Mamphela Ramphele,co-president of The Club of Rome

23 June 2022 – Until political and business leaders accept – and act on the knowledge – that we are all part of an interdependent living system, we cannot achieve global equity or a healthy planet. The good news is that The Club of Rome has identified turnaround actions that can make the holistic, systems-level changes we need. The bad news is that a lot of us will have to let go of comfortable habits and forget some of the stories we have been telling ourselves first.

Many of us are familiar with economic development and the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  I proposed that those goals and similar piecemeal economy-oriented goals aren’t thinking big enough.  

The SDGs are a reflection of a world that has become too comfortable with inequality and inequity, even though we know that inequality is bad for both rich and poor.  SDGs leave intact the assumption that poor people do not have the same aspirations as all of us for human dignity, security and wellbeing.  It is time for the UN to challenge the global human community to raise our level of ambition and call for, and promote global equity for a healthy planet.