The planetary challenge is urgent and systemic. The world confronts twenty-first century perils hobbled by twentieth century mindsets and institutions, a dangerous gap that bodes ill. A just and sustainable civilization is still possible. We can forge a path to a different future: a world of lives enriched and nature resilient. A fragmented movement is incapable of systemic transformation. Civil society efforts are vital, but lack an overarching vision and strategy matched to the complexity of the historic task. A critical social actor is missing from the global stage. The transition awaits the awakening of a vast cultural and political movement engaged on all fronts in a supranational project of global citizenship. The global citizens movement will be adaptive and polycentric. The living movement will evolve as a dispersed ecology of associations, spawning centers of influence in every nation and community.
Rio+20 provide a historical opportunity to convene and organize global civil society towards advancing a Global Peoples Movement. The Peoples’ Sustainability Treaties will create a platform to enable a collective voice of civil society at Rio+20 and will organize a public platform at the Rio+20 Peoples Summit. The idea is to bring together leaders of global civil society organizations towards advancing a global citizens movement. All the leaders and participants of the treaties circles and other likeminded initiatives will be provided with a platform to collectively voice their opinions, aspirations, plans and commitments to advance a global citizens movement that can shoulder the responsibility of the transition towards a sustainable world.
The Rio+20 Platform for Advancing a Global Peoples Movement is designed to create an alternative vision and effective strategy for realizing it. Consciousness and action must rise to the level of a unified global society. Dominant institutions have proved too timorous or too venal for meeting the environmental and social challenges of our time. Instead, an adequate response requires us to imagine the awakening of a new social actor: a coordinated global movement (GPM) struggling on all fronts towards a just and sustainable planetary civilization. The plan for advancing a global movement post Rio+20 will be ready for discussion at the Rio+20 Platform.
(for further information visit: http://www.wideningcircle.org/keyIdeas/Vision.htm)
Peoples' Sustainability Treaties 