of goods should concern mainly the third category of goods. The rest should be included in the vast category of common goods for which suitable rules of management need to be designed. 

	Proposal 7: Make a distinction between the power of proposal and that of decision to reconstruct the United Nations 

Traditional “political power” has been defined as the capacity to design, decide and implement suitable solutions to problems, in general through the definition of sectoral policies implemented by specialized administrative institutions. These conceptions are at the heart of the present operation of the United Nations and of the mandate of their agencies. However, they are also a major cause of the dead ends of a lot of UN action. Every State, beginning with the most powerful, is reluctant to place its sovereignty under tutelage. Each specialized agency acts autonomously whereas today's "global challenges", whether they have to do with the environment, poverty, or the development, are all characterized by their complexity and interconnectedness. To come out of these dead ends, we propose to institute, within the UN system, a separation between the power of proposal and the power of decision and to systematically apply a collective, interagency approach to problems that are in fact global. 

•	Separate the power of proposal from the power of decision. This principle has been experimented by the European Union and has made it possible for it to progress in its construction while respecting multiple identities. It has consisted in making of the Commission, placed in a status of extra-territoriality, the legitimate body for the elaboration of proposals of common interest; the Council, constituted of State representatives, keeps the power of decision. This system is currently experiencing a twofold crisis: the mechanism for the elaboration of proposals is too confidential; and the rule of unanimity that prevails for decisions is not suited to the admittance to the Union of a greater number of countries. However, transposed to the United Nations and taking judicious advantage of the crisis of the European institutions, this distinction can be made the starting point of a regeneration of the system. 

The General Secretariat would become the extranational institution endowed exclusively with a power of proposal. It would be backed by the Directors General of the agencies formed as a College, which should reflect a balance among the regions of the world. The process of elaboration of proposals would be extensively publicized and would associate, according to the procedures described elsewhere, the civil society and the national parliaments. 

The Assembly of States would have the power of decision. It would exercise this power through a renewed Security Council, comprising representatives of the different regions of the world, each of them having the right of veto. This procedure would have the advantage of reinforcing regional cooperation and of encouraging processes of discussion in two stages, at the regional scale then on a world scale, in keeping with the active subsidiarity principle. In the preparation of world conferences organized by the UN during the last decade, the regional debates were often in fact more active and concrete. 

•	Systematize the collective approach to global problems. For the past few years, cooperation among United Nations agencies and with the Bretton Woods institutions, in particular the World Bank, has grown. Such cooperation would be reinforced and institutionalized for every global problem. An institution would be chosen as project manager with the mission to facilitate the collective work of analyzing and elaborating proposals. An important part of this work would be to expose the inconsistencies and contradictions between rules and sectoral policies and to propose arbitration and common policies. This question is especially relevant for all that concerns the relationship between trade, environment, macroeconomic balances, and policies to combat poverty. 

In the proposed policies, the twofold reference to the ethical pillar (the Charter) and to the fundamental principles of governance would be mandatory, as well as the statement of effectiveness of the proposed policies and rules. As much in the development of the proposed policies as in their implementation, the principle of active subsidiarity would command the “duty to achieve given results” and to offer, on the basis of previous experiences, a range of means to achieve them rather than the universal "best practices" or the mandatory guidelines in which the Bretton Woods institutions have become specialized in the past. 

Proposal 8: Develop independent monitoring, warning, and assessment systems

Far from being secondary, the problem of monitoring, warning, and assessment is at the heart of governance and democracy. It is not a simple one to solve because the question of independence itself is sensitive. Bodies of experts have their own institutional and career rationale, their own forms of dependence with regard to the major economic and political actors. Preventive diplomacy fumbles, entangled in diplomatic relations founded on the sovereignty of States and lacking efficient early-intervention mechanisms. States are greatly concerned with controlling any information on their own territory, even more so in the many cases where they are stakeholders in a conflict. Independent early-warning mechanisms should be a central element of the future global-security system. 

Many countries and an increasing number of companies, have set up on their own account world monitoring or impact-measuring systems. For the analysis of economic, social, and environmental evolutions, pooling these tools can only be of benefit to all. 

Setting up systems of this kind is one of the fields where the organization of the civil society at the international scale is especially effective and the assessments that they provide are often judged by public opinion to be more believable – because more independent – than public assessments. The case of Transparency International, which is interested in questions of corruption and whose index has become a standard of reference, is eloquent in this respect. The role of private rating bodies is not new, in fact; they have played for a long time a considerable role in the financial markets, where the cost of access to information is high. Similarly, in inter-company relations, privately defined standards such as the ISO standard have become standards of reference that are also used by public authorities. 

The development of world governance involves, and will involve even more in the future, the development of monitoring and measuring tools. Biosphere sampling is increasing dramatically. It is underestimated because of the almost exclusive use of monetary or macro-economic trade-valuation criteria. It is necessary to set up information systems focusing on the one hand on exchange flows between human activities and the biosphere, and on the other hand, on the terms of contracts, on compliance with codes of conduct and standards, and on the assessment of actions.

Proposal 9: Diversify and consolidate the bases for the financing of international collective action 

The past fifty years’ experience has shown the fragility of the financing mechanisms in the international agencies or programs founded exclusively on contributions from Member States.

This financing method, unavoidable in the first construction phase of an international action, presents an array of possible disadvantages: it opens the door to all kinds of political blackmail; it generates too much uncertainty to set up permanent means to guarantee security; it encourages, as shown in the case of the European Union, every state to keeps accounts of the costs and benefits of international cooperation, which reinforces national egoism.

It is therefore necessary to set up global taxing partnerships, based, for instance, on: 

	a) the use of the world’s scarce resources or of those with low renewability, use that can be summarized in particular by "the ecological footprint"; 

	b) the usufruct of common goods; 

	c) taxes on exchange flows, for both matter and money exchanges;

	d) a tax on capital, reflecting the idea that the creation of wealth is linked directly to international capacity for ensuring civil peace and maintaining the major balances between humankind and the biosphere. 

	Proposal 10: Undertake a vast consultation process, a new Bretton Woods for the United Nations 

In the past thirty years, many new actors have had to confront the reality of global interdependence. Many have either contributed to economic globalization or have had to suffer it. International networks have been set up, even by traditionally dominated social groups such as farmers or the populations of urban working-class districts. Some global NGOs have been developed. There is thus considerable collective evaluation, which can have a “top-down” view, as well as, more importantly, a “bottom-up” view on the concrete impacts of the way international systems work. This collective capacity and the vast awareness that it reflects are a radically new given and they are often more advanced than the political and administrative bodies that have remained focused – by vocation, electoral obligations, and tradition – on national issues. 

In the past, two major negotiations led to the creation of the League of Nations then of the Organization of the United Nations. They were essential, but incomplete stages in the institution of a global governance. In this same spirit, to integrate the above-stated  proposals in the political and diplomatic reality and, more generally speaking, to apply to the reform of the system itself the principles of governance that have just been expressed, it would be desirable for the United Nations’ Millennium Assembly to launch an initiative combining credibility, quality of proposals, and a critical mass that will bring governments to take them into consideration. This initiative could be the preparation for a Convention on Global Governance of several thousand of people, gathered to this effect, for the first time in history, for a few days, on the invitation of the General Assembly of the United Nations. The persons invited to attend would be the leaders of organizations using the transnational dimension in the public or private field (examples: Universal Postal Union, IMF, Red Cross, Arab League, Médecins sans Frontières, IBM, religions, IATA, Rotary Club, etc.). 

Persons attending the Convention would have answered a questionnaire about their transnational role, their view of the world and of the future, the reforms that they see as appropriate, the most suitable institutional forms for them, and their willingness to contribute to the necessary transformations. 

The summary of these answers, preliminary documents, and discussions would make it possible to draft the Convention Acts, then a White Paper, which would be sent to all Heads of State and Government of the UN Member Countries proposing that they accept it as a basis for the general negotiations that should lead to a true International Community. 

Conclusion 

In the wake of World War II, women and men, thinking about the causes of the cataclysm that humankind had just undergone, were able to mobilize generosity and imagination, and to combine idealism, prospective views, and pragmatism to lay the foundations of a new world. 

Today, fifty years later, challenges and dangers are accumulating. Conscience is awakening. The world is not a marketable commodity. The fate of future generations is not a figure of speech, it is a burning question. Experience and imagination can once again be mobilized to integrate the considerable heritage of the past fifty years in a construction that has been renewed in depth and adapted to the challenges of the twenty-first century. It is the responsibility of the General Assembly of the United Nations to mobilize them. 

The Process of Development of the Proposals in the Present Text 

The initiative to launch the Workshop of the Alliance on Global Governance was taken at the beginning of the year 2000, after a long maturing period, by: Stéphane Hessel (from 1946 to 1950 international officer at the United Nations in New York, then administrator attached to the UNDP from 1970 to 1972; French Ambassador to the United Nations since 1977; currently Ambassador of France, and member of the High Council for International Cooperation since 1999); Jerôme Vignon (worked on the implementation of regional and sectoral policy at the Commissariat au Plan, and for 15 years with Jacques Delors in the Forward Studies Unit of the European Commission); Georges Berthoin (Director for Jean Monnet in 1952 at the European Community;  Former Ambassador of the European Commission in London; International Chairman of the European Movement. Co-chairman of the Trilateral Commission for 17 years); and Pierre Calame (General Director of The Charles Léopold Mayer Foundation for the Progress of Humankind (FPH)). They opened to discussion a first text of proposals among an international network of people thinking about these questions, from different geographical and professional horizons. The text was also presented on the Web site of the Alliance (www.echo.org), on which a number of contributions were also collected. 

Substantial contributions were provided, among others, by: Béatrice Pouligny, Ph.D. in Political Science, Researcher at the Centre d’Etude de Recherche Internationale; Richard Goldmark, CEO of the International Herald Tribune, former Chairman of the Rockefeller Foundation; Gorän Von Bonsdorf, Honorary Chairman, Foreign Policy Association, Association for the United Nations, Professor Emeritus of the University of Finland; Robert-Ali Brac de la Perrière, Coordinator of the Topical Workshop on Biodiversity of the Alliance; Bengt Broms, Judge, President of Chamber One, former President of the Special Committee on the Charter of the United Nations; Rabah Lahmar, Coordinator of the Topical Workshop on Sols of the Alliance; Ignacy Sachs, CIRED (Centre International de Recherche sur l’Environnement et le Développement), specialist in eco-development issues (Brazil, Poland, France) ; Paul Tran Van Thinh, former representative to the European Union in the GATT négociations ; Joseph Rocher, Director of Réseau des ONG Européennes sur les questions Agro-alimentaires et de Développement (RONGEAD).

On the basis of the discussions in this first phase, a second draft of the text was drawn up in June 2000. From this second version, an international meeting took place in mid-June. It associated the following people: Larry Thomson, (United States) former Ambassador of the United States in different countries, currently runs Refugees International, a Washington-based organization in charge of aid to refugees; Matthew Stilwell (Australia) who works in Geneva at CIEL, AN international law firm, specialized in the analysis of international policies on trade, and in particular the WTO; Adilur Rhaman Khan (Bangladesh) lawyer to the Supreme Court, after an early political career, currently in charge of the defense of human rights; Sinha Sureshwar (India), after a career in the army, founded the Rural Development Foundation in New Delhi; Paul Dembinski (Switzerland), economist, runs the Financial Monitoring Center in Geneva, coordinates the Workshop "Financial Markets" of the Alliance; Fabiola Rüegg (Switzerland), of the Financial Monitoring Center; Jean Tardif (Canada), anthropologist specializing in Africa, Senior Officer of the state of Quebec, Delegate for the Francophonie, currently detached to Paris; Larbi Bouguerra (Tunisia), former opposition leader to the regime of Bourguiba, biochemist, specialized in water, Coordinator of the Water Workshop of the Alliance; Bernard Laponche (France), engineer and physicist, worked in the nuclear industry at the Commissariat of Atomic Energy, then against nuclear energy, currently working on energy efficiency and coordinating the Energy Workshop of the Alliance; Richard Pétris (France) in charge of the Ecole de la Paix in Grenoble, coordinates the Workshop "Conversion of Arms Industries” of the Alliance; Laurence Tubiana (France), in charge of sustainable-development issues for the Prime Minister, one of the founders of Solagral, partner of the FPH, Publisher of the magazine Courrier de la Planète; Ahmedou Ould Abdallah (Mauritania) Executive Secretary of the Coalition for Africa, based in Washington; Silvio Marzaroli (Uruguay), leader of a farmers’ coordination in the MERCOSUR countries since 1994, which has a strategy in three points: alternative project, mobilization of grassroots populations, permanent negotiations; Jean-Christophe Bas (France), in charge of Pan-European Dialogue at the World Bank in Paris. 

This meeting made it possible to enrich the proposals on the basis of governance issues raised in different sectors: 

•	Water 
•	Energy 
•	Finance and financial markets 
•	Security, arms, conflict management 
•	Environment 
•	Culture and cultural relations 
•	Trade 

The present text is the result of this work. It will be completed shortly with proposals relative to these different sectors. As of the fall, the full text will be open to discussion within the Alliance for achieve an enriched version at the end of the year 2001. 

The Alliance for a Responsible, Plural and United World

Humankind, on the eve of the twenty-first century, is facing the challenge of having to undertake deep mutations because of the crises of relations of human beings among themselves, of societies among themselves and of humankind with the biosphere, resulting among others from our present forms of development. These mutations will be a long-term task because they involve all the dimensions of human activity and the way societies work. Because these mutations will be deep and slow, undertaking them is an emergency. Otherwise, they will be imposed upon us by social, political, and environmental disasters with incalculable consequences. The difficulty lies in knowing how to undertake them and who can take the initiative. A twofold difficulty arises: most our approaches, practices and institutions have been designed to manage yesterday’s, rather than tomorrow's situations; political power, mainly organized at the scale of  Nation-States, is focused on the medium term and is badly prepared to take on worldwide, long-term challenges while, on their side, the economic actors and financiers who have been quick to measure the importance of globalization, often have neither the vocation nor the desire to undertake transformations that are in contradiction with their own interests. It is therefore up to the citizens to take initiatives while respecting the immense diversity of situations, contexts, and cultures, from China to India, to the Arab countries, to Africa, to America, to Europe and the Pacific. For this, people who are individually in a situation of helplessness must unite around common perspectives. This finding and this conviction are the keystone of the Alliance for a Responsible and United World. The Alliance was born in 1994 with the support of an independent Swiss foundation, the Charles Léopold Mayer Foundation, on the basis of a common platform drawn up in 1993 by distinguished persons from different continents. It includes, in 1999, Allies from more than 100 countries and various backgrounds. It is preparing for the year 2001 an Earth Citizens' Assembly which will open the discussion and present its proposals.

Topical Workshops of the Alliance for a Responsible and United World

The collective work of the Alliance is organized according to 3 “paths”: 

•	the “geocultural path” highlights the diversity of contexts in the framework of local groups;

•	the “collegial path” gathers people in an analogous professional and social situation to build their own 

point of view on the world: young people, women, scientists, business leaders, union leaders, farmers, artists, political leaders, religious leaders, etc.;

•	the “sectoral path” organizes international Topical Workshops under 4 work themes: (1) Values and Culture, (2) Socioeconomy, (3) Governance, (4) Humankind / Biosphere Relations. Specific Topical Workshops gather Allies and sympathizing experts to draw up proposals.

For further information, contact:
The Alliance for a Responsible and United World
Web : http://www.echo.org	Email : alliance@echo.org

SOS²

Save Our Soils    to    Sustain Our Societies
Sauver nOs Sols   pour   Sauvegarder nOs Sociétés 

Proposals
Propositions

The Soil Campaign 
Le Programme Mobilisateur Sols

Rabah Lahmar, Mireille Dosso, Alain Ruellan

01/2001 	                                                                                           Version 01
FOREWORD

The document “Platform for a Responsible and United World” (1993) underlines the necessity for a major campaign concerning soils. The objectives of this campaign are defined as: 

	 “ The campaign consists of encouraging, on a wide scale, the instigation of types of soil exploitation which do not, or as little as possible, reduce the biological, food production or hydraulic functions of soils. The massive degradation of soils today is at the origin of a considerable reduction in soil fertility, resulting in increasing desertification. The campaign will be carried out on a world wide basis, aimed at radically revising agricultural practices, mobilising large numbers of people, reducing food security in poor countries, promoting research into diversified ecosystem management and combining a number of large and small scale actions.”

In December 1995, in the document entitled “First proposals of the Soil Campaign”, Mirielle Dosso, Rabah Lahmar and Alain Ruellan proposed objectives and defined the priorities of such a campaign.

The Soil Campaign started in 1996. It is one of a number of programmes started by ‘The Alliance for a Responsible and United World’ to face the challenges of the 21st century. Its thoughts and actions aim at:

-	Changing attitudes to soil-related problems
-	Enhancing the "image" of soils
-	mobilising international solidarity against soil degradation.

This campaign is founded on a certain number of continually verified ideas and observations that can be formulated as follows:

•	The soil, with all its diversity and by virtue of its multipurpose character, is one of the most important bases for life on Earth, one of the major factors for balance of nature [see sheet 1]
•	Soils are at the heart of current human development problems; in particular, it they are at the core of the food and environmental concerns experienced nowadays world-wide. We notice, however, that the issue of soils has been evaded.
•	Soils, despite their scarcity, are still used in an unsustainable way by human societies; little is actually done to mitigate soil degradation or to improve the situation of degraded soils world-wide; local and global economic systems are accountable for this neglect.
•	This situation, which involves risks for both natural and human systems, is mostly due to ignorance in all spheres of society ‑ from the simple citizen up to the decision-maker ‑ about what soil is and why it is necessary to conserve it. Hence, soil is always absent from public debate, especially when social choices are concerned.
•	Soils are one of the challenges of the 21st Century. They should concern the human community as much as, or more than, for example, global climate change or the loss of biological diversity, to which, incidentally, soil degradation contributes in a non-negligible, yet so far ignored, way. Soils, on account of their fertility or their degradation, by their influence on the air, water and life, are a factor of potential conflicts for the 21st Century.
•	In order to turn soils into a factor of stability and peace, the human community should fulfil at all levels the conditions that enable different soil systems to fully accomplish all their functions, which are, in short, free services offered to the biosphere and humankind.

Proposals for Change
Protecting soils from degradation and using them in a renewable manner requires a real and profound transformation of humankind’s attitudes towards this resource.
The Soil Campaign considers that there are at least three indispensable and inseparable conditions for undertaking a transformation in the behaviour of the human community vis-à-vis soils:
•	to rehabilitate soil in popular culture;
•	to legislate on soil as an only slightly renewable resource indispensable for life, whose preservation is a indispensable;
•	to add soil to the universal heritage of humankind as an entity whose conservation requires complete human solidarity.
For each of these three points, the synthesis of different activities undertaken to date by the Soil Campaign, alone or with its partners, allows us to formulate a certain number of proposals for change.
Proposals likely to contribute to the emergence of behaviour and practices leading to the protection of soils against different types of degradation, and the rehabilitation of degraded soils. 

These proposals represent the main body of this document. They are developed in the following pages and subject to debate. They are summarised below.

The main proposals of the Soil Campaign are as follows:

I. With regards to the rehabilitation of soil in popular culture:

A. In the domain of conventional education:

1.	Setting up a teaching system that ensures a Minimum soil-related Knowledge, Indispensable for all Citizens of the planet: The Pedological MKIC.
2.	Setting up harmonised higher education curricula concerning the soils, which ensure a Common Compulsory Knowledge Basis for all soil-related disciplines.
B. In the domain of popular education:
3.	Setting up and monitoring innovative educational practices based on the respect of diversity: drawing from the diversity of knowledge, controlling the diversity of teaching, information and communication resources, and continuously adapting the process to situations.
C. A monitoring and co-ordination system for soil-related educational endeavours:
4.	Setting up an analysis, support and co-ordination system for the whole set of educational experiences.
D. A strong symbol:
5.	Setting up the World Soil Day.

II. With regards to the legal protection of soils:

A. At the local, regional or national level:

6.	Setting up and enforcing regulations and judgements based on a broad participatory process involving all stakeholders, and notably the representatives, the authorities, and also the soil users themselves, as well as the scientific community and the civil society. The considerations should be based on basins or geographical units, rather than political units.

B. At the international level:
7.	Establishing a set of binding rules, such as an international agreement on the sustainable utilisation of soils and land management. The ratification by all States of such an instrument is not only necessary, but urgent.
C. Achieving transformations:
8.	Setting up assistance mechanisms in order to facilitate the transformations of different soil-related activities, in such a way as to respect the conservation of soils.

III. With regards to world solidarity for the conservation of soils:

A. Mobilisation of knowledge concerning the conservation and improvement of soils:
9.	Constituting Soil Databases ‑ SoilDBs and their networking.
B. Mobilisation of human solidarity funds for soil conservation, restoration, improvement, and building: 
10.	Setting up National Soil Funds: NSF.
11.	Setting up a World Soil Fund: WSF.

Implementing Changes

Accomplishing the objectives described here relies on the mobilisation of a large number of actors, people and institutions. The soil question concerns the simple citizen as much as the decision-makers and public, private, national and international institutions.
Concretely, we must
1)	Make all organisations take these proposals into account, whether they are governmental or non-governmental institutions, and in particular those concerned with environmental and development questions.
2)	Work towards coherence in the actions, organise the co-ordination and the mutual help between those working towards these objectives. These actions must be carried out at three levels, local, national, international. 
I

The rehabilitation of soils in popular culture:
Educating, informing and communicating: An absolute priority.
Furthermore, a strong symbol: The World Soil Day.

One of the findings of the Klingenthal Soil Symposium (held in May, 1998) [see sheet 2] was that there have been several cultural references concerning soils in history, and that some of them still exist in the remains of aboriginal cultures. In the diverse representations of ancient human societies, soils, by virtue of their food production function, have occupied a privileged position. They have contributed toward shaping the lifestyles and thinking of these societies. Social systems then reflected the condition of the pedological systems and vice-versa; the management of soil fertility was at the heart of this connection. Later on, attempts to control the biomass production function of the soils by virtue of science and technology; urban development and the differentiation between city-countryside, and finally the widespread teaching of standard agronomy have all ended up by splitting societies from the land and from the original culture associated to it.
The result is nowadays that, despite the considerable accumulation of scientific knowledge on soils:
1-	The teaching of soil-related knowledge at primary, secondary and university level has not evolved a lot, and it has even regressed. Moreover, in most countries of the world, it is completely absent from primary education. There is almost general agreement about the failure of higher education on Soil Science; reality shows that it does not have an impact on the students’ professional life. This failure is related in particular with the fact that soil is not taught as a natural milieu, and neither as a social, economic, cultural and historic reality.
2-	Information and communication systems, nowadays attracted by environmental issues, elude the soil, as if it did not play any environmental role.
3-	Society, as a whole, continues to ignore soil.

The rehabilitation of soil in everyone’s culture requires setting up educational strategies that combine teaching, information and communication, turning the soil into a both an attractive issue and a concern, as was recommended at the Prague Conference (August 2000). This attraction has to do with its beauty, its wonder, its diverse morphology, its distribution in landscapes and its links to humankind and to all forms of life, as well as to rocks, air, water, and so on. The concerns have to do with the economic, social and political costs provoked by widespread negligence in soil management.
Concretely, this strategy needs to seek:

A. In the domain of conventional education:

1. Setting up a teaching system that ensures Minimum soil-related Knowledge, Indispensable for all Citizens of the planet: The Pedological MKIC.

The Pedological MKIC is necessary on the one hand in order to rehabilitate soil in popular culture, and, on the other hand, in order to consolidate the need to preserve it.
This knowledge should be acquired in two stages:
A first stage starts in the kindergarten, or at least at the beginning of primary (compulsory) education. It seeks on the one hand to lead children to make direct contact with soil and to undo parents’ prejudices such as: “Do not get dirty with mud!”, and, on the other hand, to help them to integrate soil in their imaginary representations. All this needs to be accomplished with the assistance of appropriate tools, according to each person's language and culture [see sheet 3].
The second stage intervenes in the secondary school. It involves stirring up the need to know and protect the soil, with the support of the naturalist approach to soil, namely, soil as a structured natural milieu. This stage enables discovering pedological systems and their multipurpose nature, as well as the links between the soil and the diversity of life forms and milieus. Likewise, it needs to show, by means of concrete examples, the social and economic consequences of good and bad soil management practices.

2.  Setting up harmonised higher education curricula concerning soils that ensure a Common Compulsory Knowledge Basis for all soil-related disciplines.
Curricula that lead to degrees that enable the practice of soil-related trades, either in the domain of scientific research or in operational milieus, should ensure the same level of compulsory knowledge. This involves training in Civil Engineering, Water and Forest Engineering, Agronomy, Ecology, Environment Sciences, as well as in Topography, Urban Planning, Architecture, Land-Use Planning, Landscape Architecture, Archaeology, Social Sciences (notably Economy and Sociology), etc. This is about establishing common knowledge for all these disciplines.
These teachings should involve not only the fundamental and practical aspects of Soil Science, but also the historic, cultural, social and economic features.

B. In the domain of popular education:
3.	Setting up and monitoring innovating educational practices, based on the respect of diversity: drawing from the diversity of knowledge, controlling the diversity of teaching, information and communication means, continuously adapting the process to the situations.
In practice, and according to experience, popular soil education requires a range of complementary tools, adapted to social, economic, cultural and historic settings. These can include:
•	Conferences addressing the public, at different occasions and at different places; training courses and seminars addressed to specific audiences (practitioners, instructors, teachers, etc.). A continuous training system could be envisaged, involving several levels.
•	In-the-field visits that enable seeing, touching, feeling, etc., discovering the reality of soil.
•	Fixed or travelling expositions.
•	Publications, including the written press, comics, children stories, awareness-raising leaflets, etc.
•	Radio and television programs.
•	Audio and video products, CD-ROMs, Web sites (distance learning).
This is thus a major operation that requires strong mobilisation and substantial means. Information and communication systems should be involved in order to launch and monitor the endeavours and to disseminate the results of the experiences as they evolve. [see sheet 4].
Moreover, for this educational endeavour to succeed, the following requirements need satisfying:
•	Strengthening the initiatives of individuals and non-governmental organisations involved in the domain of soil education.
•	Networking these initiatives and working in close collaboration with the “Soil Education and Public Awareness” Commission of the International Soil Science Commission, national scientific bodies, Pedagogues, Artists, Sociologists, Economists, Historians, Archaeologists, Anthropologists, etc., in order to design and prepare the curricula and the didactic materials.
•	Stirring up the interest of the media, governmental agencies, non-governmental organisations, and national, regional and international organisms dealing with childhood, education and culture, international co-operation, research, etc. (whose priorities should be re-discussed).

C. A monitoring and co-ordination system for soil-related educational endeavours:
4.	Setting up an analysis, support and co-ordination system for the whole set of educational experiences.
Education is a major issue and society must question itself continually, notably through the teacher-learner relationship and who teaches what to whom. All educational endeavours, as a whole, should be supported by a monitoring and co-ordination system, which, in particular, should be in charge of:
•	continuously analysing successful and unsuccessful educational initiatives undertaken in a range of contexts, and suggesting amendments and improvements;
•	creating adequate conditions for the exchange between the producers of information useful for the educational process (scientists, technicians, holders of popular knowledge, etc.), the people in charge of designing and preparing pedagogical material, and soil education practitioners;
•	creating the conditions for the exchange of experiences between the different actors involved in educational endeavours, in different contexts.
D. A strong symbol:
5.  Setting up the World Soil Day.
Just as the World Food Day, the World Water Day, the World Tree Day, we suggest establishing a World Soil Day.
This day will be an occasion for world-wide scientific and cultural events and for debates on soil issues. It will also enable carrying out state-of-the-art reviews on the progress of all soil-related undertakings, at all levels, by all the stakeholders: governments, NGOs, international agencies, etc.
This day will be a real occasion for mobilising, in addition to the stakeholders directly involved, information and communication systems, educational systems, and artistic milieus world-wide. This is also a way to popularise soil and its issues as soon as possible.
Two dates are suggested:
•	8 March. This coincides with the World Women’s Day, since in many cultural and religious references, soil, land and woman are associated ‑ linked by fertility, goodness, etc. The concept of Mother Earth of all living beings is shared by a number of cultures.
•	21 March, the first day of Spring in the Northern Hemisphere. 1st day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, 1st day of autumn in the Southern, two important stages in the many life cycles in which soil is intimately linked.

II
The duty to conserve soils.
The protection of soils is a precondition for peace and prosperity

Soil is a limited resource; it is a determining factor of food security and environmental health world-wide, and it should be subject to the duty of good management.

We live and we grow on a globe whose soil resources are physically limited in space, but also in time, on account of their slow recovery rate.

Soils are fixed in geographical space, but, taking into account their multipurpose nature (see Box), all soil management, even at the local level, has global consequences that affect all the other life forms of the planet. Indeed, the flows of solid, liquid and gaseous matter that reach or leave the soil in a given place of the world cross boundaries ‑ these can be the geographic limits of plots, municipalities, provinces, countries and even continents.

Therefore, in order to increase the likelihood for world food security and environmental quality ‑ as a precondition for social stability, peace and prosperity ‑, it is necessary to adopt utilisation forms that transform soils and their functions as little as possible, or at least that do not lead to irreversible degradation.

Since private property rights and national sovereignty are both exercised over soils, regulatory systems are required at all levels ‑ local, national or regional, and global ‑ in order to redirect current human activities towards sustainable soil utilisation forms.

In order for these regulations to be efficient, they need to draw their strength from local, national or regional levels and from legislation rooted in popular awareness and demands, as was recommended at the Prague Conference (August, 2000). At global level, they need to draw on the acceptance by national states and by all stakeholders of the obligation of preserving living conditions on Earth, namely, on the acceptance of the principle of the prevalence of good soil management over ownership rights or over the exercise of sovereignty.

Regulations should first seek to conserve and maintain a balance between the different functions of soil and prevent conflicts over its utilisation, and, in extreme circumstances, give priority to the conservation of all soil ecological functions (production, transformation, regulation, and genetic reserve functions), which are essential for maintaining natural balances and the diversity of life.

Concretely, we propose:

A.	At local, regional or national levels:

6. Setting up and enforcing regulations and judgements based on a broad participatory process involving all stakeholders, and notably the representatives, the authorities, and also the producers themselves, as well as the scientific community and civil society. Considerations should be based on basins or geographical units, rather than political units.

B.	At international level:
7. Establishing a set of binding rules, such as an international agreement on the sustainable utilisation of soils and land management. The ratification by all States of such an instrument is not only necessary, but also urgent.
It should be recalled that the need to protect soils was felt long before the seventies. However, it was only in May 1972 when the Council of Europe adopted the first soil charter ever: The European Soil Charter. It was followed almost ten years later by the World Soil Charter (November, 1981) drawn up by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). The World Charter on Nature, adopted by the UN Assembly in October, 1982, devotes just a few articles to soils. Yet all these documents have no juridical value ‑ they just state principles or formulate recommendations. Therefore, they will not be followed by any effect.
Since the Rio Summit (1992), the international community has three international law agreements that cover soil-related issues, but no convention on soils as an entity and a resource with all its dimensions. However, from 1972 to 1996, a number of recommendations were made ‑ particularly in Europe ‑ for creating a binding world-wide juridical instrument for soil protection.

In 1997, civil society launched an initiative to creating an international convention on sustainable soil use, better known as the “Tutzing Initiative for a Soil Convention” ‑ TISC. This initiative was rapidly supported by the scientific community and by a number of NGOs and the active support of the Soil Campaign, the Alliance for a Responsible and United World, and the Charles Léopold Mayer Foundation [see sheets 5 and 6].

The TISC is currently subject to debate. It is encouraging many other initiatives in Europe, and notably among local authorities. The latest is the proposal for an “Soil Alliance for Local Authorities”. Moreover, some proposals are being put forward in order to turn the current United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (CCD) into a Convention on Soils. The Commission on Environmental Law (CEL) of IUCN (The World Conservation Union) has set up the Sustainable Soils Working Group (SSWG) in order to study the feasibility of a soil protection instrument. The Amman resolution (October, 2000) confirms this will [see sheets 7, 8 and 9].

The SC is participating in the construction of TISC and calls for support for all the activities it is organising until the final goal of a soil convention is achieved.

C. Achieving transformations:

8. Setting up assistance mechanisms in order to facilitate the transformations in the different activities in relation to soil, in order to respect the primacy of soil preservation.

As long as the utilisation of soils is subject to the constraint of sustainability, deep modifications could be undertaken in a number of sectors (namely, agriculture, industry, urban development, tourism, craft-making, services, leisure, etc.), as well as in their distribution in the territory, since these activities need to be adapted to the constraints imposed by the soil and the natural milieu.

•	Agricultural activity

Agriculture is now one of the main sources of soil degradation, and requires major changes. It should stop altering and even degrading the other ecological functions of soil (transformation and regulation), as intensive agriculture (due to an excess of tilling, fertilising, phytosanitary treatments and wastewater from animal husbandry) and mining agriculture (due to the lack or the insufficient management of soil fertility) do. This means that new kinds of agriculture need to be set up, which suit not only environmental conditions and natural fertility renewal rates, but also the conditions and needs of human societies.

But, taking into account the current control of the market on the production styles and on the commerce of agricultural produce, some mechanisms of assistance are required:

1-	States should commit themselves not to turn food supply into a form of blackmail vis-à-vis other states or vis-à-vis specific social groups whatsoever.

2-	States should commit themselves to ensuring that the food products they sell on the international market are obtained under the same conditions as those marketed in the country from which they came; this commitment is essential in order to avoid the development two parallel agricultures: export-oriented and  local consumption-oriented.

3-	Under no circumstances (notably when development assistance is invoked) should states be allowed to move industrial polluting agricultural activities to developing countries. No exceptions to this rule should be accorded under any pretext, above that of development aid.

4-	The international trade of food produce should be subject to a principle of human solidarity, rather than to market law; compensation systems should be utilised accordingly.

5-	Changes in citizens’ consumption patterns should be encouraged, in order to limit waste and encourage the reorganisation of agriculture; the consumer can and should, by virtue of his choices, direct the way soils and natural resources are used, towards sustainable utilisation forms. Biological agriculture, organic agriculture, the privileged consumption of local produce, imposed by the consumer and supported by the action of several non-governmental organisations, are now a reality in a number of countries.

•	Industrial activity

The multitude of polluted sites today and the difficulty of restoring them should lead to increased caution when setting up the industrial activities of the future. At least three principles should be compulsory:
1-	Avoid locating industries on lands whose soils are especially sensitive to ecological functions.
2-	Include in the design of any industrial activity the provision for rapid and easy soil rehabilitation in the case of permanent shutdown activities.
3-	Submit industrial activity to the principles of industrial ecology, in order to minimise inputs (energy, water, raw material) and discharge at the end a limited amount of waste into the soils and the environment.

•	Architecture, urban development and land-use planning

All these activities should be fully re-thought so as:
1-	To consume as little surface area of soil as possible. A paved soil loses most of its other functions as a whole; efforts need to be made in particular to replace concrete pavement in some places (public places, parking lots, roads, airports, etc.) by other materials that offer the same comfort but that enable rainwater, air and biological activity to flow through.
2-	To mitigate the physical and cultural rifts between the city and the countryside, between the urban and the rural; contemporary societies do not live anymore with the soil but on it, as it was observed at the Prague Conference (August 2000): This is dangerous.
3- 	Tourism, craftwork, leisure and services should be reviewed and redistributed in territories according to their impact on the soils and in order to maintain the vitality of the countryside.

This means that tomorrow’s habitat and tomorrow’s cities, as well as land-use planning, need to be reinvented.

III
Human solidarity to save a universal heritage
Soil is a natural and cultural heritage of humanity. It is a spatial and temporal link between living beings. It is a factor of interdependence.
1-	Soils influence and have been influenced by the development of human societies since the post-Palaeolithic era. In particular many human societies have improved or even created soils and assured the continuation of human life under harsh conditions in regions with poor soil (the podzols of northern Europe), mountainous regions (Mediterranean basin), and arid climates ( Saharan oases, the Dogon highlands, etc). In this fashion soils are truly ‘the combined work of humankind and nature’, and soils therefore can be classed as a ‘Cultural Heritage’ according to Article 1 of the Convention for the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage (UNESCO 1972). To this can be added the cultural aspect of soils, they preserve humankind's history. They are a temporal link between humans.
2-	Soils are a factor of human interdependence. They are a spatial link between living beings, soil degradation, which is part of the consequences of humankind's influence on the climate and the flows of gases and water  on earth, show this to be a daily reality. In fact; 
a) there is no longer any “natural soil”, not even in the Amazon forest, 
b) the consequences of soil degradation are global; they concern humankind as a whole, even if the causes of degradation are very local. The emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and ammonia from the soil spread into the atmosphere; the pollution of continental ‑ surface and underground ‑ water and that of sea water are linked to soil pollution.
c) soil erosion is a factor for the downstream transfer (sometimes across national boundaries) of fertility (organic matter, clay, silt), pollutants (nitrates, pesticides, heavy metals), biodiversity (grains, spores); we should remember that a number of the earliest human civilisations were born along rivers (Tigris, Nile, Indus, Amazon, etc.), there where agriculture was practised on soil deposited from upstream erosion. 
d) soils, by stocking organic matter,  offer the possibility of sequestrating atmospheric carbon dioxide and of thus mitigating the greenhouse effect and climate change.
Thus, soils are a true heritage that humankind is obliged to protect. Human solidarity can take place in particular in two ways:
•	by mobilising knowledge useful for soil conservation, and making it available to all;
•	by mobilising financial resources to ensure the effectiveness of soil protection and rehabilitation measures.

A.	Mobilisation of knowledge concerning the conservation and improvement of soils:
9. Constituting Soil Databases and their networking.
The repeated failures of high-tech endeavours in soil protection operations have led during the last decades to research efforts that seek to gain insight into popular knowledge and incorporate it into natural resource ‑ and especially soil ‑ conservation practices. The first scientific findings have shown the need to for research into and to preserve what remains of coherent popular knowledge as soon as possible, so as to prevent a permanent loss for humankind.
Our suggestions are as follows:
1.	Soil Databases ‑ SoilDbs ‑ should be created within every country or region, covering both scientific knowledge and coherent popular knowledge on soil conservation.
2.	The SoilDbs should bring together all knowledge that may be applied for the protection of soil and its functions; for the restoration of degraded soils; for the management of soils and their fertility; for the sustainable use of soils; etc.
3.	The national or regional SoilDbs should constitute continental networks, and the latter should constitute a global network.
4.	These databases should be drawn on when solutions are sought to local, national, continental or global problems.
5.	Any utilisation of knowledge from these databases should commit the user not only to quote the reference (even if the technology was modified, as long as the principle remains the same), but also to provide at least a symbolic financial contribution, since these contributions would enable maintaining and enriching the SoilDbs, as well as their networking.
6.	Periodical publications (on both paper and electronic supports) should be issued and they would provide additional resources for the operation of SoilDb networks.
7.	The SoilDbs should be independent from the current organisations in charge of managing pedological information, although the latter could play a complementary role.
8.	The activities of SoilDb networks should be sponsored by international agencies, large NGOs and foundations.

B.	Mobilisation of human solidarity funds for soil conservation, restoration, improvement, and building:
Conserving soils in order to prevent their degradation, restoring degraded soils, and improving and building soils require mobilising large amounts of financial resources at the national and global levels.
These funds can be mobilised in two ways:
a-	The first calls for human solidarity: Every citizen can accept the principle of paying a symbolic tax on every product that comes, either directly or indirectly, from the soil, and especially on food.
b-	The second involves establishing taxes based on principles such as “the polluter pays” or “the destroyer pays” on:
•	every product stemming from or aimed at activities that may provoke the degradation of soils or their functions;
•	every activity that leads to the degradation of soils or their functions;
•	every activity that leads to definitive soil losses.
10. Setting up National Soil Funds: NSF.
Every state should create the institutional conditions for setting up its National Soil Fund, geared towards the preservation, improvement and development of its own soils. It should also create the institutional conditions and the mechanisms that enable collecting taxes and allocating them to the NSF, as well as ensuring good management.
The NSFs will support states and local NGOs to implement policies and activities (including educational activities) aimed at the protection, the improvement and the development of soils, giving priority to the knowledge included in the local SoilDbs.
11. Setting up a World Soil Fund: WSF.
The international community needs to set up the institutional conditions for creating, feeding and managing a WSF. This fund could well be created under an international convention on soils.
Unlike the NSF, the WSF will be supported by taxes on international trade and on multinational companies.
The WSF should seek to support soil conservation activities at the global level, and, last but not least, the restoration of degraded soils ‑ a source of serious concern nowadays. In particular, it should be aimed at:
1.	Supporting the action of states and international and local NGOs in cross-boundary soil restoration activities, by giving priority to the knowledge contained in the local SoilDbs.
2.	Supporting the action of states and international and local NGOs in all the activities (including educational activities) aimed at soil conservation, by giving priority to the knowledge contained in the local SoilDbs.
3.	Supporting and reinforcing the operation of SoilDb networks.
4.	Supporting the actions of the NSFs.
5.	Supporting the objectives of the international soil legislation.

APPENDICES

Sheet 1: The Functions Fulfilled by Soils
Sheet 2: The Klingenthal III meeting
Sheet 3: Tell me the Soil
Sheet 4: Soils, the Earth’s Skin
Sheet 5: The Tutzing Initiative for a Soil Convention (TISC)
Sheet 6: Support of the ISSS to the Tutzing Initiative
Sheet 7 and 8: The International Panel on Soils
Sheet 9: An Intergovernmental Panels on Soils
Sheet 10: The IUCN Resolution at Amman, Jordan 2000

Sheet 1

The functions fulfilled by soils
According to current knowledge, soils are:

-	Biomass production systems; both the starting and the ending points for biogeochemical cycles. This production includes food for the living world, renewable energy and the materials that the living world, and notably humankind, uses in its constructions and its industrial activities.
-	Substance transformation systems. Their properties enable them to carry out physical (physical reactors), chemical (chemical reactors) and biological (bio-reactors) transformations on the flows of solid, liquid and gaseous materials that lie in it or flow through it. This function turns the soils into an excellent treatment system for the wastes of human activities. The quality of the food chain, the water and the air depend on it.
-	Regulation systems. This function is particularly important nowadays for water and carbon. Soils have properties that enable them to play a leading role in feeding underground aquifers and in regulating the hydrological regimes of rivers. Moreover, they store atmospheric carbon dioxide ‑ the main greenhouse-effect gas ‑ in the form of organic matter. The sequestration of atmospheric CO2 by soils is considered as one of the possible solutions to climate change.
-	A gene reserve. Soil is a step for many biological cycles. Biological diversity in the soils is much higher than the one on them. A number of living organisms remain undiscovered in the soils.
-	A memory. They bear witness of past human activities. Since they keep track of their own history and of the ways they have been used by human societies, they are a page in the history of nature and of human evolution.
-	Physical supports for all human activities (agriculture, industry, transport, habitat, craft-activities, leisure, etc.). They are a raw material for a number of human activities (e.g. industry, urban development, architecture, craft-making). They contain minerals that are sought by humankind.

Sheet 2 

The meeting of Klingenthal III 

At the initiative of the Soil Campaign of the Alliance for a responsible, plural and united world and Pax Christi France, persons from different cultures and spiritualities, representatives of the civil society, administrators, scientists, met in a symposium from the 6th to the 10th of May 1998, in the Castle of Klingenthal, Alsace, France - to exchange ideas on the issue of "Soils, Cultures and Spiritualities”. 
The presentations and the debate were about many subjects: existing knowledge accumulated by the soil sciences; perceptions, representations and lessons learned about soils in the different religions, spiritualities, native cultures (Bahaïsm, Buddhism, Christianism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Shistoism, Taoism, Aborigines of Canada, Indians of Amazonia, Negro Africans, Quecha of the Andes, Shamans of Siberia) and the Universalists. After these talks, concrete experiences were exchanged on the way soil is managed in mono, multi-cultural and religious societies; the way soils issue is taken into account in teaching and communication campaigns; as well as how it is integrated into the preoccupations of administrators, civil servants and local authorities, and non governmental organizations.The symposium was fruitful. It ended up with the " Declaration of Klingenthal III on Soils" of which we have extracted the following ...... 
We have observed…
-	scientific knowledge now allows us to identify clearly the importance of soils for the preservation of life on earth and the maintenance of global equilibria; to understand better the role of soils in individual lives, human societies, and diverse human activities; and to define clearly the threats to this natural resource.
-	 in the different cultures and religions represented at this symposium, references to the soil exist, and to the extent that these attitudes toward the soil converge, they encourage respect for this resource.  But in reality, unfortunately, this is not always reflected in the preservation of the soil. 
-	a lack of awareness of the importance of soil is widespread in public opinion and among those who use or manage the soil directly. 
We consider that :
-	for human societies, the soil is the source of life, of well-being and fulfilment, and that whatever our scientific and technical progress, the soil will remain an essential foundation for all human progress.
-	In the diversity of our cultures and spiritualities, we must preserve the soil and all its functions for future generations.  To this end, we must first change our daily behaviour towards the soil.  

We call on :

1-  educational, information, and communication systems to become conscious, and to make others conscious, of the existence of the soil with its multiple functions and its importance for the life of our planet.

2- all peoples to value their culture and popular traditions concerning the earth and the soil, because they encourage an attitude of respect for this resource which we only tend to see as a source of profit.

3-  humans and human society to reexamine the illusion of liberty and systematic progress produced by science and technology, and to rediscover ways of using the soil that respect its diversity and the natural rhythms that renew its fertility, while guaranteeing a healthy food chain and excellent water quality.

4- decision-makers at all levels:  individuals, businesses, nations, and international organizations to make judicious and responsible choices when deciding on land uses and developments.  Conflicting demands for the best soils must be resolved in favour of preserving the soil resource and its functions.

5-  individuals and societies to adopt patterns of consumption that discourage the pillage of natural resources and that produce little waste destined for soils and the environment.  Non-governmental organizations and associations for international solidarity have particularly important responsibilities here.

6-  individuals and societies to be unified, to recognize the inalienable right of peoples to feed themselves, and to replace confrontation with cooperation and dialogue, which alone can find ways to counter the deterioration of soils and their functions.

7-  the scientific community to engage more in research on the sustainable uses of soils by human societies in the diversity of their cultures and spiritualities.  Nations and institutions must support these research efforts and the application of the results.

8-  individuals and societies to create a dialogue among diverse forms of popular knowledge about soil use and between scientific and popular viewpoints, and to create conditions for the revival and reevaluation of coherent and useful forms of popular knowledge of the soil for the benefit of future generations and all humanity.

Sheet 3
“Tell me a story on soil”

A project of the Soil Campaign within
the Intercultural Library of FPH

The absence of soil, as subject matter, in the basic teaching programs (3-10/11 years) as well as in the medium and secondary teaching (12-18/19 years) has been highlighted, at the occasion of several international meetings, by Soil Scientists and by representatives of civil society working for a sustainable use of soil resource. 
This lack in general teaching, both public and private, is a serious handicap to popular awareness on soils issues. It is reinforced by the absence in the educational and para-educational networks (bookstores, libraries, medias, …) of specific educational materials on soils while there are some on rocks, minerals, water, plants, animals, mushrooms etc. 
The experience suggests that a minimum knowledge on soil is necessary  for all citizens of the Earth in view of the rehabilitation of soils in people’s culture. This rehabilitation appears, today, as a prerequisite for the success of all policies of soil preservation, including through legal means. The community of Soil Scientists must contribute to this effort. 
From the outset, the Soil Campaign emphasised, as part of its concerns, the necessity of teaching about soil as a prerequisite. It launches, in the framework of the “Intercultural Series for the Future” of the Foundation Charles Léopold Mayer, a call to the community of Soil Scientists for the production of educational references on soils intended for the general teaching. 

In particular, the community of Soil Scientists was summoned by the IUSS bulletin to contribute to constitute a first series of educational references for children. They were asked to prepare, in the framework of their own cultures, a two-page (6,000-character) soil lesson for 10 to 12 year old children.
The contributions will be presented and validated when the IUSS Commission on Soil Education and Public Awareness meets on the occasion of the 17th Soil Science World Congress (Bangkok, 2002).
The validated lessons will then be illustrated by a specialist and published under the title “Tell me a story on soil” - Collection of Educational References on Soil, addressed to 10 to 12 year old children. The patronage of UNESCO for this work will be sought, since its official acknowledgement by this institution as a pedagogical tool useful for soil education would facilitate its translation into other languages and its world-wide distribution.

Sheet 4

Project

SOILS – THE EARTH’S SKIN

SOS-2002 (“let’s save our soils”)

for a sustainable utilisation of soils

Since 1999, the Soil Campaign is participating with Peter Heller, a well-known German filmmaker, in setting up and launching this project. It foresees:

•	Preparing a multimedia kit called “Soils ‑ the Earth’s Skin” in different mass media in a Franco-German campaign during the year 2002. In this context, there will be a whole 240-minute evening program on the French ARTE channel (in co-operation with the German ARD channel) on the subject “It’s dirty - the Soils of the World”, as well as a series of radio programs (in co-operation with the “Francfurter Hörfunkagentur IAD” / International Audio Services).

•	The publication of articles in the journals of the different German and French journalists’ associations; the production of an educational film for German and French general education schools; several expositions; and a DVD-ROM (German/French). In-depth and extended versions of these materials will then be produced for secondary schools and for adult education.

The team behind this project includes today:  Prof. Dr. Mireille Dosso (CNEARC Montpellier; SC); Prof. Dr. Alain Ruellan (CNEARC Montpellier; SC); Prof. Dr. Rabah Lahmar (Charles Léopold Mayer Foundation, Paris; SC); Dr. Martin Held (Protestant Academy Tutzing), Prof. Dr. Armin Reller (Augsburg University); Peter Heller, filmmaker and producer of award-winning films such as “Jungleburger” and “Love of the Empire”,  (Filmkraft, Munich.); Heiko Feld, documentary film maker  (Feldfilm, Munich); Sylvie Banuls, filmmaker (Lopevi Images, Paris).

Fiche 5

Tutzing Initiative for a Soil Convention (TISC)
By Martin Held

Dr. Martin Held, Protestant Academy Tutzing, Co-Author of the proposal for a Soil Convention
held@ev-akademie-tutzing.de ; www.soil-convention.org

There had been recommendations for a binding instrument on soils as an international framework for actions at all levels from various experts and scientific bodies (German Advisory Council on Global Change 1995; Hurni et al. 1996). According to these recommendations the Tutzing Initiative for a Soil Convention (TISC) has launched a proposal for a  “Convention on Sustainable Use of Soils” (Soil Convention) in 1997. The draft was written with the support of experts and representatives from NGOs and from all relevant disciplines (Tutzing Project “Time Ecology” 19982).
This initiative underlines the importance of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) as a first step for the sustainable use of soils and land management. This proposal is now widely debated. Many persons as well as organizations are actively supporting and working on it like the International Union of Soil Sciences (IUSS), the International Soil Conservation Organisation (ISCO), the Committee on Environmental Law of IUCN and many others. Foundations and NGOs from all over the world are actively supporting it like “The Soil Campaign” of Charles Léopold Mayer Foundation, Paris, Legambiente (Italy), Friends of the Earth Germany and many others. This Tutzing Initiative has stimulated activities on all levels, from global to local, to be active and raise soil awareness and stimulate measures on the sustainable use of soils and land management. For example, the parliament of Bolzano-South-Tyrol has decided to support this proposal and take up the goals in the region (June 1999, with all votes). The proposal also stimulated the idea of a Soil Alliance for Local Authorities complementing the Climate Alliance which was discussed and welcomed at the International Annual Conference of the Climate Alliance, Bolzano, Thursday 18 May 2000.
One of the results of these debates and activities was to establish an Intergovernmental / International Panel on Soils (IPS). In close contact with organizations like the IUSS Hartmut Grassl (former director of the World Climate Research Programme based at WMO, Geneva) and Beno Pilardeaux (member of the Committee on Science and Technology of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, Bremerhaven) have written short papers to introduce this idea to all interested decision makers and to all other interested persons and organizations.

References
German Advisory Council on Global Change (1995): World in Transition: The Threat to Soils. Annual Report 1994. Bonn: Economica.
Hurni, Hans et al. (1996): Precious Earth. From Soil and Water Conservation to Sustainable Land Management. Berne: International Soil Conservation Organisation.
Tutzinger Projekt “Time Ecology” (19982): Preserving Soils for Life. Proposal for a “Convention on Sustainable Use of Soils” (Soil Convention). Schriftenreihe zur politischen Ökologie. Munich: oekom publishers (French-English-Spanish-German). [other publications available edited at Paris, Mexico, Lublin, Beyrouth; text is available in Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, Polish and Spanish.]

Sheet 6
Support of ISSS to the Tutzing Initiative for a Soil Convention.
Preface to the publication:
“Conserving soils, the source of life. Proposal for a Convention on sustainable soil utilisation”

In August 1998, on the occasion of the 16th World Soil Science Congress, the proposal for an International Soil Convention was introduced for the first time to the World scientific community. This proposal is now known as the “Tutzing Initiative for a Soil Convention”. The preface for this document, published jointly by Ökom-Verlag (Munich) and by Éditions Charles Léopold Mayer (Paris) is reproduced below:

After considerable efforts on a world-wide level to protect air, water and biota (see UN Agenda 21, Convention on Biological Diversity, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change etc.) it has now become necessary to include the soil within the scope of environmental protection. Soil is a more complex medium than air and water. It may indeed be the most complex system known to science. Composed of inorganic and organic compounds, and solid, liquid and gaseous forms, it contains large numbers of living organisms and is the medium which supports life in its broadest sense. Unlike air, water, and biota, which are mobile systems, soil is site-specific, and although more stable than the other three systems, it shows great variability in space and time.

In general, soils are not known to humans, because they are hidden under their feet and they cannot use them in the way they use air, water or biota. But soils have at least six main functions for human life such as:

•	The production of biomass by agriculture and forestry 
•	Filtering, buffering and transformation activity, between the atmosphere, the ground water, and the plant cover, protecting the environment and especially humans through the protection of the food chain and the drinking water reserves. 
•	Soils are biological habitats and gene reserves, much larger in quantity and in quality than all the above ground biomass.
•	Soils serve as a spatial base for technical, industrial and socio-economic structures and their development, e.g. for the construction of industrial premises, houses, transport systems, sports and recreation areas, dumping of refuse, and others.
•	Soils are used as a source of raw materials, e.g. clay, sand and gravel for construction, and also as a reserve of water and energy.
•	Finally, soils are a geogenic and cultural heritage, forming an essential part of the landscape in which we live and concealing paleontological and archaeological treasures of high value for the understanding of the history of earth and mankind

The problems of soil degradation and soil destruction are caused by the competition existing between these different forms of land use. Therefore, new perceptions and concepts for sustainable land use should be developed, which are conditioned in the bounds of nature. In this context, sustainable land use and protection of soil can be defined as the spatial (local or regional) and temporal harmonisation of all main uses of soil and land, minimizing irreversible ones, which is not a scientific but rather a political issue.

 Exactly in this sense, a new convention is urgently needed, and it is most interesting to recognize that in the last few years NGOs of different origins and with very diverse views and perspectives have started to care for soils, well knowing that the protection of soil through international legal instruments is a must if humankind should survive, especially in view of the world-wide, rapid degradation of soil and the still growing world population.

 The International Society of Soil Science (ISSS) is supporting this initiative for a Convention on Sustainable Use of Soils (Soil Convention). We do hope that it will find broad support, promoting new insights into the problem of soil degradation, and stimulating the public, politicians and decision makers to bring it to an agenda.

Prof. Alain RUELLAN	Prof. Winfried E.H. BLUM
President of ISSS	Secretary General of ISSS

Note: The International Soil Science Society (ISSS) became in 1998 the International Union of Soil Science (IUSS)

Sheet 7
Tutzing Initiative for a Soil Convention (TISC)
By Martin Held

Dr. Martin Held, Protestant Academy Tutzing, Co-Author of the proposal for a Soil Convention
held@ev-akademie-tutzing.de ; www.soil-convention.org

There had been recommendations for a binding instrument on soils as an international framework for actions at all levels from various experts and scientific bodies (German Advisory Council on Global Change 1995; Hurni et al. 1996). According to these recommendations the Tutzing Initiative for a Soil Convention (TISC) has launched a proposal for a  “Convention on Sustainable Use of Soils” (Soil Convention) in 1997. The draft was written with the support of experts and representatives from NGOs and from all relevant disciplines (Tutzing Project “Time Ecology” 1998).
This initiative underlines the importance of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) as a first step for the sustainable use of soils and land management. This proposal is now widely debated. Many persons as well as organizations are actively supporting and working on it, such as the International Union of Soil Sciences (IUSS), the International Soil Conservation Organisation (ISCO), the Committee on Environmental Law of IUCN and many others. Foundations and NGOs from all over the world are actively supporting it, such as “The Soil Campaign” of Charles Léopold Mayer Foundation, Paris, Legambiente (Italy), Friends of the Earth Germany and many others. This Tutzing Initiative has stimulated activities on all levels, from global to local, to be active and raise soil awareness and stimulate measures on the sustainable use of soils and land management. For example, the parliament of Bolzano-South-Tyrol has decided to support this proposal and take up its goals in the region (June 1999, with all votes). The proposal also stimulated the idea of a Soil Alliance for Local Authorities complementing the Climate Alliance which was discussed and welcomed at the International Annual Conference of the Climate Alliance, Bolzano, Thursday 18 May 2000.
One of the results of these debates and activities was to establish an Intergovernmental / International Panel on Soils (IPS). In close contact with organizations such as the IUSS Hartmut Grassl (former director of the World Climate Research Programme based at WMO, Geneva) and Beno Pilardeaux (member of the Committee on Science and Technology of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, Bremerhaven) have written short papers to introduce this idea to all interested decision makers and to all other interested persons and organizations.
References:
German Advisory Council on Global Change (1995): World in Transition: The Threat to Soils. Annual Report 1994. Bonn: Economica.
Hurni, Hans, et al. (1996): Precious Earth. From Soil and Water Conservation to Sustainable Land Management. Berne: International Soil Conservation Organisation.
Tutzinger Projekt “Time Ecology” (1998): Preserving Soils for Life. Proposal for a “Convention on Sustainable Use of Soils” (Soil Convention). Schriftenreihe zur politischen Ökologie. Munich: oekom publishers (French-English-Spanish-German). [other publications available edited in Paris, Mexico, Lublin, Beyrouth; the text is available in Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, Polish and Spanish.]

Sheet 8
International Panel on Soils (IPS)
By Benno Pilardeaux

Dr. Benno Pilardeaux, Secretariat of the German Advisory Council on Global Change  (WBGU), Bremerhaven (all views expressed are those of the author) 
   www.wbgu.de - bpilardeaux@wbgu.de

There is a lack of scientific advice concerning the international soil protection policy for several reasons:

Improvement of implementation control of the UNCCD through the development of guardrails.
In order to improve control of the implementation of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) there should be quantified reduction or protection targets. A prerequisite for this is to define the non-tolerable developments of soil degradation, termed guardrails. The purpose of limiting tolerable developments of soil degradation by means of guardrails is to prevent the environmental system from moving dangerously close to possibly unstable states that could lead to dramatic hazards, e. g., famines. As soon as the specific guardrails have been defined a scientific analysis can identify the soil protection strategies required. This so-called tolerable windows approach developed by the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU 1997) identifies, on the basis of normative stipulations of non-tolerable developments, a range of soil protection strategies compatible with these restrictions.

Global monitoring of soil degradation
Although the GLASOD-data and the FAO world soil map provided a first scientific basis to assess soil degradation, there has not been a continuation or a refinement of this work. Moreover, the GLASOD-data are based on expert estimates. Quantified data showing the trends in global soil degradation will be provided within the next 10-15 years by the Global and National Soil and Terrain Digital Database Program, called SOTER (Oldemann 1999). SOTER is a joint program by ISRIC, FAO and UNEP. Such a set of quantitative data are a basis necessary for the development of global strategies. However, on the long-term basis there must be a body that monitors the work of SOTER. 

Soils and biological sources and sinks for greenhouse gases
Concerning the ongoing negotiation processes of the sister conventions of the UNCCD there is a need for co-ordination. There is still a lack of knowledge about the possible impact of the Clean Development Mechanism on the UNCCD and the role played by soils in the accounting of biological sources sinks under the Kyoto protocol. 

Basic set of global indicators for the implementation of the UNCCD
There is a need for a basic set of indicators (implementation and impact indicators) in order to compare and assess the progress achieved by the implementation of the UNCCD through National Actions Programmes.

Conclusion: International Panel on Soils is needed
Taking the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as an example and learning from the experiences gained, there should also be a scientific body for soils to provide independent scientific advice to the UNCCD. An International Panel on Soils (IPS) could deal with the scientific questions mentioned above in order to support the development of global strategies for soil protection. The task of the UNCCD´s Committee on Science and Technology (CST) would be to process or prepare the scientific findings for the Conference of the Parties. This would be in line with the tasks of the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) of the Framework Convention on Climate Change that prepares the scientific findings of the IPCC-reports for the Conference of the Parties. 

References
German Advisory Council on Global Change, (Wissenschaftlicher Beirat Globale Umweltveränderungen, WBGU) (1997): Targets for Climate Protection 1997, Bremerhaven.
Oldeman, Roel (1999): Bodenmonitoring – Index eines nachhaltigen Umgangs mit Böden, in: Haber, Wolfgang, Held, Martin und Schneider, Manuel (Hrsg.): Nachhaltiger Umgang mit Böden – Initiative für eine internationale Bodenkonvention, S. 67-80, Süddeutsche Zeitung, München. 

Sheet 9 

Why do we need an Intergovernmental Panel on Soils (IPS)?
By Hartmut Grassl

Prof. Dr. Hartmut Grassl, Director Max-Planck-Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany.    grassl@dkrz.de
Until 1999 he was Director of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP),  based at WMO, Geneva, Switzerland.

Degradation of soils is a problem for all countries and is threatening food security in many countries already, maybe even more than anthropogenic climate change might do in coming decades. However, no globally co-ordinated assessment of the knowledge base on soil degradation, its trends and potential solutions for a trend reversal exists. Without such an assessment, progress in improving food security in most developing countries will be slow. One of the main reasons for the absence of co-ordinated action is the argument that local mismanagement causes soil degradation so it should be corrected by acting locally as well. This misjudgement neglects that - despite the immobility of soils - degradation is to a great extent due to transport across borders, either by shipping of goods or by atmospheric circulation, exporting pollution and soil and plant nutrients (e.g. mining nutrients by shipping soy beans used in animal husbandry from South America to Europe). If soil degradation is affecting agricultural yield, i.e., if stronger fertilizer applications and changed agricultural practices can no longer offset reduced soil fertility, increased poverty and finally migration will be the consequence causing conflict inside countries or between them and leading to xenophobic reactions in industrialised countries.
The absence of most up-to-date policy-relevant information now delays action within the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). The input for its Committee on Science and Technology is far from that for the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). SBSTA gets regular input from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that has received joint sponsorship from the the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a specialised UN agency, and the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) since 1988. IPCC has been able to attract the leading scientists of the global climate and climate impact research community. It is no exaggeration to state that IPCC assessments were fundamental for global climate change policy. The first full assessment (1990) stimulated UNFCCC, the second (1995) laid the foundation for the Kyoto Protocol and the forthcoming third (late 2000) might push Kyoto-Protocol ratification.
Obvious conclusions for environmental policy are:

•	The global community has to accept soil degradation as a global problem that needs to be reduced by globally co-ordinated action.
•	The existing UNCCD is not sufficient to reduce soil degradation world wide, i.e., we need a UN soil convention dealing with all soil degradation types, not just desertification, which is obviously the most important one.
•	The assessment of the knowledge base on environmental problems has to be co-ordinated globally as well, has to be accepted by governments, thus must be intergovernmental, and it is the prerequisite of political action within UN conventions.

In other words: We urgently need an Intergovernmental Panel on Soils (IPS), established by the relevant UN bodies and supported by international non-governmental scientific organizations. The parents of IPS would therefore be the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and the International Council for Science (ICSU) with its International Union of Soil Science (IUSS). The way the IPCC is structured with its 3 working groups on science, impacts and policy responses could act as a useful model for the design of an IPS.
IPS would facilitate the implementation of UNCCD. IPS could also promote the enlargement of UNCCD into a global convention to protect soils in due time. It would stimulate research on sustainable use of soils and land management. It would specifically strengthen the monitoring of soil properties and impacts of measures. Finally, it will lead the way to food security.

Fiche 10

Proposal for an Intergovernmental Panel on Land and Soil (IPLS)
Report from the side event at the 4th Conference of the Parties to the Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD)

Organised by: German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU, www.wbgu.de) and Protestant Academy Tutzing (www.ev-akademie-tutzing.de)

Speakers: Prof. Dr. Hartmut Grassl, former director of the World Climate Research Programme, member of the WBGU and director at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg. Prof. Dr. Winfried Blum, General Secretary of the International Union of Soil Sciences, Vienna and Dr. Luca Montanarella, Head of the European Soil Bureau, Ispra.

Participants: 55 participants attended the meeting, among them many members of the Committee on Science and Technology (CST) of the UNCCD. 

Results

Parent bodies could be: International Council for Science (ICSU), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations (FAO).

Structure: Experiences with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) could guide the process, e.g. the system of having chairs and co-chair from industrialised and developing countries in each working group and the system of peer reviews.

Funding: Like IPCC. A small secretariat funded by the parent bodies would be sufficient. Operational costs for technical support units and travel costs of experts would have to be funded by volunteer donations. 

Tasks
Providing independent and multidisciplinary scientific input to the CST/COP:
•	Integration and use of existing scientific knowledge at the international level
•	Assessment of scientific findings
•	Formulation of recommendations for policymakers and stimulation of research programmes

Dr. Martin Held, Tutzing Academy
Dr. Benno Pilardeaux, WBGU Secretariat			              Bonn, Germany, 14 December 2000

Sheet 10

RESOLUTION ON THE LEGAL ASPECTS 
OF THE SUSTAINABLE USE OF SOILS 
IUCN WORLD CONSERVATION CONGRESS AMMAN, JORDAN

RECALLING that one of the objectives of IUCN since its founding in 1948 was the establishment of laws and treaties for the protection of nature, and
RECOGNISING the important contributions to establishment of the field of environmental law made by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources since 1965, 
AWARE that environmental law has become a field of law whose scope is exceptionally broad, ranging from the legal systems of local authorities and the customary law of traditional societies and indigenous peoples, through to the laws of States and the international law among States, and 
NOTING the significant cooperation and support that exists among the soil science community for the improvement of environmental law and policy for the sustainable use of soils, particularly in regard to the ecological functions of soil for the conservation of biodiversity and the maintenance of human life, including: the production of biomass; the filtering, buffering and transformation activity between the atmosphere, ground water and plant cover; soils as a biological habitat and gene reserve; soils as a spatial base for technical, industrial and socio-economic structures and their development; and soils as a source of raw materials, 
CONVINCED that the future ecological benefits of the world’s soils will depend on the availability of the existence of adequate global, regional and national legal strategies to enable individual nations to make sound land use and land management decisions, and on building the capacity to communicate these strategies, 
CONCERNED that there is a need to study further and make recommendations concerning the synergy among the several international environmental instruments of relevance to soils and the patterns of their implementation through national legislation, 
ACKNOWLEDGING that whilst there is a range of international instruments addressing aspects of soil conservation, there is at present no specific global environmental law instrument for the sustainable use of soils 

The World Conservation Congress, at its second session, in Amman, Jordan, 4-10 October 2000,

WELCOMES the initiative of the Environmental Law Programme to form the Working Group on the Legal Aspects of the Sustainable Use of Soils to prepare guidelines and explanatory material relating to principles and elements of national legislation and policy to assist States to manage their specific soil degradation and land degradation problems, and to investigate the need for and feasibility of further developing international environmental law in this field, in particular through an international instrument for the sustainable use of soils, 

INVITES IUCN members to provide all possible support to the Environmental Law Programme in developing guidelines on the essential elements to include in environmental legislation and policy for the sustainable use of soils, and its investigation of a global instrument for the sustainable sue of soils, and

REQUESTS the Environmental Law Programme, in its development of legal guidelines, explanatory material and investigation into a global legal instrument for the sustainable use of soils, to pay particular attention to the ecological needs of soil and their ecological functions for the conservation of biodiversity and the maintenance of human life.

Signatures of the resolution sponsors:

1.	Center for Environmental Legal Studies, Pace University, New York, USA;  
2.	Sociedad Peruana de Derecho Ambiental (SPDA), Peru ;
3.	Asia Pacific Centre for Environmental Law, National University of Singapore, Singapore; 
4.	Environmental Law Institute, Washington, USA;
5.	Lawyers for a Green Planet (Instituto “O direito por um Planeta Verde”), Brazil ; 
6.	Nature Conservation Council of New South Wales, Australia.